{"entity":{"id":"steve-jobs","kind":"person","name":"Steve Jobs","aka":[],"tldr":"Diagnosed in 2003 with a rare, slow-growing pancreatic neuroendocrine tumour, he put off surgery for about nine months while trying diet and alternative approaches. His case is the standard example in discussions of delay and unproven therapies.","summary":"Steve Jobs (1955-2011) was diagnosed in October 2003 with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumour, a rarer and generally slower-growing disease than pancreatic adenocarcinoma and often curable by surgery when caught early. According to his authorised biographer, Walter Isaacson, he resisted an operation for around nine months, pursuing diet-based and alternative treatments, before undergoing a Whipple procedure in July 2004; Isaacson reported that Jobs later regretted the delay. He had a liver transplant in 2009 for metastatic disease, and had his tumour and germline genomes sequenced, an early instance of personal cancer genomics. He died on 5 October 2011 at 56. Clinicians cannot know whether earlier surgery would have changed his outcome, and his case is cited here not as a verdict but as the reason the conversation about delay, evidence and patient autonomy is had so often.","asOf":"2026-09-09","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs","links":[{"label":"Wikipedia","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs"}],"tags":["public-figure","patient"],"related":[],"cancers":["neuroendocrine"],"sections":[],"technologies":["liver-transplant-oncology","wes-wgs"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":["unproven-diet-claims","net-grade-ki67"],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-misinformation","b-patient-voice"],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"role":"Patient whose delay of surgery for a neuroendocrine tumour became a public debate","specialisms":["Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumour","Treatment decisions","Unproven therapies"],"profiles":[{"label":"Wikipedia","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs"}],"papers":[]},"route":"/people/steve-jobs/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"neuroendocrine","kind":"cancer","name":"Neuroendocrine tumours","route":"/cancers/neuroendocrine/"}],"technology":[{"id":"liver-transplant-oncology","kind":"technology","name":"Liver transplantation for cancer (Milan criteria and beyond)","route":"/technologies/liver-transplant-oncology/"},{"id":"wes-wgs","kind":"technology","name":"Whole-exome & whole-genome sequencing","route":"/technologies/wes-wgs/"}],"term":[{"id":"net-grade-ki67","kind":"term","name":"Neuroendocrine tumour grade (Ki-67) and WHO classification","route":"/terms/net-grade-ki67/"},{"id":"unproven-diet-claims","kind":"term","name":"Unproven diet claims (alkaline, juice, 'anti-cancer' diets)","route":"/terms/unproven-diet-claims/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-misinformation","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Misinformation and unproven therapies","route":"/bottlenecks/b-misinformation/"},{"id":"b-patient-voice","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Patients lack understanding, navigation and agency","route":"/bottlenecks/b-patient-voice/"}]}}