Monday, October 10, 2011

Two die from pancreatic cancer

By a strange coincidence two famous men died of pancreatic cancer last week. Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple succumbed and so did Ralph Steinman, who discovered the dendritic cell. Steinman was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine, but when the telephone call came he had been dead for three days.

Ironically, Steinman was being treated for his pancreatic cancer with a dendritic cell approach.

So there you have it: pancreatic cancer is so terrible a disease that it cannot be defeated by all the money in the world or by the biggest brains on the planet.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes, this was an odd coincidence. I read the Nobel Prize funds will be given to his family anyway. He put himself through several "trials" the newspaper was quick to point out were legitimate/approved, but so what if they weren't. In all cancers there is so much unknown territory. I feel like we are only at the beginning, not even in the middle.

Ann