Most pancreatic cancers are aggressive and always terminal, but Steve was lucky (if you can call it that) and had a rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, which is actually quite treatable with excellent survival rates — if caught soon enough. The median survival is about a decade, but it depends on how soon it’s removed surgically. Steve caught his very early, and should have expected to survive much longer than a decade. Unfortunately Steve relied on a diet instead of early surgery. There is no evidence that diet has any effect on islet cell carcinoma. As he dieted for nine months, the tumor progressed, and took him from the high end to the low end of the survival rate.
Why did he do this? Well, outsiders like us can’t know; but many who avoid medical treatment in favor of unproven alternatives do so because they’ve been given bad information, without the tools or expertise to discriminate good from bad.
Everyone would prefer to avoid surgery -- especially painful, high-risk surgery with an uncertain prognosis. But this seems to be a clear case where better advice could have made a real difference. Unfortunately, the literature is full of spurious findings and it can be hard for even experts to sort these issues out.
The ultimate goal of Epidemiology is to give patients the best (high-quality) evidence available in order to assist them in making optimal decisions. We'll never know if the advice given to Steve Jobs was good or bad, but stories like this highlight how important it is to keep focusing on communication.
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