Did Natural Medicine Kill Steve Jobs?

Ramzi Amri, a physician from Harvard University, has proposed an idea, even though it is mere speculation: If Steve Jobs had accepted chemotherapy treatment and a possible surgical operation when his cancer was detected in October 2003, he could still be alive today.

Instead, he waited nine months while he tried to fight the illness through a diet plan.

Amri is clear when he writes, “a PERSONAL title, and this is my PERSONAL opinion,” given that no one knows the details of Jobs’ illness. But he has posted his analysis on Quora, a very popular website in Silicon Valley, an area south of San Francisco where the American technology industry is concentrated, including the headquarters of companies like Hewlett-Packard, Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Adobe, Oracle and, of course, Apple. And what he said is emphatic: “Jobs allegedly chose to undergo all sorts of alternative treatment options before opting for conventional medicine.” As a consequence, “it seems sound to assume that Mr. Jobs’ choice for alternative medicine has eventually led to an unnecessarily early death.”

For Amri, Jobs had a very benign type of cancer. However, at the end of July 2004, when he yielded to the evidence and agreed to have his pancreas and spleen removed at Stanford University, the tumor had already spread dangerously.

According to the doctor, Jobs therefore committed another fatal error by “opt[ing] to dedicate his time to Apple as the disease progressed, instead of opting for chemotherapy or any other conventional treatment.”

The thesis has been tremendously controversial. On the one hand, Jobs was incredibly protective of his private life; therefore, it is difficult to know whether he used chemotherapy, especially during his two long sick leaves from Apple. On the other hand, Amri is not a recognized expert in pancreatic cancer, although he does have experience in pancreatic cancer treatment and in other types of malignant tumors. At the least, the analysis is a reminder of the importance of routine checks for the types of cancer that are easiest to diagnose (breast, prostate, colon …), among which pancreatic cancer is not found.