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Friday 7 October 2011
What caused Steve Jobs’ death

I am sorry to piggyback this discussion of causal ascriptions on the death of a man I greatly admired and respected. However, we need to be very careful about blame in these cases. Naturopathy is a (mostly harmless) substitute for medical treatment, and since medical treatment is usually not needed (in the case of treating colds and the like) it doesn’t matter. But if it is a replacement for medical care when medical care can do some real good, then it becomes a serious sociological and political issue.

When naturopathy causes people not to take medications or vaccinations that work, then we should attack it. When it keeps poor people from getting medical treatment for economic reasons and false advertising, then it is a political issue. In this case, however, Jobs, who had access to medical treatment and information of the best kind, chose to manage his illness in a manner that slightly hastened his death, probably. And that’s about all we can say. It was his right to do that, though we may lament the outcome.

22 notes

  1. reluctantukresident reblogged this from rickwebb and added:
    The very sad truth is, pancreatic cancer is almost always fatal within 5 years (5 year survival rate: 1%). Maybe he...
  2. splinterinyoureye reblogged this from azspot
  3. secondverse reblogged this from rickwebb and added:
    My grandfather died of pancreatic cancer when I was 3. There was never even an opportunity for surgery - he simply got...
  4. spytap reblogged this from rickwebb and added:
    Without wanting to get too much further into the conversation, I’d like to clarify that the initial comment seems to be...
  5. rickwebb reblogged this from spytap and added:
    “Putting off” in Job’s case was a sort of very specific thing, though. He almost certainly was in the queue for a liver...
  6. ericmortensen reblogged this from spytap and added:
    jayparkinsonmd wrote about this back in August:
  7. section9 reblogged this from azspot and added:
    The guy had a liver transplant at one point. Doesn’t sounds very much like naturopathy to me.
  8. terenceinmonochrome reblogged this from azspot
  9. innermuses4life reblogged this from azspot
  10. azspot posted this

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