Jobs' surgeon specializes in cancer recurrence
Apple CEO Steve Jobs' liver transplant earlier this year was the work of a surgeon who treats recurrences of the rare cancer Jobs had five years ago, according to a Bloomberg profile of the doctor.
Dr. James Eason
(Credit: UT Medical Group)In his first interview since performing Jobs' transplant in the spring, Dr. James Eason told Bloomberg this week that he has replaced the livers of about 10 people with a neuroendocrine tumor. Jobs was treated for that cancer in his pancreas back in 2004, but he hasn't said whether this year's liver transplant was related to a recurrence of the cancer.
Jobs returned to work in June after a medical leave of absence that started in January.
Eason, who trained at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, is head of transplants at the Methodist University Hospital and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis.
The surgeon said he couldn't comment on the details of Jobs' health, though he did tell Bloomberg that Jobs is "really a genuinely nice person."
Eason did deny that Jobs, who lives in Silicon Valley, bypassed any transplant waiting list by relocating to Tennessee.
"It's not gaming the system," he told Bloomberg. "It's people choosing where they want their health care. Some people would leave Tennessee to go to California or somewhere else to seek treatment. Now we have people coming from California to Tennessee."
Eason said he will only undertake a liver transplant on a neuroendocrine tumor patient when he is certain that he can completely rid someone of all the spreading cancer. According to what he told Bloomberg, his results with such patients are about the same as those of other liver-cancer sufferers--about 70 percent have healthy organs five years post-transplant.
Natalie Weinstein is an associate editor who works out of Austin, Texas. She spent a decade as a reporter and editor in the newspaper industry before joining the CNET News staff in 2000. E-mail Natalie. 
So rather than buy the party line about the horrible healthcare we have in this country, you should look at making our roads safer (think trucking) and fighting violent crime, the true black-eyes of the USA.
And winstein you are right, why'd this turn political, I would have expected some evil comment about Jobs for the first comment.
A BBC articles seems to comment a journal article that claims quite the opposite ( it is from a year ago before the healthcare spinmeisters spun up full blast on maintaining the status quo. )
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7510121.stm
Namely those who have wealth have higher survival rates. Article also highlights the US is only the leader in some areas ( which happen to those where early preventative diagnostics are more widespread among the many pulbically pushed concerns. )
Pouring more than 13% of the GDP into healthcare will be bad. Needs to be more effective ... not larger share of GDP.
The highest number of car accidents involve trucks ??? where are the stats that back that up????
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470204508701797/abstract?isEOP=true
"... Cancer survival in black men and women was systematically and substantially lower than in white men and women in all 16 states and six metropolitan areas included. Relative survival for all ethnicities combined was 2?4% lower in states covered by NPCR than in areas covered by the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program.
"
Care to guess which populations are overrepresented in those who are in the large number of uninsured in this country?
But more importantly, you are just parroting what others are saying about the relative merits of our health care. In particular, the life expectancy being the highest after taking into account car accidents and murder. I haven't read Ohsfeldt and Schneider's book, but everyone is pointing out this presentation they did with their material: http://www.aei.org/docLib/20061017_OhsfeldtSchneiderPresentation.pdf The data you are talking about comes from Table 1-5 (p. 18). The slides don't mention how the normalization was done (I guess that's in the book), but it seems that it used a convoluted if not absurd methodology, apparently somehow involving the mysterious data from Table 1-3.
My point is: under any reasonable standardization, you would expect the life expectancy of any country to increase after taking into account murder and car accidents (unless, of course, most people involved in these acts are older than the actual mean for that country, which is pretty much never the case).
Nevertheless, the life expectancies for 10 of the 16 countries actually decreases after standardization. That's extremely weird. It seems like the authors massaged the data using a shoddy methodology to show what they wanted it to show. I guess I'll have to buy the book, but so far this looks very fishy.
Too funny.
Our healthcare system is broken. First it costs twice what leading health care systems in the more socialist contries have. Next insurane companies decide medial issues. ***? Sure my Dr. can say "You need this treatment" and I can get a second opinion, but my insurance (who I pay to cover this crap) can say "nope". We have too many specialist Dr's and not enough General Practice Docs. We have duplication (part of why we have higher costs).
20 years ago, you may have been right. Now the ills of our system are catching up to it and the other systems we thought sucked are proving to be better.
While any new system will have problems I'm willing to try becasue this one is broken.
Alas, our system is broken. Insurance companies make medical decisions and their focus is money. There are not enough GP doctors, and too many specialists (who have to charge more since they don't have enough customers to go around)
I read that in email all the time. It may very well be a contributing factor. If your wife works in the industry (I suspect Nurses have a better pulse on what's broken than most) then she knows a lot of what's broken. ER abuse results directly from the broken parts of the sysem. Dr's often refuse patience and send them to the ER becasue the ER has to take them, That way they can shift cost to some one else. (Cost shifting is another broken thing in our system).
But more importantly, you are just parroting what others are saying about the relative merits of our health care. In particular, the life expectancy being the highest after taking into account car accidents and murder. I haven't read Ohsfeldt and Schneider's book, but everyone is pointing out this presentation they did with their material: http://www.aei.org/docLib/20061017_OhsfeldtSchneiderPresentation.pdf The data you are talking about comes from Table 1-5 (p. 18). The slides don't mention how the normalization was done (I guess that's in the book), but it seems that it used a convoluted if not absurd methodology, apparently somehow involving the mysterious data from Table 1-3.
My point is: under any reasonable standardization, you would expect the life expectancy of any country to increase after taking into account murder and car accidents (unless, of course, most people involved in these acts are older than the actual mean for that country, which is pretty much never the case).
Nevertheless, the life expectancies for 10 of the 16 countries actually decreases after standardization. That's extremely weird. It seems like the authors massaged the data using a shoddy methodology to show what they wanted it to show. I guess I'll have to buy the book, but so far this looks very fishy.
According to "OECD Economic Surveys: United States 2008", p. 137 ( http://tinyurl.com/mt3g76 ):
"It has been claimed (Ohsfeld and Schneider, 2006) that adjusting for the higher death rate from accident or injury in the United States over 1980-99 than the OECD average would increase US life expectancy at birth from 18th of of 29 OECD countries to the highest. In fact, what the panel regression estimated by these authors shows is that predicted life expectancy at birth based on US GDP per capita and OECD average death rates from these causes is the highest in the OECD. The adjustment for the gap in injury death rates between the United States and OECD average alone only increases life expectancy at birth marginally, from 19th on average among 29 countries over 1980-99 to 17th. Hence, the high ranking of adjusted life expectancy mainly reflects high US GDP per capita, not the effects of unusually high death rates from accident and injury."
In other words, the figures in Table 1-5 are not U.S. life expectancies adjusted for fatal injuries, but rather a model that assumes that both the relationship of life expectancy to per capita GDP and injuries in the U.S. follow OECD trends.
That is - they are falsely giving the U.S. credit for having the same basic life expectancy as other other high GDP OECD countries, when in fact it is markedly lower.
Check it out for yourself, the Ohsfeld and Schneider report is at:
http://www.aei.org/docLib/9780844742403.pdf [aei.org]
See p. 20-21.
1) Hepatitis induced liver damage
2) Primary liver cancer, which is normally caused by hepatitis and or other damage to the liver such as cirrhosis
3) Metastatic cancer which has spread to no other area of the body.
With Mr. Jobs history of cancer, and strong stand against alcohol which make cirrhosis highly unlikely, it is almost certain that the transplant was done for recurrent disease.
I discussed this in my blog (http://mydrmom.blogspot.com/search?q=jobs) starting several months before the transplant was openly admitted.
As for the comments about the Obama heath care plan, yes it is unlikely that the transplant would be covered but that is because the surgery is still considered relatively experimental (that is that is it not considered the standard of care) because not enough of the procedures have been done to establish it as the standard of care. As for finances influencing the availability of organs, it is illegal in the United States to purchase organs for transplantation so Mr. Jobs personal wealth is irrelevant.
Dr. Banchik, (mydrmom.blogspot.com)
Herpes is a natural killer of cancer.
Heck if I ever got cancer first thing I would do is infect myself with herpes.
HPV and Herpes can both cause warts but they are different viruses (virii?) .
From the CDC:
"Genital HPV is not the same as HIV or herpes (herpes simplex virus; HSV). While these are all viruses that can be sexually transmitted ? these viruses do not cause the same symptoms or health problems."
"The cancer survival rates are the best in the United States" -- not true
Source: http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20080716/cancer-survival-rates-vary-by-country
"The highest survival rates were found in the U.S. for breast and prostate cancer, in Japan for colon and rectal cancers in men, and in France for colon and rectal cancers in women, Coleman's team reports."
"Obamacare means that Steve Jobs would have died" -- not true
We already have "Obamacare" -- it's called Medicare and people are in general more satisfied with the care they receive from Medicare than people with private insurance. Since Medicare can't cherry pick young healthy people to collect premiums from and kick out people when they need treatment, Medicare already pays the MAJORITY of the hospital bills in this country, why not simply cover the entire country and let people choose to participate or not.
Source: http://swampbubbles.com/20090520/poll-americans-are-more-satisfied-medicare-private-healthcare-insurance
"In a national Commonwealth Fund survey, elderly Medicare beneficiaries reported greater overall satisfaction with their health coverage, better access to care, and fewer problems paying medical bills than people covered by employer-sponsored plans."
Since 1970, Medicare costs have risen at a slower rate than private insurance.
Source: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/medicare-versus-insurers/?apage=2
"since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8% ? but insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9%. The rise in Medicare costs is just part of the overall rise in health care spending. And in fact Medicare spending has lagged private spending: if insurance premiums had risen ?only? as much as Medicare spending, they?d be 1/3 lower than they are."
The reason why Medicare has not kept up is because the government sets its prices. The problem with Medicare is that it's subsidized by everyone else. When I go for my check up, my doc gets $20 from me, and $150+ from my insurance to cover the visit, any tests, etc. When an old lady comes, he gets squat from her and $30 from Medicare to cover a lot more work. Oh and while I come every two years, she comes every three months. It's OK for me to subsidize the old and the poor, but it just doesn't work for everyone else.
- by winstein August 24, 2009 7:27 AM PDT
- My mother died of complication from kidney transplant 5 years ago. She had Medicare. She was treated at the best hospital in Chicago (IMO). I'm grateful that the we could have the best treatment and medicine for her. However, toward the end, as her condition worsen, the doctors would order tests after tests without any conclusive results. Now I look back, I would rather the doctors tell me that all the tests and treatments were experimental so we would have time to say goodbye.
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