"Why Did Steve Jobs Die?"

In a newsletter article from last fall, Dr. McDougall exposes the calumny that Steve Job's vegan lifestyle and, in particular, his decision to postpone his surgery arising out of that lifestyle, caused his early death. A video of Dr. McDougall's talk on the subject is presently available on his website.

Until I read the article, I did not realize that the operation was a "Whipple" procedure.  We had a will-contest case in our office, where the decedent underwent that radical surgery.  The issue before the court was whether, during our decedent's hospitalization for pancreatic cancer, he was competent to change his Last Will to favor his brother over his mistress.  The surgeon testified (dressed in his scrubs, the hot dog) that the decedent was too sick to have testamentary capacity.  Our neurologist, on the other hand, examined the charts and said that he certainly did have the capacity (oxygen levels remained well within normal limits at the particular times that the decedent discussed the Will with his brother and the decedent's unhappiness with his mistress over the way she had treated his family members.)  My view is that the surgeon - who had not apparently done a lot of these procedures - botched it up.  It was clear that the immediate cause of our decedent's death was the infection that followed the failure of the wound to heal and close, leaving a sort of fistula.  The surgeon believed that the mistress was our decedent's wife. (He had no wife, and she had lied on the admission papers.) The mistress controlled the treatment regime.  The surgeon apparently felt that if he was vulnerable, then it was from her side and not from the brother's.

Job's surgeons would hardly concede that their surgery was a vain thing, even destructive in many ways.  So we blame the lifestyle; we blame the decedent.  Read the article; view the video.