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.
> 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."
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.
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."