[gideonparanoid]

Coronation Street - a popular TV soap in the UK had a storyline about this last year [0]. As the storyline played out, the character chose alternative therapies before finally trying conventional medicine, but it was too late & she lost her life.

I think it was quite brave of a soap to tackle that, & hopefully it's made people think if they were considering alternative 'solutions'.

[0] https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/06/coronation-street-spoilers-si...

[stepstop]

> the character chose alternative therapies before finally trying conventional medicine, but it was too late & she lost her life.

Isn't this the same story as Steve Jobs? I recall reading that on this forum

[mistersquid]

> > the character chose alternative therapies before finally trying conventional medicine, but it was too late & she lost her life.

> Isn't this the same story as Steve Jobs?

While much of the news media characterized Jobs' death as partly due to conventional cancer treatment coming too late, such a view is reductive given the nature of Jobs' "rare form of pancreatic cancer, called an islet cell tumor or gasteroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (GEP-NET)" [0].

Not much conventional medical literature exists regarding the treatment of GEP-NETs (presumably due to their rarity) and Jobs and his care providers had to make choices without much evidence to guide them. Quoting from the above-cited article:

> [W]hat many journalists failed to note is that the evidence supporting any specific conventional treatment approach (surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy) for GEP-NETs comprises a slim literature, and the evidence base for use of CAM [complementary and alternative medical] therapeutic approaches for GEP-NETs is virtually non-existent. After a delay of nine months after diagnosis, in 2004, Jobs opted for surgery. He died 7 years later. [0]

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4924574/

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

It may be that Jobs shortened his life with his rejection of mainstream treatments, but pancreatic cancer also has relatively poor prognosis even with optimal treatment. Good thing it's rare.

[gonehome]

That’s true, but I think in Jobs’ case he actually had a rare type that is treatable.

It’s hard to know how much impact his delay had, but it’s possible his focus on alternative medicine killed him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steve_Jobs&mobile...

> In October 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with cancer. In mid-2004, he announced to his employees that he had a cancerous tumor in his pancreas.[158] The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually very poor;[159] Jobs stated that he had a rare, much less aggressive type, known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor.[158] Despite his diagnosis, Jobs resisted his doctors' recommendations for medical intervention for nine months,[160] instead relying on alternative medicine to thwart the disease. According to Harvard researcher Ramzi Amri, his choice of alternative treatment "led to an unnecessarily early death". Other doctors agree that Jobs's diet was insufficient to address his disease. However, cancer researcher and alternative medicine critic David Gorski wrote that "it's impossible to know whether and by how much he might have decreased his chances of surviving his cancer through his flirtation with woo. My best guess was that Jobs probably only modestly decreased his chances of survival, if that."[161] Barrie R. Cassileth, the chief of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center's integrative medicine department,[162] said, "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."

[Balgair]

By 'insufficient diet' they mean that he decided to eat only fruit. High sugar intake combined with the pancreatic cancer likely did him no favors and may have taxed his pancreas even more. Such a shame, I'd have liked to see him grow older and wiser.

[mc32]

Yes exactly. There have been others like Farrah Fawcet and Andy Kaufman (although Fawcet did it in combination with traditional treatment).

[dehrmann]

...A very special story arc.

Reminds of of the "fasten your seatbelt" campaign. I can't find a source, but I remember that line being inserted into movies before action sequences as a bit of a PSA. There's a lot TV shows and movies can do to educate people about things, to the point that the way diseases are shown in media should be researched and taken seriously.