Similarly, one of the great idols of Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, was sufficiently doubtful about medical science that when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he opted to treat it with acupuncture, a lot of fruit juice and “spiritual consultations”….
….which of course resulted in him dying of pancreatic cancer. Yep, you’re right, RFK Jr will fit right in.
Being that you’re triple-boosted against Misinformation; how concerned are you about the global supply of cloth facemasks if the interconnected Crises of Long Covid, Patriarchy, Systemic Racism and Global Boiling were to strike at the same time?
“Triple-boosted against Misinformation”? I am happy to read misinformation (I mean, I’m on here, aren’t I?), but my BS Detector generally identifies it.
Sometimes, accepting the inevitable brings its own relief, that medication side effects don’t. If you know that one way or another, it’s the end; the more comfortable route is often the right one.
Pacteatic cancer is very agressive and it almost never ends well. Look it up and convince yourself. If you are going to die anyway, why spend your last days with chemo?
Steve Jobs didn’t have the aggressive kind. He lived 8 years after the initial diagnosis and underwent all kinds of treatments, from the aggressive Whipple procedure to a liver transplant. He fought hard against death, but as we all will, lost in the end.
Actually no. Jobs was fortunate to have the slow-growing, treatable variant of pancreatic cancer, rather than the one that means certain death in weeks. Unfortunately, he chose the environmentally-correct RFK methods of treatment.
Make sure you wear a mask all the time, even when eating and showering. And I hope you have definitely had your 17th Covid Booster shot.
It is very important.
Like you, a lot of people have the opinion that Steve Jobs defied medical advice to try natural remedies, and that delay resulted in his death, but there’s no evidence to support that. Steve Jobs didn’t say much about it, and his doctors of course could say nothing, but he seems to have followed traditional medical advice but, unfortunately, died anyway. That happens. Cancer is a terrible killer.
What we do know is that Steve Jobs had a rare form of pancreatic cancer that can often be successfully treated with surgery in a procedure called the Whipple. With him the cancer was discovered early, before he had any symptoms. While we don’t know what his doctors told him, other cancer specialists have said that his doctors probably recommended the Whipple but told him that it wasn’t urgent.
The Whipple (also called a pancreaticoduodenectomy) is a complex operation with lots of risk. It also does a number on your digestive tract, somewhat analogous to amputating a limb. Your body is disfigured for life. Some cancer specialists have said that they would have suggested that Steve Jobs take a few months to get used to the idea, and to see if a miracle happened in the meantime. That seems to be the tack his doctors took.
Steve Jobs did wait a few months and tried some nontraditional remedies, but had the Whipple done well within the period normally thought to be safe. For a few years he was cancer free, but then more tumors were found and he died about 8 years after cancer was first discovered.
Would getting the Whipple done earlier have saved Steve Jobs’s life? Or at least prolonged it? It’s possible. Some cancer specialists think he should have had the Whipple done right away. He himself later wished he had not delayed. But that was in hindsight. At the time, there seemed little risk in waiting. And it seems likely that it made no difference.
To me, Steve Jobs’s liver transplant late in his life is more of a concern. When cancer has invaded his liver so much that it needed to be replaced, the immune-suppressing drugs needed after the transplant to prevent rejection weakened his body’s ability to fight off cancer. At least that seems to be what happened in his case. He died anyway with a new liver that might have saved someone else’s life. A wasted liver that he used his wealth to jump the queue to get.
But that too was a medical decision that it’s hard to criticize. The upshot is that Steve Jobs was not like Bobby Kennedy is. He didn’t ignore traditional medicine, he embraced it. He did try nontraditional remedies, but only in the hope of a miracle. When none happened in the window he had been given, he followed the advice of his doctors — the finest that money could buy — and had part of his guts torn out. That bought him a few years, but cancer got him in the end.
It seems unfair, ghoulish even, to criticize the man for that.
It seems unfair, ghoulish even, to criticize the man for that.
I am not short of things to criticize Steve Jobs for. Although the position is now held by Elon Musk, Jobs was “Business Leader I had the Lowest Regard For” during much of his adult life.
I’ve lived and worked in Silicon Valley now for 30 years. I’ve been at various times an M&A lawyer, a litigator, a scientist, an inventor, a patent attorney, an investor, an executive, a salesman, and an entrepreneur. I’ve worked for and with a lot of people, been hired and fired, and hired and fired people myself.
I’m rich in some people’s eyes, but “beer and pizza” rich rather than really rich. My fortune is modest, and my reputation mixed. I’ve been taken advantage of, and I’ve taken advantage of. I’m more greedy than generous. I have more enemies than friends. I share my personal experience because I think seeing my own faults has taught me to look at others with a more discerning eye.
During my time here, I’ve never worked for or with Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, but I know people who have, and I’ve worked for and with people like the two of them. Both are tremendously gifted, not as individual contributors but as people with vision. And more importantly, with charisma. They are people who can convince others to work like crazy to bring their vision to reality. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elizabeth Holmes and their ilk have the same talent.
But strong people have strong weaknesses, as management expert Peter Drucker said. Sure, you will never be short of things to criticize them for, but so what? As Peter Drucker also said, if you choose leaders based on their lack of weaknesses, you end up with people who are mediocre at best or incompetent at worst. Better to focus more on strengths.
Some compare Steve Jobs and Elon Musk to the robber barons of the Gilded Age, and the comparison is apt. Though they had their faults, and they were big faults, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller in their age took the United States from a rather poor and backward country to lead the world. Steve Jobs and Elon Musk have in turn changed our modern world. Not just changed, but revolutionized.
Do I hold Steve Jobs and Elon Musk in high regard? No, not really. They do not seem like evil men. I don’t know their personal lives well, but they seem to have done well as family men. And they have stayed away from the nasty exploitation of workers and crude monopolization that gave the robber barons their sobriquet. So I’m not too harsh on Steve Jobs and Elon Musk for their faults.
No question, the two of them have done a lot of harm along with their good. Even so, I do respect them for their drive and their will, not just to personally profit, but to make the world a better place. They have done that in a way that few others have. Thank God for them.
This is dressed up as an exercise of logic but in fact amounts to little more than a sneer.
Arthur King
18 days ago
Support for libertarian perspectives is big in high tech. It will be mainstream in a decade,
Hugh Bryant
18 days ago
The weirdest paradox of this strange election is that the only candidate with conventional policies is Trump.
Michael Coleman
18 days ago
Unfortunately, we are much more likely to have a single-party system of politics than a truly multiparty (>2) system in the foreseeable future. I wish RFK Jr. well – his pulling in a significant number of votes this fall is required to delay the transformation of the US into a typical South American country like Brazil or Venezuela.
Alan Gore
17 days ago
I totally don’t understand what appeal RFK might have in Silicon Valley. He was an environmental lawyer who embodied the ideas of there anti-science left (nuclear power, genetic engineering, the whole pantheon of wacky food theories) and more recently incorporated the anti-science right. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he thinks the Earth is flat.
Yes, there is actually a candidate this year who is worse than Donald Trump.
Ahh….a believer in “The Science”. Almost an extinct species these days.
Have you actually read or listened to anything RFK says, or is this just your MSM-distilled soundbite of the man?
Robert Pruger
16 days ago
Third party candidates have a long history in the U.S. In 1860 the Democrat party split and Lincoln won (arguably the U.S.’s greatest president).
In 1912 Teddy Roosevelt ran on the aptly named Bull Moose party and Woodrow Wilson won (the most racist president of 20th century). So 3rd party candidates can be consequential, even if their chances of winning the White House are slim.
Third party candidates generally run for one or more several overlapping reasons: 1) hurt one particular candidate that he considers particularly onerous, 2) advance an idea or policy that he hopes will take hold (Perot in 1992 opposing NAFTA), 3) promote an over arching philosophy that will take hold over time (essentially that is what both the Libertarian party and the Green party do and are pretty close to diametrically to each other).
RFK Jr. appears to be trying to accomplish all 3: 1) wound Biden who changed the rules and stifled any discussion within the Democrat party; 2) break the hold of the pharmaceutical industry on the CDC and NIH and never again punish people for refusing to take a minimally tested treatment; 3) compel more transparency from national security agencies and hold them to account for violating U.S. citizens’ constitutional rights. All of the above appear to be legitimate reasons to run.
RFK Jr. is more than a disruptor (though he is that). He may very well accomplish all 3 of the above. Expect to hear more from him after November 5th.
Interesting view, but I think you give Bobby Kennedy too much credit. He’s certainly an intelligent man and has lots of admirers among environmentalists and the elite. His name opens a lot of doors that remain closed to the rest of us.
But Bobby Kennedy’s ideas are quite shallow and his leadership experience next to nothing. People like Steve Kirsch who have become detached from reality give him strong support, and that to me points out the quality of his ideas, very low.
I don’t think Bobby Kennedy will accomplish any of the three objectives you list. Instead, I think he will fade during the election and then fade away after it, living on only on the fringe.
Similarly, one of the great idols of Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, was sufficiently doubtful about medical science that when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he opted to treat it with acupuncture, a lot of fruit juice and “spiritual consultations”….
….which of course resulted in him dying of pancreatic cancer. Yep, you’re right, RFK Jr will fit right in.
Being that you’re triple-boosted against Misinformation; how concerned are you about the global supply of cloth facemasks if the interconnected Crises of Long Covid, Patriarchy, Systemic Racism and Global Boiling were to strike at the same time?
“Triple-boosted against Misinformation”? I am happy to read misinformation (I mean, I’m on here, aren’t I?), but my BS Detector generally identifies it.
Conventional treatment would most likely have ended in his death as well.
Possibly, but he seems to have wanted to take the “most likely” out of the equation.
Sometimes, accepting the inevitable brings its own relief, that medication side effects don’t. If you know that one way or another, it’s the end; the more comfortable route is often the right one.
Pacteatic cancer is very agressive and it almost never ends well. Look it up and convince yourself. If you are going to die anyway, why spend your last days with chemo?
Well, it’s his choice of course, but I was extremely happy to see the back of him.
Steve Jobs didn’t have the aggressive kind. He lived 8 years after the initial diagnosis and underwent all kinds of treatments, from the aggressive Whipple procedure to a liver transplant. He fought hard against death, but as we all will, lost in the end.
Actually no. Jobs was fortunate to have the slow-growing, treatable variant of pancreatic cancer, rather than the one that means certain death in weeks. Unfortunately, he chose the environmentally-correct RFK methods of treatment.
Yes, Steve Jobs did have the rare slow-growing type of pancreatic cancer. No, he didn’t choose the Bobby Kennedy method of treatment.
A crass and ill-informed comment from someone who appears to be congenitally misinformed.
Well, I have no respect for RFK Jr, and had a hearty dislike for Steve Jobs, so my comments can be viewed in that context.
Make sure you wear a mask all the time, even when eating and showering. And I hope you have definitely had your 17th Covid Booster shot.
It is very important.
Like you, a lot of people have the opinion that Steve Jobs defied medical advice to try natural remedies, and that delay resulted in his death, but there’s no evidence to support that. Steve Jobs didn’t say much about it, and his doctors of course could say nothing, but he seems to have followed traditional medical advice but, unfortunately, died anyway. That happens. Cancer is a terrible killer.
What we do know is that Steve Jobs had a rare form of pancreatic cancer that can often be successfully treated with surgery in a procedure called the Whipple. With him the cancer was discovered early, before he had any symptoms. While we don’t know what his doctors told him, other cancer specialists have said that his doctors probably recommended the Whipple but told him that it wasn’t urgent.
The Whipple (also called a pancreaticoduodenectomy) is a complex operation with lots of risk. It also does a number on your digestive tract, somewhat analogous to amputating a limb. Your body is disfigured for life. Some cancer specialists have said that they would have suggested that Steve Jobs take a few months to get used to the idea, and to see if a miracle happened in the meantime. That seems to be the tack his doctors took.
Steve Jobs did wait a few months and tried some nontraditional remedies, but had the Whipple done well within the period normally thought to be safe. For a few years he was cancer free, but then more tumors were found and he died about 8 years after cancer was first discovered.
Would getting the Whipple done earlier have saved Steve Jobs’s life? Or at least prolonged it? It’s possible. Some cancer specialists think he should have had the Whipple done right away. He himself later wished he had not delayed. But that was in hindsight. At the time, there seemed little risk in waiting. And it seems likely that it made no difference.
To me, Steve Jobs’s liver transplant late in his life is more of a concern. When cancer has invaded his liver so much that it needed to be replaced, the immune-suppressing drugs needed after the transplant to prevent rejection weakened his body’s ability to fight off cancer. At least that seems to be what happened in his case. He died anyway with a new liver that might have saved someone else’s life. A wasted liver that he used his wealth to jump the queue to get.
But that too was a medical decision that it’s hard to criticize. The upshot is that Steve Jobs was not like Bobby Kennedy is. He didn’t ignore traditional medicine, he embraced it. He did try nontraditional remedies, but only in the hope of a miracle. When none happened in the window he had been given, he followed the advice of his doctors — the finest that money could buy — and had part of his guts torn out. That bought him a few years, but cancer got him in the end.
It seems unfair, ghoulish even, to criticize the man for that.
It seems unfair, ghoulish even, to criticize the man for that.
I am not short of things to criticize Steve Jobs for. Although the position is now held by Elon Musk, Jobs was “Business Leader I had the Lowest Regard For” during much of his adult life.
I’ve lived and worked in Silicon Valley now for 30 years. I’ve been at various times an M&A lawyer, a litigator, a scientist, an inventor, a patent attorney, an investor, an executive, a salesman, and an entrepreneur. I’ve worked for and with a lot of people, been hired and fired, and hired and fired people myself.
I’m rich in some people’s eyes, but “beer and pizza” rich rather than really rich. My fortune is modest, and my reputation mixed. I’ve been taken advantage of, and I’ve taken advantage of. I’m more greedy than generous. I have more enemies than friends. I share my personal experience because I think seeing my own faults has taught me to look at others with a more discerning eye.
During my time here, I’ve never worked for or with Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, but I know people who have, and I’ve worked for and with people like the two of them. Both are tremendously gifted, not as individual contributors but as people with vision. And more importantly, with charisma. They are people who can convince others to work like crazy to bring their vision to reality. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elizabeth Holmes and their ilk have the same talent.
But strong people have strong weaknesses, as management expert Peter Drucker said. Sure, you will never be short of things to criticize them for, but so what? As Peter Drucker also said, if you choose leaders based on their lack of weaknesses, you end up with people who are mediocre at best or incompetent at worst. Better to focus more on strengths.
Some compare Steve Jobs and Elon Musk to the robber barons of the Gilded Age, and the comparison is apt. Though they had their faults, and they were big faults, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller in their age took the United States from a rather poor and backward country to lead the world. Steve Jobs and Elon Musk have in turn changed our modern world. Not just changed, but revolutionized.
Do I hold Steve Jobs and Elon Musk in high regard? No, not really. They do not seem like evil men. I don’t know their personal lives well, but they seem to have done well as family men. And they have stayed away from the nasty exploitation of workers and crude monopolization that gave the robber barons their sobriquet. So I’m not too harsh on Steve Jobs and Elon Musk for their faults.
No question, the two of them have done a lot of harm along with their good. Even so, I do respect them for their drive and their will, not just to personally profit, but to make the world a better place. They have done that in a way that few others have. Thank God for them.
This is dressed up as an exercise of logic but in fact amounts to little more than a sneer.
Support for libertarian perspectives is big in high tech. It will be mainstream in a decade,
The weirdest paradox of this strange election is that the only candidate with conventional policies is Trump.
Unfortunately, we are much more likely to have a single-party system of politics than a truly multiparty (>2) system in the foreseeable future. I wish RFK Jr. well – his pulling in a significant number of votes this fall is required to delay the transformation of the US into a typical South American country like Brazil or Venezuela.
I totally don’t understand what appeal RFK might have in Silicon Valley. He was an environmental lawyer who embodied the ideas of there anti-science left (nuclear power, genetic engineering, the whole pantheon of wacky food theories) and more recently incorporated the anti-science right. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he thinks the Earth is flat.
Yes, there is actually a candidate this year who is worse than Donald Trump.
Ahh….a believer in “The Science”. Almost an extinct species these days.
Have you actually read or listened to anything RFK says, or is this just your MSM-distilled soundbite of the man?
Third party candidates have a long history in the U.S. In 1860 the Democrat party split and Lincoln won (arguably the U.S.’s greatest president).
In 1912 Teddy Roosevelt ran on the aptly named Bull Moose party and Woodrow Wilson won (the most racist president of 20th century). So 3rd party candidates can be consequential, even if their chances of winning the White House are slim.
Third party candidates generally run for one or more several overlapping reasons: 1) hurt one particular candidate that he considers particularly onerous, 2) advance an idea or policy that he hopes will take hold (Perot in 1992 opposing NAFTA), 3) promote an over arching philosophy that will take hold over time (essentially that is what both the Libertarian party and the Green party do and are pretty close to diametrically to each other).
RFK Jr. appears to be trying to accomplish all 3: 1) wound Biden who changed the rules and stifled any discussion within the Democrat party; 2) break the hold of the pharmaceutical industry on the CDC and NIH and never again punish people for refusing to take a minimally tested treatment; 3) compel more transparency from national security agencies and hold them to account for violating U.S. citizens’ constitutional rights. All of the above appear to be legitimate reasons to run.
RFK Jr. is more than a disruptor (though he is that). He may very well accomplish all 3 of the above. Expect to hear more from him after November 5th.
Interesting view, but I think you give Bobby Kennedy too much credit. He’s certainly an intelligent man and has lots of admirers among environmentalists and the elite. His name opens a lot of doors that remain closed to the rest of us.
But Bobby Kennedy’s ideas are quite shallow and his leadership experience next to nothing. People like Steve Kirsch who have become detached from reality give him strong support, and that to me points out the quality of his ideas, very low.
I don’t think Bobby Kennedy will accomplish any of the three objectives you list. Instead, I think he will fade during the election and then fade away after it, living on only on the fringe.