Steve Jobs had liver transplant Sometime in April, roughly three months after taking a medical leave of absence from the Apple CEO post, Steve Jobs received a liver transplant. News of the two-month-old transplant broke late Friday evening, at the end of a day when Apple released the latest incarnation of its worldwide status symbol, the iPhone 3G S. As …
the liver can fully heal itself as long as at least 25% of it is left... so a donor can happily donate 50% of their liver, then both donor and donee would still have plenty of redundant liver capacity to get by until such time as both parts have grown in to full livers in their respective hosts
if you can donate a liver without having to die first, this brings up the obvious question of why the waiting lists are so long - is it just that they aren't actually bothering to try and find donors? i know i've never been asked here... (only ever had the NHS ask me for blood... before presenting me with the list of things that disqualify you, which explained why they were so short on donors!)
The behaviour of apple over all this is a little bit like a cult. Are they, as a company, so tied to a single person that they can't survive without him? If MS behaved in the same way, all the Mac heads would freak out about the secrecy but apple - who make enterprise support extremely difficult by not publishing a proper product roadmap - are more secretive than the scientologists - but they're not a cult either so that's ok
... the business aspect is probably first to spring to mind?
Maybe a moment or two to dwell upon his personal issues, family issues, matters to do with friends and so forth is probably well spent.
And maybe another moment or two to dwell on people who might not attract quite so much press coverage for similar issues?
Then another moment or two just to let your thoughts run reflectively to wherever and whatever they take you to too?
As it is to ask whether the donors name was Lily...
I concur with the general tone. Steve is a talented guy who has made some brilliant decisions and created some really neat stuff.
If I had his money I would feel a responsibility and a desire to spend the rest of my time with my family - if he goes into work it just pure passion.
Stay as well as possible for as long as possible Steve.. You have been an inspiration for a long time..
TBH it seems the markets have finally been weaned off their Jobs obsession when it comes to Apple stock. The past six months have shown that the team Jobs built are quite capable of running the show without him, and the share price has risen to reflect that.
Jobs shouldn't rush back. It'll be good for the long term health of both himself and Apple if he stays away until his body is capable of meeting the demands work puts on it. In the meantime I wish him well with his recovery.
Steve is a lucky fella - pancreatic cancer has an atrociously low survival rate (I lost a friend to it a few months back - not a pleasant way to go) and a liver transplant isn't exactly what you'd call a routine procedure either.
I'm not a fan of the man or many of his products, but hope he has a speedy and trouble-free recovery - God knows the world needs a few more people like him with creative drive and vision.
@ Mike007
Although you are correct about being able to donate part of a liver the reason the NHS don't usually do this is because you present to a healthy donar a very bad chance of dying from infection, it's easy to donate a kidney but cutting someones liver in half can have many complications which can cause death.
The point made by the doctor in the NYT is that a liver transplant is not a proven method for curing a metabolized cancer as in all likelyhood the cancer may return to his new liver which makes it a poor use of a donar organ. I know this as my mother did not get a transplant for this very reason. I guess the kind of money Jobs has speaks louder than medical facts.
... just a thought, keep it, don't keep it ... for those of you who wished Steve well, a quick reality check - the chances of him actually reading it and going "oh Gee, thanks" are about as good as Gordon Brown winning the general election.
Anyway, get well soon Steve, we've all missed you, ya big lug.
"for those of you who wished Steve well, a quick reality check - the chances of him actually reading it and going "oh Gee, thanks" are about as good as Gordon Brown winning the general election."
He'll probably see an internet full of well wishing, his response to such support and compassion probably will be "oh Gee, thanks" and the lift will almost certainly aid his recovery. At least, that's how it works for humans. Your biology may vary.
I've never bought an Apple product, but I wish you well, Mr Jobs.
Bill, Larry and Steve. No doubt there's more.
Large companies are supposed to plod along no matter who is at the helm. But if you can trust one person, that large company can also turn on a dime. The tradeoff for this agility is resilience, hence all the effort to set up Cooks and Ballmers.
Noting that body parts are available 6.375 times faster in TN than US average, does anybody know (a) whether there are a disproportionately large number of motorcyclists in TN and/or (b) that State's policy on the death penalty and its current Death Row throughput rate?
What a thick twat!
DRM is present at the insistence of the record megacorps, not Apple. Indeed, S Jobs appealed for its riddance.
I hope Jobs gets better and can remain at the helm of Apple. His company has done more to innovate and style than any IT firm I know. Apple is synonymous with excellent design implementation.
"(b) that State's policy on the death penalty and its current Death Row throughput rate?"
So we can look forward to a Simpson's style episode where the ex-con's murderous personailty still alive in the liver assumes control of Mr Jobs and starts to wreak revenge on those that helped convict him......
.....coooooool
"Must be all the Jack Daniels" --Actually I believe Tennessee is a 'dry' state where alcohol is of course legal to drink, but cannot be purchased. Ironic I suppose.
Anyway, I wish Steve all the best. Regardless of how you feel about Apple, Steve is one of the early pioneers and deserves respect a-plenty just for that, and still seems to have a genuine love for this field. One of the true and original "hardware hackers" Even if he wasn't, I'd certainly wish him all the best anyway as a person going through a trying situation.
Proof positive that life's a bitch---you get all the wealth you can spend, can be genuinely happy in most every way, and still be f#cked by something like this.
Good luck Steve.
Tennessee isn't a 'dry' state; it is a county by county thing there. I know, it doesn't make any sense - the county I lived in was dry but neighboring counties weren't, so all you had to do was drive a few minutes and make your purchase past the county line. And in true entrepreneurial spirit, just over the county line were a number of establishments happy to sell you (at a slight premium) the beverage of your choice.
As to the organ donor question, it has been over 20 years since I lived there so I'm not sure what the current state of affairs may be. At the time it was an opt-in thing, but everyone who applied for a drivers license had to make the choice and it was displayed on the license itself. Considering Tennessee is known as the Volunteer State and many people who live there are proud of their heritage, perhaps that spirit of volunteerism contributes to a higher percentage of organ donors as well.
As much as I like to mock Tennessee, just as I like to mock everyone, a state that makes organ donation easier gets a thumbs up. I lost a friend to liver cancer; he might be alive today if the red tape weren't so thick. I still think he contracted it from being around drinkers, since he didn't drink much. Second hand liver damage?
(Plus, my two favorite blues musicians were born in Tennessee, so who am I to snark.)
"DRM is present at the insistence of the record megacorps, not Apple. Indeed, S Jobs appealed for its riddance."
Ah yes, Jobs means everything he says doesn't he? Sorry but fuck off. Just because he said he hates DRM doesn't mean he continued to do so whilst his competitors had absolutely no problem running DRM free services. The fact everyone else managed to get DRM free deals showed up Jobs for what he is, a lier. The fact is Jobs loved their proprietary DRM, it tied the millions of iPhone users to Apple hardware. Even now iTunes has a ton of DRM laden tracks and the ones that aren't cost far more than DRM free versions at places like Amazon and Play.com. Don't be so damn gullable and assume everything he says it's true.
"His company has done more to innovate and style than any IT firm I know. Apple is synonymous with excellent design implementation."
Uh, yeah, okay you keep telling yourself that. Meanwhilst I'll chuckle at the fact the iPhone had fuck all features to start with such as GPS, MMS etc. and we were told it didn't need them but then Apple realised they did in fact need to copy everyone else in the industry and add these features. I'll also sit chuckling at all the easily scratched, regularly discolouring, non-replacable battery, fire hazard power adapter products that Apple keep churning out, so much for excellent design and implementation.
Apple is good at one thing - interface and looks, when it comes to actual quality, usefulness, cost effectiveness, features, Apple fails hard.
So, DRM wasn't at the insistence of the recording industry? Oh yes it was.
So his competitors "had absolutely no problem running DRM free services", oh yes they did ... they were routinely threatened by the big labels and had major problems getting catalogues. You seem to be the master of the grand overstatement ... "everyone else managed to get DRM free deals" - no they did not, and many have since gone to the wall.
By the way, it's gullIble, not gullAble.
And it's liAr, not liEr.
Another wacky statement ... "the iPhone had fuck all features to start with such as GPS, MMS etc. and we were told it didn't need them but then Apple realised they did in fact need to copy everyone else in the industry and add these features." Apple brought to market a mobile phone which awoke the market from its slumber ... hence the number of 'me too' models brought out by competitors. Of course it wasn't perfect (and certainly not up to your 'standards') ... what first models are? But you seem to want to live in the past so chuckle away.
My guess would be Vanderbilt University. Not sure how they stack up against other programs but over all it is an excellent hospital. If I had his financial resources when I got mine I probably would have chosen Pittsburg. But they are all pretty good these days. I got mine in the Ghetto of Newark and can say nothing but good things about UMDNJ.
Also being somewhat knowledgeable about liver disease and what one goes through I would put my money on good things coming from Mr. Jobs. Funny thing happens when your liver is sick. You have really high levels of ammonia in you blood and that makes you lose your mental edge or at times makes you down right retarded. Liver disease also does not happen over night. Post transplant a patient will be thinking clearer than he or she has in 10 years.
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