[LINK] Why did Steve Jobs choose not to effectively treat his cancer?

From Quora:

"Now 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. 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."

From Quora:

"Now 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. 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."

You can experiment empirically with mainstream medicine,...

That's nearly a contradiction in terms. Mainstream medicine, as a practice, refuses empirical experimentation on particular patients. Here's the disease. Here is the cookbook cure that has been sanctioned by some professional board, with backing by a billion dollar study that shows some statistical advantage over a whole population. If there is no such study, then the prescription is a shrug and a pat on the head.

Older family practicioners often aren't like that. They'll say "I don't really know what will work for you, but we can try a few things".

Think of a car mechanic. He thinks about how a car works, runs diagnostic tests, and swaps out parts. He doesn't have placebo controlled double blinded studies, and doesn't just shrug when he doesn't have a study, or doesn't have an immediate answer.

Individuals engaging in personal experimentation tend to be no less prone to bias, and are in a much worse position to conduct meaningful research.

I completely disagree. He is uniquely situated and motivated to conduct research to solve the problem at hand - his problem

If it works for you, then it works for you. No billion dollar study required, and it doesn't matter what the statistical averages are when you determine it works for you. That is the problem to be solved - an individual's problem. Given that he and no one else has possession of the system requiring fixing, he is in a very good position to do "research" to fix his problem, if he is not prevented by regulations and institutions barring him from tests, materials, and treatments. He has much more motivation to fix the problem than his doctor, who has a great many more compelling interests than healing his patient.

That's nearly a contradiction in terms. Mainstream medicine, as a practice, refuses empirical experimentation on particular patients. Here's the disease. Here is the cookbook cure that has been sanctioned by some professional board, with backing by a billion dollar study that shows some statistical advantage over a whole population. If there is no such study, then the prescription is a shrug and a pat on the head.

If no study shows that any treatment has a particular advantage over placebo, many doctors will prescribe a placebo. Prescribing actual medici... (read more)

10JoshuaZ15y

This is actually not quite true. There's been a surprising amount of self-experimentation in medicine and experimentation on individual patients. Lawrence Altman's "Who Goes First?" is a somewhat dry book on this subject that looks at self-experimentation by doctors and scientists in history. Most examples are things where they do deliberate harm to themselves (e.g. trying to figure out how a specific disease is transmitted by trying all sorts of different methods of infection, or deliberately reducing their intake of some specific vitamin and measuring the effects) but others involve actively trying to cure diseases that they happen to have. (Edit: For one recent unsuccessful example see here). [...] It is often difficult to tell if actually works for you or not. Self-evaluation is really tough, and when your sample size is one, the noise level can easily outweigh the signal. Still, there are actual steps that self-experimentation can include that help a lot. One can without too much difficulty double-blind self-tests with a help of a friend.

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[LINK] Why did Steve Jobs choose not to effectively treat his cancer?

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[LINK] Why did Steve Jobs choose not to effectively treat his cancer?

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