For as much as the quacks are trying to claim that they could have cured Jobs if only they had given them the chance, there is, however, the chance of taking the opposite argument, namely that Jobs might have died because of his embrace of non-science-based treatments, too far in the other direction. Unfortunately, there is a skeptic who should really know better who did just that, using Steve Jobs’ death as evidence of the harm that alternative medicine can do. Now, given my reputation as someone who relentlessly applies the cudgel of reason, science, and critical thinking squarely to the back of the head of woo on a regular basis, you just might think that I would heartily approve of this line of argument. You’d be wrong, and not because I have any qualms whatsoever about appropriately blaming alternative medicine when someone pursues alternative medicine and ultimately dies. (I have, after all, done it myself on several occasions.) The key word is “appropriately,” and the reason that I’m not so hot on using Jobs’ death as a “negative anecdote” against “alternative” medicine is because I’m not so sure how appropriate doing so is in Jobs’ case. While Jobs certainly didn’t do himself any favors by waiting nine months to undergo definitive surgical therapy of his tumor, it’s very easy to overstate the potential harm that he did to himself by not immediately letting surgeons resect his tumor shortly after it was diagnosed eight years ago.
