And here you were thinking it was pancreatic cancer…
What’s the harm?
What’s the harm if someone believes in “alternative medicine”? That’s the question whined by idiots who think there’s nothing wrong with the multi-billion dollar industry selling powdered rhino horn, magnetic bracelets, Naturopathy, Homeopathy, and faith healing.
We all know the hundreds of reasons why it’s bullshit. But hundreds of millions of people still don’t, and not only do they help elect other scientifically-illiterate people into positions of authority that decide policy on things like healthcare (ain’t democracy great?), occasionally their BS kills cool people.
So how do you respond when one of them asks “what’s the harm”?
Well instead of going with your first impulse–replying with a brisk “fuck you“, try this:
Grab their iPhone, say the name “Steve Jobs”, and drop it like a mic.
iDiot™
In most cases, pancreatic cancer is a death sentence: virtually all forms of the disease are incurable. But the Apple co-founder had a form called an “islet cell neuroendocrine tumor”, which is significantly less aggressive and has a fairly high recovery rate, assuming you seek actual medical treatment.
And that’s exactly what Steve Jobs didn’t do.
“Jobs’s faith in alternative medicine likely cost him his life…. He had the only kind of pancreatic cancer that is treatable and curable…. He essentially committed suicide.” -Dr. Barrie R. Cassileth, chief of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s integrative medicine department
Suicide by Bullshit
Instead of seeking out actual physicians for actual medicine, Jobs sought remedies including:
- a Vegan diet
- a Fruit-based diet
- Acupuncture
- Herbs
- a fucking Psychic
- Juice Fasts
- Bowel Cleansing
According to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, Jobs was “fascinated” by Eastern mysticism and alternative medicine. He also recounted how Jobs, when asked about his long delay in getting surgery, explained, ‘I didn’t want my body to be opened…I didn’t want to be violated in that way”. Steve Jobs would eventually opt for a desperate, last-minute surgical ‘violation’, but by then it was too late.
In the wake of his death, many medical professionals and media outlets tip-toed around the fact Jobs’ infatuation with nonsense caused his death. But one of the people who danced a little less delicately on those silicon eggshells was Harvard oncology researcher, Dr. Ramzi Amri. He wrote a piece in response to a question on Quora that–without explicitly stating how idiotic Jobs’ decision was–provided an overwhelming amount of evidence to allow the reader to come to that conclusion. He summed it up with this:
Mr. Jobs always was a free thinker, a strong believer in spirituality, a vegetarian and a known skeptic of conventional medicine. He chose to reject conventional medicine altogether for a while. He’s not alone in that. We come across many people like this and we all know someone in our midst that uses homeopathy or has this known fear of anything “chemical” (to those I always say that everything is chemical, if you think dihydrogen oxide sounds scary you should stop drinking water). Individual freedom of thought and choice is a cornerstone of our modern society and the medical world makes no exception.
It’s always an ethical puzzle if a patient chooses alternative treatment that we know from fact will not work. Yet, as long as the person is mentally sane, we cannot force them to choose a working treatment, even if it means their death. Sadly, even for one of the greatest personalities of the last 100 years, there will be no exception, and badly treated cancer is just as deadly for him as for anyone else…
That last line, whether intended or not, is a swift kick right up the stupidity; a grammatical, evidence-based middle finger.
Remember: “Alternative Medicine” that actually works is called “Medicine”
So maybe you shouldn’t smash that idiot’s iPhone when they ask “What’s the harm?”. After all, some poor (literally) Chinese laborer made the conscious choice to make that phone instead of jumping out the factory window. But feel free to link said idiot to this article. And while you’re at it, strongly consider that “fuck you”, because the world would be a better place with a healthy, rational Steve Jobs still in it.
RIP.
Poor Jobs
Its the same stupidity all over the world…pseudoscience
Fate cannot be rubbed off , may be his role in earth is over
Mission accomplished
Steve Jobs layed faith in Alternative Medicine for his Cancer but that costed his Life😑
For us in Africa people believe more in some self styled prophet we know from the back yard to the point stopping Ant Retroviral Therapy and the die miserably .We mystical as Africans but not to the point of stupidity!
Sad but it’s a fact people turn a blind eye on modern medicine
But a friend of mine and a relative tried chemo and died too. Not after spending a huge sum on treatments. How now?
Ayurvedic and other traditional drug contain toxic metal used deliberately and/or contaminated. Causes liver and kidney damage
Allopathy pushes harmful chemicals into the human body, I prefer to be dead rather than living the life of a robot with 50 million side effects, science has been corrupted by greedy pharmaceutical companies, the best example is psychiatry, they don’t test your brain, they just stuff harmful chemicals that will destroy your entire system and make you a walking robot without emotions, that kind of life is not precious at all, most of allopathy has no observable improvement except in rare cases like surgery or accident, suicide should be made legal and all treatment should be on choice, if I wish to go to an illiterate priest for treatment, it’s my choice, I was forced to take lifelong treatment and the pharmaceutical industry is the only beneficiary, allopathy needs to prove itself through observable results, not by forcing the stupid treatment on patients, Choice should rule
What’s the point in showing only one sided comments, it took me 20 minutes of time to read and 15 minutes to type a comment, lot of negative emotions, fuck allopathy and their campaigners
Every medicinal branch is a tool against disease.The crux lies in who is using the tool.Of course this happens with modern medicin also.There are many deaths with modern medicin
That’s called self assassination.
So what!!! Didn’t he have Choice like everyone else?
He made his choice, can you absolutely know it’s true he would’ve been cured!!
It’s all fucking BS my mother had REAL medical treatment for chronic liver disease and deteriorated really rapidly after being told they could maintain it for many many years WITH treatment.
When you decide to give up and go, that’s a choice EACH person makes. I swore that alternative (had I know about it) could’ve saved her. Can I absolutely know that’s true NO!!
Would Steve Jobs still been alive had he sort out “real” medicine? I doubt it! Yet that’s only an assumption.
The question is , why feel the need to slate alternative medicine if people want to do that! Let them!!!
We all have Choice!!
Poor Phrost. Science is like a religion and it covers only a small part of our universe. It brought us many things but only in the domains that are already ‘discovered’. The parts that are not yet discovered are disregarded by believers as nonsense and alternative crab. That does not say anything about those undiscovered areas but only about the person that disregards them.
A bit more respect for things that you are not familiar with and for Steve’s choices would be appropriate.
Cancer , if treated scientifically, has only the “chance” to get cured with varying degree of success. This is science. Because, Sloan Kattering knows it better, that cancer is a multifactorial ailment, of which the factors may be a million. Hence, scientifically it is impossible to “cure” cancer unless we can take control of those 1 million variable factors that play in the process of disease modification. Probably Jobs knew this and chose a comfortable way to live the rest of his life.
Well, i am a doctor and strongly believe that all patients with cancer must avail a scientific way to TREAT the disease. Don’t think, i am a philosopher, not that intelligent.
this article is Bullshit. Steve was not a fool to put his life at stake. this is a ploy of the allopaths to bad mouth about alternative medicine.
Why would anyone mock the Free Will in action? We were nor created for this world and were not meant to live forever. He believed he was mak8ng the best decision for his life. He made a free will decision. It is not an immoral act to refuse pharmaceuticals. I pray he knew Jesus and wish for him Salvation!
Billions of people believe in bullshit, it’s called religion, but it’s their right to do so.
If you’re implying Jobs was one of those scientifically-illiterate people then you must be some fucking genius, eh? I turned to alternative healing to get rid of a 16cm mass growing on my right kidney. Guess what? The fucking mass is now gone! Explain that, you fucking genius.
We’re not implying Jobs was scientifically illiterate, we’re openly stating it. The man sought out psychics rather than doctors and his stupid choice cost him his life.
And yeah, we’re stating you’re scientifically illiterate too; otherwise, you’d know that anecdotes aren’t evidence.
Look at it this way. 7 billion human beings die away from earth every 100 years. But a fresh 7 billion replenish earth in the next 100 years. Makes sense.
What I don’t like about this article is, its tone, and the fact that it considers that living and surviving a cancer is necessarily better then dying. Life of the body is overrated… pfff Arrogant little boy. Life is eternal bruh. duh… U know, Jesus, the cross, live and let die … All that good stuff…
One person means a trend. But when millions die after getting chemo, it’s the cancer that killed them.
The doctors who pumped my friend with chemo who had the aggressive form of pancreatic cancer should lose their licenses. She should have gone straight to hospice, where perhaps she could have seen and enjoyed her friends and family for a couple of months. Instead she was deadly sick in bed from the chemo.
The author is a SHILL for Big Pharma, Big Doctor and Big Hospital.
Hahaha, look at the worms coming out of the woodwork!
I don’t mind, it’s evolution of the fittest… Unless it turns out like something out of Idiocracy. O.o
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
[…] So we decided to apply our principles to industries that affect vastly more lives: fitness, nutrition, and healthcare for example. People who are full of shit in those spheres of influence are literally responsible for the deaths of millions: scaring people into avoiding vaccines or food products that have saved countless lives from the horror of starvation, for starters. Hell, it’s entirely possible that the next global pandemic could wipe out much of the Human race, all because a cluster of fucking idiots can’t tell the difference between an axis of bullshit like that of Wakefield-McCarthy (Andrew, and Jenny, respectively) fearmongering for fun and profit, and credible immunology. Bullshitters are even responsible for killing off icons of technology that push us all into the future. […]
[…] Keep in mind that this kind of nonsense doesn’t just take in your garden-variety idiot, this tar pit of deadly ignorance captures reasonably intelligent and successful people too. […]
[…] Aside from the catastrophic effects on wildlife resulting in nonsensical beliefs that ground rhino horn works like Viagra for flaccid Chinese dudes, of course the broader concern is when people turn to “alternative” instead of legitimate forms of medicine, resulting in deaths that could have been avoided—such as what happened to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. […]