Apple's chief executive Tim Cook offered part of his liver for a transplant to Steve Jobs before the company co-founder died, but the offer was rejected, a new book states.
The book said Jobs reacted angrily to the offer to help extend his life when he was suffering from pancreatic cancer.
"He cut me off at the legs, almost before the words were out of my mouth," said Cook, according to the book, "Becoming Steve Jobs," due to be released later this month by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli.
Cook quoted Jobs as saying, "I'll never let you do that. I'll never do that."
Jobs refused the offer even though Cook had the same rare blood type as Jobs and as a result would have been compatible, the book said. Because the liver can regenerate, a partial transplant from a living donor can often be successful.
http://phys.org/news/2015-03-tim-cook-liver-steve-jobs.html
[Also Covered By]:
The Washington Post, CNet and AppleInsider.
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David Knowles reports at Bloomberg that former Hewlett-Packard CEO and potential 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina called out Apple CEO Tim Cook as a hypocrite for criticizing Indiana and Arkansas over their Religious Freedom Restoration Acts while at the same time doing business in countries where gay rights are non-existent. “When Tim Cook is upset about all the places that he does business because of the way they treat gays and women, he needs to withdraw from 90% of the markets that he’s in, including China and Saudi Arabia,” Fiorina said. “But I don’t hear him being upset about that.”
In similar criticism of Hillary Clinton on the Fox News program Hannity, Fiorina argued that Clinton's advocacy on behalf of women was tarnished by donations made to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments where women's rights are not on par with those in America. ""I must say as a woman, I find it offensive that Hillary Clinton travels the Silicon Valley, a place where I worked for a long time, and lectures Silicon Valley companies on women's rights in technology, and yet sees nothing wrong with taking money from the Algerian government, which really denies women the most basic human rights. This is called, Sean, hypocrisy." While Hillary Clinton hasn't directly addressed Fiorina's criticisms, her husband has. “You’ve got to decide, when you do this work, whether it will do more good than harm if someone helps you from another country,” former president Bill Clinton said in March. “And I believe we have done a lot more good than harm. And I believe this is a good thing.”
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:56PM
stubborn man dies stubbornly.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @04:39PM
In Steve Jobs' defense, Tim Cook could not guarantee that his liver had rounded corners.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday March 16 2015, @05:53PM
Besides, I heard Cook is a homeopath, and at risk for hepatitis.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday March 16 2015, @10:25PM
Hepatitis can be tested. Problem solved.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Tuesday March 17 2015, @05:58AM
what! and no chianti?! [throws liver into the fireplace]
(Score: 5, Informative) by GungnirSniper on Monday March 16 2015, @04:06PM
How does a liver cure pancreatic cancer?
By the time Cook made the offer Jobs' prior choices had already put him on the path to ruin. [telegraph.co.uk]
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Aichon on Monday March 16 2015, @04:47PM
How does a liver cure pancreatic cancer?
It doesn't. But pancreatic cancer was not the only life-threatening condition he had in the last decade of his life. Also, the way you've presented things, it kinda confuses the timeline a bit, since he had two bouts with pancreatic cancer.
He was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, and did indeed turn to alternative medicine while taking some time away from Apple. That said, after they weren't working for him, he saw reason and switched to traditional surgery in 2004. By all appearances, he made a complete recovery and returned to Apple. They couldn't find any traces of the cancer left in his system after the procedure, and it was about 7 years before he had a relapse.
In the meantime, he had a separate, unrelated medical condition at the start of 2009 that necessitated he leave his day-to-day duties at Apple and seek a liver transplant, which he eventually received from a random organ donor. He came back to work by mid-year, and was there until he relapsed with his pancreatic cancer in mid-2011, about two years later.
Which is to say, yes, his use of alternative medicine almost certainly cost him his life, but it was the second time he turned to it that ended up killing him, rather than the first time. He saw reason the first time and was able to extend his life for 7 years. He didn't see reason until too late the second time, and it ended up costing him his life.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday March 16 2015, @06:16PM
Which is to say, yes, his use of alternative medicine almost certainly cost him his life, but it was the second time he turned to it that ended up killing him, rather than the first time. He saw reason the first time and was able to extend his life for 7 years. He didn't see reason until too late the second time, and it ended up costing him his life.
You never explained when, or for what, he turned to alternative medicine the SECOND time.
Seems odd a guy of his intelligence should have needed to learn that lesson twice. (Or even once).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Aichon on Monday March 16 2015, @07:28PM
Well, I kinda assumed that since I stated he died of pancreatic cancer and that it was his use of alternative medicine that led to his death, it was obvious he turned to alternative medicine when he began dealing with his second bout of pancreatic cancer. We're smart folks here, so I trust people to pick up on this implications. But you're right that I never just out-and-out stated it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Monday March 16 2015, @08:42PM
So no evidence at all that Jobs did return to voodoo a second time?
I can't find any evidence he retried his fruit diet again after his liver transplant.
Are you sure you didn't conflate Jobs with Aston Kutcher [usnews.com] who tired the Jobs fruit diet and ended up in the hospital?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Aichon on Monday March 16 2015, @09:15PM
In looking into it more, it looks like you're quite correct, and that I misremembered. Apparently I heard about his regret regarding trying alternative treatment and assumed that it was in regards to his life-ending fight with pancreatic cancer, rather than the initial fight against it.
Thanks for the correction.
And nope, I wasn't conflating it with Kutcher, since I wasn't aware he had done that.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @04:16PM
I can't submit a story today it just shows an error message.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday March 16 2015, @04:49PM
Occasionally i get pages that are missing content. SN is probably having indigestion today : /
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by n1 on Monday March 16 2015, @06:14PM
The staff are aware of these issues, they are related to the site update that happened yesterday. We are working to get things working properly again asap.
Apologies to all for any inconvinience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @01:42AM
It isn't showing posting histories any more.
I've missed this functionality at least 5 times today when I've wanted to see if people were joking or serious about some outrageous statements.
Without an easy to check posting history, its nearly impossible to cultivate a reputation unless you constantly post.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @04:18PM
*part* of liver
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @05:09PM
fava beans?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SrLnclt on Monday March 16 2015, @04:24PM
I was a bit amused by the term "rare blood type". There are only so many blood types - I didn't think any of them would be small enough to consider rare. The Red Cross [redcrossblood.org] has some information on percentages... Looks like AB- is 1% for Caucasians and less than a half percent for those with other ethnic backgrounds. Less common than I would have thought (assuming they are both in fact AB-), but is this really rare?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @04:45PM
when you're talking about liver transplants, you need to check for more than just "0", "A", "B" or "AB" and "+/-".
blood is characterized by several properties, basically outlining a hierarchy of "how many blood transfusions can we have from this person to this other person". "0/A/B" is the first such property, "+/-" is the second such property (and it's only relevant for a second blood transfusion", and then there are others I don't know about.
with many organ transplants, you basically have to be an exact match, since it's a lot like having many many blood transfusions to have someone else's organ in you; if you're not an exact match, you will eventually develop antibodies that will succeed in killing the "foreign invader".
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Monday March 16 2015, @05:56PM
It's called histocompatibility and it's a bitch. Yeah, we can now suppress parts of the immune system in such a way that we couldn't years ago so we can do transplants, but the side effects suck.
If I had no choice would I get a transplant? Yes. If I had already been through chemo and a liver transplant already and I was faced with more chemo plus another post-transplant regime probably even more stringent than my former one? It's a close call. I'd probably chicken out and do it (mainly because I still wouldn't want to die), but I could see others choosing differently. In fact, I could even see myself choosing differently, depending on other quality of life issues. Evolution works too slowly sometimes.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Monday March 16 2015, @06:11PM
was a bit amused by the term "rare blood type". There are only so many blood types - I didn't think any of them would be small enough to consider rare. The Red Cross has some information on percentages... Looks like AB- is 1% for Caucasians and less than a half percent for those with other ethnic backgrounds. Less common than I would have thought (assuming they are both in fact AB-), but is this really rare?
donating blood and donating organs is different. when it comes to organ transplants, you need an exact match. getting a liver transplant is hard enough but getting a liver transplant with an uncommon blood type is exceptionally difficult. frankly, we should quit this organ donation business and instead focus on start growing/printing new organs and engineering bionic replacements.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @09:03PM
Personally I'd say 1% is rare. Not lottery winner or struck by lightening levels of rare, but it is low enough that I'd consider the word "rare" to be acceptable. Certainly it is uncommon enough that there is a good chance that nobody you know with at least passing familiarity has that particular blood type.
I guess the analogy I'd make is "it's pretty rare to meet somebody with a birthday on New Years Day."
Now if they start using the term in the "Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft" sense of "approximately 20%" then I'd start taking offense...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @01:46AM
At least 33 known blood groups, two of them were just discovered a few years ago, so there are probably more we haven't isolated yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_blood_group_systems [wikipedia.org]
Which, by the way, is one reason the "blood type diet" is total bullshit. [dadamo.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @05:29PM
There is a rare type, probably THE rarest the is: B3Null, not rh+ nor RH- but without the whole shebang. Anyway, any rhNull is, basically, royally fucked. Need blood? get a self transfusion or get some from some dude halfway round the world.
Anyway, it only happens in some rare inbreds or so i've heard. It's THAT rare.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @05:18PM
Must be nice when one of the parties to the conversation is dead. I'm sure Brian Williams offered his liver too. In fact I think he was the donor. Anyway Mr. Cook seems to be on quite the ego trip. I guess he has to make it about himself since the actual products Apple offers are pretty shitty.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Monday March 16 2015, @06:10PM
And also some of the vegetables. Then you can go back to surfing the internet.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Nerdfest on Monday March 16 2015, @08:25PM
I'm not sure I believe the story. Given Jobs typical behaviour, I think the odds are very good that he would have accepted it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @08:45PM
Just because jobs was generally a selfish arsehole, doesn't mean he didn't care about some people. Although maybe the real reason was because he wanted to get a whole liver, not just part of one.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @09:58PM
He probably just didn't want to get AIDS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @09:06PM
"Good people copy, great people steal."
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday March 16 2015, @10:34PM
I have read that fruit diet may overload pancreas. So perhaps the first treatment was a good one but by continuing a diet that strained the organ the cells inside went haywire. It's the particular sugars and their high content that supposedly causes this overload.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @12:10AM
First, among cancers, pancreatic cancer is the 4th deadliest.
The five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is less than 7 percent. [google.com]
For Stage IV pancreatic cancer, it is zero.
Jobs beat the odds once, but not twice.
Much-lauded jazz baritone sax guy and Renaissance man Fred Ho [wikipedia.org] co-authored a book about a raw food diet.
I heard him speaking on the radio where he said that uncooked veggies were his survival method but I was surprised to hear him say that carrots were out. [google.com]
He said that any fruit is a strict no-no.
His 2nd bout with colon cancer lasted 7 years before that finally got him.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday March 17 2015, @05:50PM
Tim Cook Offered Part of Liver to Save Steve Jobs
Goes nicely with chianti, I've heard.
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