Steve Jobs cancer cure?

[Zombie]

Steve Jobs died in 2011 of a type of pancreatic cancer - in medical terms a neuroendocrine tumour [NET] in the pancreas. NETs can occur in all sorts of places in the body. Last year I read about a writer, Alexander Masters, who was trying to get Apple to support a new treatment that might have been able to save Steve Jobs. A guy in Sweden - Professor Magnus Essand - and his weightlifting assistant had done promising work on a virus, and tests they conducted showed this could "eat" NETs and offered the prospect of a cure. Apparently it's been known since the 19th century that viruses can destroy cancer cells and this was what Prof Essand was hoping to do but his tests were only in animals, he had no money and there was no commercial interest in backing the £2m clinical trial. So the virus he created was just sitting in the back of his fridge since 2010. This seemed a real shame.

I've just caught up on a more hopeful article last month by Alexander Masters, this time in The Guardian, about the Swedish duo's persistence and inventiveness with crowdfunding and their plan to sell the name of the virus to anyone donating £1m. If this virus can be made to work, that person's name will live on, along with all those who might be cured.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9512505/Author-appeals-to-Apple-to-fund-cancer-hope-that-could-have-saved-Steve-Jobs.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9544400/Would-I-takean-untested-cancer-treatment-myself-Hellyes.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/04/2013-new-approach-fighting-cancer