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The world lost a true visionary yesterday with the passing of Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple. I remember back in the late 80’s when I was a young computer programmer/designer fresh out of grad school using the (Apple) MacIntosh computer for the very first time.
The MacIntosh user interface was so intuitive and such a leap ahead of the predominant Microsoft DOS operating system (remember? type commands at the green screen prompt) that I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
This new and emerging user interface in the 1980s that is taken for granted today rocketed the task of computer design light years ahead and allowed the development of computer systems to at last be something users could be involved in and easily understand.
There is no doubt that Steve Jobs’ passing at 56 years old was premature. He had much more to contribute to the world and I for one feel the world has been cheated now that he is gone.
Pictures of him in his final days showed a frail, shockingly thin frame consistent with a person who had undergone chemotherapy treatments for cancer.
While every single detail of Mr. Jobs’ cancer treatments over the years are not publicly known, one can’t help but wonder if his chemotherapy and radiation treatments contributed to his demise.
Just a few weeks ago, Kara Kennedy, daughter of the late Senator Edward Kennedy died at age 51 from a heart attack. Her brother, Patrick Kennedy said that her many years of chemotherapy to treat lung cancer took a severe toll on her health and weakened her physically to the point where “her heart just gave out.”
Is Conventional Treatment for Cancer Worse Than the Disease?
It seems that chemotherapy/radiation treatments causing death rather than preserving life are becoming more common.
Radiation in particular ups the risk of heart problems in women undergoing conventional treatment for breast cancer. The May 2000 issue of The Lancet reported that women who had undergone radiation for breast cancer increased their odds of dying from other causes, usually heart related, by 21% compared with women who had not undergone radiation with the 20 year survival rate for breast cancer improving by only 1%.
Does that seem worth it to you? It sure doesn’t to me.
Chemotherapy is another conventional treatment for cancer that seems to hasten people’s death. The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death in the UK reported that its review of 600 cancer patients who died within 30 days of treatment revealed that over one quarter had in fact been killed by the chemo and not cancer.
The extreme toxicity of chemo treatments is what causes the rapid demise, usually infections such as the very serious neutropenic sepsis.
In the case of Mr. Jobs, this appears to be what happened. According to reports from multiple sources, he had received chemotherapy treatments in recent months at the Stanford Cancer Center in Palo Alto California and his devastating physical deterioration from these treatments almost certainly contributed to his quick passing.
Would You Ever Use Chemo or Radiation to Treat Cancer?
If you received a cancer diagnosis, would you ever agree to chemotherapy or radiation treatments or would you explore nontoxic alternative therapies?
I, for one, would not consider conventional cancer treatment as such an approach to disease seems more than a little misguided. How can use of toxic chemicals and/or radiation possibly be beneficial when both of these treatments actually have been shown to cause cancer in the long run?
It seems that a more holistic approach to cancer would be wiser than the slash and burn approach of conventional cancer treatments.
In his article A Holistic Approach To Cancer, Dr. Tom Cowan MD writes:
“… the job of the doctor is to distinguish between the therapy and the illness. What I mean by that is if you get a splinter in your finger, and then your body makes pus to get the splinter out, is the pus the therapy or the disease? We know that pus indicates infection and the presence of microorganisms, and we learned in medical school that doctors should kill the pus. But I don’t think it is that far of a stretch to see that if you have a splinter in your finger, the pus is the therapy for the splinter. If you don’t take the splinter out, the pus will do it for you. If you mistakenly think that the pus is the disease and you destroy the pus, the splinter will stay and your body will attempt this process again. If you destroy the pus again, your body might repeat this process three or four more times. Then you have a chronic infection as the body keeps trying to remove the splinter. Eventually it will either succeed, or it will encapsulate the splinter, which is a tumor, a new growth. It is not a cancerous tumor but a benign cystic tumor of the splinter. The understanding that the pus is the therapy allows you to predict what is going to happen in the future.
Now think of this example. Joe Bloke is a smoker. In other words, he puts a bunch of splinters in his lungs every day. Twice a year Joe gets cough, fever, mucus–all to get the splinters out of his lungs. I prefer to say “cough, fever, mucus” rather than “bronchitis” because the word “bronchitis” separates you from the reality of the situation. His body is producing an inflammatory response–it is making a mucus-pus-fever response to cleanse his lungs of splinters. If Joe goes to a doctor who makes the mistake of thinking that the response is the problem, he will give drugs to stop the bronchitis–which is actually the medicine. So Joe will be left with the splinters. That scenario will happen twice a year for thirty years and then Joe has a big bag of splinters in his lungs, and we call that lung cancer.”
Holistic approaches to cancer help resolve whatever caused the cancer in the first place. Conventional chemo/radiation treat only the “pus” of the cancer as described by Dr. Cowan.
Stopping cancer symptoms by “killing” the cancer cells with chemo or radiation is not in any way a cure as Mr. Jobs tragically discovered in his long running quest to regain his health.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist.com
Source: Doctors Rely on Chemo Too Much
If I had children, I’d choose what had the highest survival rate whether it be chemo or something else. Since we have no young children I would not take chemo or radiation. My brother passed away from cancer last year and didn’t want any type of treatment but it upset his college age daughter so much, he went ahead with chemo & radiation. It gave him an extra 18 months to be a father so he felt it had been worthwhile. It also gave the daughter time to come to terms with the fact that he would pass away.
LIsa, that is what happened to my Dad.. it just moved so fast, he didn’t have time to really decide, altho he did try some alternative, but no one in medicine was willing to wait and see if it is working. They move FAST and that is NOT always because they are trying to get the cancer. You can believe what you want. I KNOW. I hope that you can find enough information to make a good decision and that you have a doctor who is willing to think outside the box, if necessary. No judgment here; it IS a personal decision. God bless.
I would and I have. Turns out my cancer, tho, was a result of my not taking care of issues in the first place. Had I started out taking care of my auto-immune disease maybe I would not have developed it in the first place. I think it is an easy question to answer until you are 38 with young kids and faced with this diagnosis. Hindsight, the radiation I received increases my chances of developing Lymphoma and that scares me. I would have liked a doctor to give me information about trying a more natural method first (maybe for 3 months) to see if that made progress. My treatments were scheduled before I ever knew the diagnosis. The whole process goes so fast you don’t have time to really think about much.
Yes Angela! That is so true! I too lost my daddy at a young age. It hurts.. God bless you and your family.
no, i’m totally against chemo and radiation my father died at 47. the doctors kept on him telling him, this will save YOUR LIFE! he had just two treatments and wanted no more after that. after his treatments he went for a follow up and they found another tumor on his brain. now i know that brain cancer is a lot diff. but i really do believe, he would have been w us a lot longer, if the doctors would’ve just let him decide for himself. but they couldn’t and wouldn’t stop and because of them we lost him. so if anyone out there is sturggling w this please do what is best for you and ur family 🙂 i believe that is your choice and to my understanding doctors just will not let it rest when it comes to chemo and radiation!!!! stand up for yourself and SAY NO
According to this article, they say Steve Jobs never used chemo or radiation (and he did try quite a few natural treatments over the years). They theorize that the liver transplant (followed by the anti-rejection meds) was the real problem. By having the immune system suppressed, the body couldn’t keep the cancer at bay.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/09/dr-nicholas-gonzalez-on-steve-jobs.aspx?e_cid=20111009_SNL_Art_1
I have been struggling with the very same question after seeing my BF deteriorate undergoing chemo for the past two years. It has been very difficult for me to watch him buy into the chemo solution and then take tons of medicines on top of it to combat its side effects.
This has made me become very WAPF-oriented, knowing that it’s contrary to popular science, medications, and health warnings. I compare my diet to my grandmother’s who lived to be a healthy 93 without all the low-fat, low calorie processed foods. She did have a heart attack or two, which concerns me, but my overall attitude is that I’d rather have a heart attack (from the rich foods?) than cancer.
I read that Jobs refused conventional cancer treatmens and opted for a ‘special diet’ instead.
That was earlier in his treatment. Later he did chemo and radiation. Chemo was tried only this year.
Been so busy I am just catching up on your posts but I must say this is one of your finest, touching on a controversial subject and having the guts to tell it like it is! Nothing wrong with your communication. “Cut, poison and burn” is the allopathic treatment of choice because it cures cancer? No, because it lines their pockets and well.
Surprisingly, the “cure” for cancer is already known–it’s called the immune system however, you can’t patent it.
In answer to the question, “Would you ever use chemo. . . ?” HELL NO.
“Steve Jobs had a much more benign version of pancreatic cancer–islet cell carcinoma, which is in the carcinoid types. The liver transplant was a bad call. He’d still be with us if he hadn’t done that. Impossible to control any cancer with the immune suppression required for an organ transplant. Don’t know what those doctors were thinking, except perhaps$$….”
Dwight McKee MD
oncologist, internist, hematologist, nutritionist and author of “Herb, Nutrient and Drug Interactions”
and about cookie cutter/1 size fits all chemo and radiation, Dwight states…
“The problem with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation for cancer is when they are used as the ONLY therapies, and when they are used without any personalization. Debulking tumor (getting all tumor that can be seen on scans) is very beneficial, and takes a huge load off the immune system–if it can be done with appropriate nutritional and botanical support, and if the therapy is truly targeting the tumor–too often therapies are applied that don’t work, because they are based on the statistics of clinical trials, rather than on study of the individual’s tumor. Oncology research is actively pursuing the holy grail of personalizing treatment, but what people get in the oncology office is still usually an empirically chosen regimen, because it worked in a significant percentage of people with that tumor type. Its not about treating “lung cancer” with “lung cancer drugs”, or breast cancer with “breast cancer drugs”–its about studying the gene and protein expression of the tumors, when possible, getting live tumor cells from the patient by surgical biopsy and culturing them with many different chemotherapy and targeted agents, and choosing those that are most active in killing the cells. This approach has been sidelined by a complex mix of medical politics and medical economics, but it is light years ahead of using drugs based on the old clinical trial system that groups cancers together by the organ in which they started. See http://www.weisenthal.org ”
Thank you Steve Jobs. Rest in peace.