kimberly said:

Just because YOU can’t handle death and are afraid of the world around you, that does not mean the person with cancer has to subscribe to whatever things you chose to believe based souly on faith. Do your family members and friends and favor and no matter how “well intentioned” your advice may be, what they REALLY NEED is your LOVE and your TIME. They may have less time left to experience these things with you and you with them.

I’m not sure what you’re saying. I don’t think cancer patients are pawns of the pharmaceutical industry nor do I in any way dispute that they should do what they can with their time with friends and family. The only advice I give is to avoid anyone pushing questionable medicine and to stick to the real doctors for your best chance of beating it or at least maximizing your time.

So I guess we’re in agreement then?

Just because YOU can’t handle death and are afraid of the world around you, that does not mean the person with cancer has to subscribe to whatever things you chose to believe based souly on faith. Do your family members and friends and favor and no matter how “well intentioned” your advice may be, what they REALLY NEED is your LOVE and your TIME. They may have less time left to experience these things with you and you with them.

        Calli Arcale said:

He was fortunate to be among the few who could be cured by having the entire pancreas removed and replaced with a donor organ (which requires not only having cancer in the right place and at the right stage, i.e. not metastatic, but also being very lucky in the donor organ lottery and/or rich enough to move to an area with a very short transplant list). It was in the category of heroic medicine, really, but he was cured of pancreatic cancer by mainstream medicine.

I would not be surprised if when Steve Jobs does die (as we all will, lets face it, the man is 54 and had a major organ transplant. Chances are he’ll die in less than 40 years) there are likely to be some who claim that his death was the result of mainstream medicine. Or they might claim that mainstream medicine ruined his pancreas so badly that he had to get a new one. They may also point to all the side effects of organ transplantation and anti-rejection drugs and say it would have been better to have a “natural” cure.

Steve Jobs was able to live because he was both rich and lucky. He was able to move to a location where there was a shorter doaner list. Unfortunately, the national and international shortage of organs makes this a concern. He also had a form of cancer that was relatively isolated and not far along in its progress (as you mention.) It helped that he was relatively young and in otherwise good health as well, because getting priority on the donation programs often involves their assessment of your likelihood of successfully receiving the organ. So those who are less likely to successfully survive the operation and recover get a lower priority. (again, sad that they have to resort to that, but given the number of organs avaliable)

Still, it was really a dire situation for Jobs and and it took some very extreme and cutting edge medicine to get this to happen. Major organ transplants are always a big deal and the fact that the survival rate is as high as it is is just about stunning.

        Antice said:

Is there really no depth too low for the snake oil pushers to stoop down too?
Should be a law somewhere against that.

There is, if you can call it a law. It’s called common sense.

Unfortunately it’s not all that common.

One of his greatest moments is sadly not mentioned in the english wiki. In 2004 he threatened a 9 year old boy with bone cancer with his vitamins and claimed to have cured him. He then proceeded to drag him around as the (still) living proof for is insane babbling and when his health started to decline he claimed that this was the result of the chemo the boy got before his parents handed him over to Rath. The boy died in November 2004 painfully from quickly growing metastatis in his lungs and brain and to this day, Rath claims that he had cured the cancer and he died from the results of the chemotherapie.

I think the problem with Mengele wannabees like him is that most people think “let him babble, if you think it doesnt work then get another doctor” but in fact, with every time that this pseudoscientific rubbish gets repeated, some poor child dies of an otherwise cureable disease because his parents think they found a less pain- and stressfull way to help them.