Recent article paints an even less rational picture of his battle against cancer. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/opinion/limits-of-magical-thinking.html

He was a control freak, yet when he learned he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer that would respond to surgery, he ignored his wife, doctors and friends and put the surgery off for nine months, trying to heal himself with wacky fruit diets, hydrotherapy, a psychic and expressing his negative feelings.