Iain Banks: Extremely Ill With Cancer

The_Other_Kelly writes "News that will shock and sadden the many fans of Iain (M.) Banks. He is suffering from gall bladder cancer, and things do not look good: 'The bottom line, now, I'm afraid, is that as a late stage gall bladder cancer patient, I'm expected to live for "several months" and it's extremely unlikely I'll live beyond a year.' His books, both normal and science fiction, are world view warping Excessions, and my heart goes out to him and his. I am shocked and saddened. Thank you, Iain."

Comments

No more "Culture" novels. Damn.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks

Re:Well said. Maybe it's not too late though?

[Paul Fernhout]

That's a bit like saying no one should not use "NoScript" because they know someone who had trouble using Facebook with it installed.

If someone has a localized cancer that is easily treatable completely by surgery, then surgery can make a lot of sense of course. Steve Job's cancer apparently was one rare such situation. In that sense, he did regret not having surgery sooner. But many cancers, by the time they are detected, can't be easily removed surgically. Procedures to remove cancers can also let cancerous cells loose in the bloodstream. Removing one cancer may allow others that cancer suppressed to grow. Even when cancers can be removed 100% surgically, the conditions (diet and lifestyle) that contributed to the cancer growing would likely just support more cancers or other health issues. There are also quite a few cases of a person's immune system rallying and the cancer going into remission.

Consider:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/27/opinion/weil-steve-jobs
"Steve Jobs had a long run with a rare form of cancer (a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor) that is sometimes curable by early surgery. While I was not his physician and don't have access to the details of his illness or its treatment, assertions that his use of alternative medicine shortened his life strike me as uninformed. No one knows how long he would have survived or what his quality of life would have been had he opted for immediate surgery and used only conventional treatment."

And:
http://www.livescience.com/16551-steve-jobs-alternative-medicine-pancreatic-cancer-treatment.html
" "I don't think waiting nine months for surgery was a bad decision," Dr. Maged Rizk, a gastroenterologist at Cleveland Clinic, told WebMD in an interview last week. "Especially if it is limited disease, especially if it is an islet-cell tumor and the cells are [typical of early cancer], and as long as you don't have symptoms, you can sit on it a bit," Rizk said. (Neuroendocrine tumors are also known as islet-cell tumors.)
But what about Jobs' use of alternative medicine? Could that have had an impact on his cancer?
Some experts say that, if anything, use of alternative medicine approaches may have helped Jobs' overall health. Jobs lived 8 years after his diagnosis.
The average life expectancy for someone with a metastatic neuroendocrine tumor is about two years, according to PCAN. (It remains unclear whether Jobs' cancer was metastatic when he was diagnosed.)
"I believe that he must have really refocused his heath practices," through changes in diet and exercise, said Dr. Ashwin Mehta, an assistant professor and medical director of integrative medicine at the University of Miami's Sylvester Cancer Center. "To do as well as he did, he must have done a lot of things right," Mehta said."

So yes, eating better may have helped Steve Jobs live a lot longer, whatever one can say about his decision about surgery. Iain Banks says parts of his cancer are inoperable, so it is a very different situation. He says he is considering chemotherapy; I pointed to potential ways as to how to make it more effective,

People are always getting pre-cancerous and cancerous cells. They usually don't get "cancer" because their body's immune system kills the cells. So, anything you can do to strengthen your immune system can help you do better. So can anything you do to remove additional toxins and also to remove things that may promote cancer growth (including apparently some substances in dairy).

The worst thing about making cancer treatment decisions (beyond all the personal trauma) may be that most oncologists get paid by the treatment. So there is no financial incentive for oncologists to suggest anything other that treatments they can supply. This sort of conflict-of-interest between patient and specialist physici