Steve Jobs Issues Update On His Health 320
i4u writes "Rumors about Steve Jobs' health have been flying high again after Apple announced that he will not be holding the keynote at the Macworld 2009. Today Steve Jobs issued a letter with a rather personal update on why he was losing weight in 2008. The reason for losing weight in 2008 is a hormone imbalance that has been reducing proteins. The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward according to Jobs.
Steve and his doctors predict that he will have normal weight again by Spring. So stop the rumors and enjoy Macworld 2009."
Hormonal Imbalance? (Score:5, Funny)
If anime has taught me anything, Steve Jobs should be back to work in no time with a huge rack.
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If anime has taught me anything, Steve Jobs should be back to work in no time with a huge rack.
Well, that explains the tittiesloveappletech tag on the other Apple story today.
Re:Hormonal Imbalance? (Score:5, Funny)
I hope not, I've heard that the iRack is unstable.
Re:Hormonal Imbalance? (Score:4, Funny)
As an FYI on the above joke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcjLEwZqcQI [youtube.com]
Truly funny MadTV skit.
Re:Hormonal Imbalance? (Score:4, Funny)
> Truly funny MadTV skit.
I know; I was just as shocked as you were.
Re:Hormonal Imbalance? (Score:5, Funny)
Great, like Mac fanboys aren't in infatuated with him enough already.
News because (Score:5, Insightful)
from the can't-believe-this-is-news dept
When many people believe that the continued success of a large company depends on one individual, his health becomes news.
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When many people believe that the continued success of a large company depends on one individual, his health becomes news.
That's because in Apple's case, it's more than a belief. Apple's success does depend on Steve Jobs, strangely enough. Remember John Sculley?
Re:News because (Score:5, Funny)
Re:News because (Score:5, Funny)
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yea, they need someone who has the hormones of a 13 year old girl to buy their products!
There, fixed that for you.
Re:News because (Score:5, Funny)
Remember John Sculley?
People usually pick inferior successors, egomaniacs even moreso. Makes their own "term in office" look better. It was Jobs who set up that failure and Jobs who profited from it on his return.
Re:News because (Score:5, Informative)
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Right, but he wasn't picked as a successor. Sculley was to run the day-to-day stuff, leaving Jobs to be the 'visionary leader' over the Macintosh project. Later, it was Sculley who forced Jobs out, mostly because Jobs was trying to basically set the Macintosh group up as totally independent from the rest of the company.
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The Macintosh and the OS as separate parts or something else?
Personally I don't give a shit anything not computers from Apple, and even in the case of mac vs OS I would obviously had prefered a split.
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The Macintosh and the OS as separate parts or something else?
Prior to the Macintosh, and for some time after that, the Apple II series computers were the biggest-shipping product and profit center for Apple.
Re:News because (Score:4, Insightful)
Sculley had the the thing running into the ground well before Spindler came along to piss on Apple's fresh grave. Amelio, believe it or not, was relatively good for Apple -- it was through his efforts that Apple bought NeXT and brought Jobs on board.
Jobs != SinglePointOfFailure (Score:3, Insightful)
If Apple's doomed the minute Jobs is no longer running the helm, you might as well start running like hell as far away as you can from Apple right now. Jobs is a mortal, and will not be around forever. Find a company or product that will not immediately collapse when its founder dies or retires.
Do you *really* want to be running on something with a future that uncertain? I for one don't believe that Apple's on that shakey ground, but for those who do believe that, if they're still running on Apple, they'
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Find a company or product that will not immediately collapse when its founder dies or retires.
Except that there was a long period of time between about 1985 and 1998 or so that Jobs was no longer associated with Apple. That's what? Almost 15 years?
Apple didn't immediately collapse and the Macintosh line existed and was largely successful in niche markets without Jobs.
No, Apple doesn't need Jobs, but I think that without Jobs, Apple would lose its sense of direction.
Re:Jobs != SinglePointOfFailure (Score:4, Funny)
With iClone technology, it won't matter!
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I apologise in advance if this is a dumb question. But what exactly is Job's speciality that makes him so important to the company?
I get the impression he's not a technical guy as Woz did all that in the early days and he has plenty of other peons to do that now.
I understand he's not a designer, certainly credit for the iPod design goes to a British guy iirc and similarly the iPhone.
Is it simply that he's good at hiring the right guys? Is it down to making good business oriented decisions (i.e. what markets
Re:News because (Score:5, Insightful)
He's a catalyst. He's not arguably good at anything that's directly useful to development, sales or marketing, but he fires employees and customers up. You could say he's the soul of his company.
My boss is like that: he doesn't know much about the products we make and how they're made, nor is he particularly good at promoting or selling them, but he could convince you to put on suntan lotion in the middle of a blizzard storm.
Re:News because (Score:5, Insightful)
And, FYI, that's exactly the kind of people that make the big money while us nerds look startled at their sheer ignorance and evident feeble reasoning.
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Speak for yourself, I for one am capable of seeing through a cult of personality, so are most technically inclined people. Its those who don't have the intelligence and/or discipline to learn that become enamoured with an image or personality.
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During the dot-com days, his business card would have read, "Technological Evangelist."
I think that understates his value to Apple. A "Technological Evangelist" promotes the technology that a company has. Jobs does do this, but he also recognizes which technologies to push the development of, what markets to enter and he rides people to create products that fit his vision/version of perfection.
That's not to say he's irreplaceable, just that since his return he has been highly effective in leading Apple's success.
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Remember Gil Amelio? He followed Scully, and proceeded to pull Apple stock down to around $10 a share. That's about the time I should have bought a ton of Apple stock. Too bad my time machine was running Windows NT at the time.
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You mean the guy that practically invented the PDA and could have made Apple the biggest company in the tech world with it?
Yeah, I remember him. Getting rid of him is the the reason Apple's going to be #2 in the computer world forever.
Sculley sucked at building PCs, that's for sure. He would have made a kick-ass iPhone/iPod combo years ago, though, and I could see him creating an Apple version of a game console, too. It's really too bad Apple didn't keep him for his non-PC related talents.
Oh well, why sh
Re:News because (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is all the more reason for Mr. Jobs to stop giving the keynote. Apple needs to break this perception that Mr. Jobs is Apple. He can't go on working there forever, and if they want to survive once he retires, they need to get him to take a back seat for awhile so the ninny-headed stock holders stop believing the sky is falling every time Mr. Jobs gets a cold.
Incidentally, it's not surprising that Mr. Jobs might have this happen, a lot of people as they get older have thyroid or other changes that cause them to gain or lose weight. E.g. Bush Sr. had that thyroid operation when he was president because it was becoming overactive IIRC.
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Next step is for #2 to come out with "Steve Jobs has actually been dead for 3 years". Maybe not that extreme but the best way to reassure investors is to think that Jobs is running everything while having someone else actually run everything.
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Now that you mention it...I think I have seen a picture of Steve Jobs walking across Abbey Road barefoot....
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Somebody get that man some more french fries...
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You mean like Warren Buffet?
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When many people believe that the continued success of a large company depends on one individual, his health becomes news.
Seeing that much more people care about "lose" vs. "loose" - I don't think so.
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When many people believe that the continued success of a large company depends on one individual, his health becomes news.
Seeing that much more people care about "lose" vs. "loose" - I don't think so.
I think you mean many more people.
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When many people believe that the continued success of a large company depends on one individual, his health becomes news.
An entire hockey team can depend on the performance of one player. A religion can lean on just one character/thing. Apple is obviously not successful only because of Steve Jobs, but you have to admit that his performance in recent years changed the way we look at things.
It is easy to sit here and look at Apple's products and think "yeah, I would approve that product too, and make millions". It's an entirely different thing to have a deep understanding of how the industry works, predict products, function
What is weird is... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What is weird is... (Score:5, Funny)
why is not Ballmer loosing weight despite of being unable to sit down anywhere?
It's not fat, it's muscle. Peons like us don't realize the weight of a good, executive chair.
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I beg your pardon. It's typically all dead weight.
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Wow... Steve Ballmer is the Kingpin.
It's January 5th (Score:4, Funny)
I don't think Steve is the only one resolving to be "back to normal weight" by spring.
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Misspelled (Score:4, Funny)
"stop the Tumors."
There, fixed that for ya...
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hormone imbalance that has been reducing proteins.
...yeah, and Michael Jackson has a skin disorder that makes him paler ...
I'm kidding! I'm kidding! Please don't mod me down!
Re:Misspelled (Score:5, Funny)
I only want to know (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I only want to know (Score:5, Funny)
For values inside the RDF, the field strength is unchanged.
Which Steve? (Score:5, Funny)
The big question is, which Steve will be commemorated by the U.S. Postal Service on a stamp? The younger, chubbier Steve or the older, skinnier, playing-in-Vegas Steve. If only there was a precedent...
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Does anyone else see the irony in the idea of someone who did so much to make snail mail less relevant being commemorated in a stamp?
Darkstar (Score:2)
Patrick Volkerding laughs at Jobs' silly medical problems.
Okay, so I have to ask the obvious question... (Score:5, Funny)
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How do I *get* this hormone imbalance?
Build a house under high tension power lines.
Re:Okay, so I have to ask the obvious question... (Score:5, Funny)
Start using exclusively apple products.
Apple computers, apple software, apple music, apple apples...
Pretty soon you will run out of money, so you will be soon be forced to eating apples grown in the wild and ones you can steal at the market.
You'll be losing weight so fast - Justin Long will try to kill you in a fit of jealousy.
poor jobs (Score:5, Funny)
I guess Jobs should have eaten an apple a day to keep the doctor away.
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If you eat only an apple a day you're going to have to visit the doctor in a week or two.
Oh. Steve is going to be taking 'roids? (Score:2)
Reading between the lines on the 'hormone imbalance' and weight loss, and not a stemming but a rapid regain of lost weight (by late Spring), it seems what Steve isn't saying here is that the doctors have put him on a Steroid (testosterone) supplement (testosterone replacement therapy) to put on weight.
Is there another underlying issue for the weight loss, or is Steve just becoming an old man (with the loss in testosterone that goes with it)? Who knows.
But I, for one, look forward to the new roid inspired de
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But I, for one, look forward to the new roid inspired designs yet to come from Apple.
Irate?
Irascible?
Irritable?
Ikillyou?
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Well, he can't have iChoke-U, because that's already taken. [penny-arcade.com]
so much for... (Score:2)
Update on my weight (Score:5, Funny)
i's? (Score:2)
Always wondered what the i's in the Apple product line stood for? Internet, information? No, ill.
The newest Linked List library from Apple! (Score:2)
extreme vegetarian diet? (Score:3, Interesting)
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That's what vitamin supplements are for.
Lots of people live perfectly healthy lives and go their whole life with a vegetarian diet.
but for a *balanced* vegetarian diet (Score:3, Informative)
guess the hormone? insulin, thyroid ... (Score:2)
Steve had some of his pancreas removed during his cancer and the remainder may become insufficient.
Oblig. Monty Python (Score:2)
I'm not dead! ... I... feel... happy...
Hormone imbalance usually means menopause right? (Score:2)
Or is it a new euphemism for cancer now?
You know, such as when some bigshot gets fired, the press release usually says so and so resigned to "spend more time with family."
Future Headline: Steve Has Breasts! (Score:2, Funny)
Seriously people (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, but I can't believe the incredible amount of stupid comments posted here on this article. Jobs basically announces he's not dying and Apple's shares jump 4%. Apple isn't a one man operation and Wall Street knows that. It's probably safe to assume that every single innovation that's come out of Apple in the past 11 years hasn't been dumped straight from Steve's brain either.
Steve's marketing genius [wikipedia.org] and patient leadership are the real value he provides to Apple, and losing his leadership is what makes investors nervous. As some suggest, Apple pulling the Stevenote from MacWorld is an attempt to address the former, but without a plan to address the latter, Wall Street will still freak out at the possibility of Apple losing Jobs.
In a world where IT companies are constantly diversifying their offerings, rushing products to market, and generally playing a bizarre game of throw 50 products at the market and see which ones stick, Apple is playing its cards close to its chest - and has been successfully since Job's return. It's not chasing emerging markets (Netbooks), it's not trying to get into online advertising (Microsoft) and hell it's not even doing things that outsiders think it should be doing to expand its business. Apple's stock value is based on the perception that is has a master plan. This is what makes Apple unique. And this is the value of Steve Jobs.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Sorry, but I can't believe the incredible amount of stupid comments posted here on this article. Jobs basically announces he's not dying and Apple's shares jump 4%"
What's even more amazing is that he didn't say he wasn't dying. He said he had a hormone imbalance. Also note the time required to regain the weight...
Press releases are often very important for what they don't say. But most people tend to miss the obvious. Certainly doesn't rule out the dying bit....
hormone imbalance (Score:5, Funny)
is an anagram of 'a common rehab line'
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=hormone+imbalance&t=1000 [wordsmith.org]
I have no idea what this means (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, there can be some pretty complicated and rare syndromes related to pancreatic hormones insofar as cancer is concerned. However, I have no idea what he is alluding to here. The most likely answer for why a person without part of a pancreas would be losing nutrients would be a deficiency in exocrine pancreatic enzymes leading to steatorrhea and calorie loss. However, the description of hormones instead of enzymes and sophisticated blood tests instead of stool tests is a little confusing. My understanding is that he had a Whipple procedure for a neuroendocrine tumor. He would certainly be at risk for steatorrhea. People with neuroendocrine tumors can overproduce certain hormones (such as glucagon) which can lead to weight loss from chronic diarrhea. However, if his problem was due to such overproduction, that would certainly mean that his cancer had not been cured by the surgery and probably wouldn't be described as an "imbalance."
Anyway, I'm not his doctor and don't know much about his case, but can't really put together what he's given us into a coherent story. Maybe someone else can speculate, but it's a bit of a mystery what he is referring to here.
Re:Hey Steve... how about a little (Score:5, Insightful)
Being that he had pancreatic cancer, he's probably on a special diet. A fatty diet causes a pancreas much grief.
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I question the use of the word "hormone"... What he is saying does not make allot of sense. It no doubt does sound like an adrenal/thyroid/pituitary problem of some sort, but his symptoms are wrong for the typical diagnoses...
I strongly suspect there is more to this....
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Just for the record... I am assuming a complex diagnosis because of his statements of "his doctors not knowing the problem". There are a number of very simply conditions that could cause the weight lose, hyperthyroidism being an example...
Re:Hey Steve... how about a little (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't heard of anyone getting better from pancreatic cancer.
Now you have. A few minutes with Wikipedia reveals that "Jobs was lucky; he had an extremely rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor that can be treated surgically, without radiation or chemotherapy." (From the Fortune article the Steve Jobs Wikipedia article links to.)
It's really dicey for non-experts (or, probably even experts) to make generalizations based on the common name of a cancer, without knowing exactly what variety of the disease it is, what stage it's at, and so on. Jobs has been (apparently) cancer-free since his surgery in July 2004.
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Pancreatic Cancer has a 6% 5-year survival rate.
Again, this is pretty misleading unless you consider the specific cancer rather than "pancreatic cancer" as a generic. The statistic you cite is for "Estimated Five-year Relative Survival Ratio (%) (and 95% Confidence Interval) for the Most Common Cancers", and you read off the "pancreas" line. The specific case in question is not one of "the most common cancers" but (AFAICT) a different disease of the same organ.
Pancreatica.org [pancreatica.org] has this to say about islet cell tumors:
Neuroendocrine tumors of the pancreas (islet cell tumors) are much less common than tumors arising from the exocrine pancreas. Reports often indicate that there are about two to three thousand cases diagnosed in the U.S. each year
and
The natural history of islet cell and carcinoic tumors tends to be favorable as compared with pancreatic adenocarcinoma. For example, the median survival duration from the time of diagnosis for patients with non-functioning metastatic islet cell tumors approaches five years.
(Johns Hopkins [jhu.edu] agrees.)
The Pancrea
Re: (Score:2)
Read this article [guardian.co.uk]:
Let's recap why there's concern about his health: in October 2003, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer - which is usually a quick killer. But Jobs is extraordinarily lucky: he had neuroendocrine cancer, a rare and treatable form. He had the Whipple procedure (which removes the head of the pancreas, where the cancer was, and the duodenum, which connects the stomach to the jejunum) to treat it in July 2004 (having unsuccessfully tried to "treat" it through diet, a fact that was kept from
Re:Hey Steve... how about a little (Score:4, Insightful)
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Slashdotter venom? *shudder* Thank you for putting such an image in my head. Now I have to go and get my mind rinsed out with beer.
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Come to think about it, so am I.
Re:Steve? (Score:4, Insightful)
dad?
Don't you mean "father"?
"male parental unit" would be acceptable too.
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Where does this buddy-buddy tone come from?
Same place Billgatus of Borg icon and Developers-Developers-Developers video came from.
Or maybe not from EXACTLY the same place, but a couple of doors down the hall from there.
I wouldn't be surprised if he is old enough to be your dad.
Are you implying that Steve-steve-stevee-o and his mom were getting it on behind his father's back?
Re:Should I sell my Apple shares? (Score:5, Funny)
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You stick it in, and ... boom!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Re:Any doctors reading this? (Score:5, Informative)
A rare but treatable kind of pancreatic cancer, which he foolishly tried to treat by eating mostly raw vegetables, before having the operation. It's not much of speculation, it's a matter of record.
Re:Any doctors reading this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a physician and I have actually performed a few Whipple procedures in my training. I can say that upon reading this letter, I immediately smelled big-time BS.
There are some treatable medical causes of cachexia (profound weight loss) but they are not difficult to diagnosis. If he had pancreatic insufficiency following his pancreas resection, this should have been quickly noted because it is common and his newfound symptoms of diabetes are easily recognized.
Hyperthyroidism is another cause of weight loss, but any doctor worth his salt would have screened for this right away. Celiac disease is another possibility but again this is not a difficult diagnosis because of the GI symptoms (lots of diarrhea).
The most likely cause of weight loss in this setting is cancer, cancer, and cancer. It can sometimes be very difficult to find where exactly the cancer metastases have recurred, and this can delay the proper diagnosis.
The main thing that Jobs has going for him is that this weight loss was first publicly noted some time ago now, and he does not have other signs of cancer that we know of. Jobs does not seem to be the type to hide it if he knew he had cancer. At least, he didn't hide it the first time, right?
shellac.
Re:Any doctors reading this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Your comments seem, well... under-informed.
Here's a link to a user comment that I found pretty interesting regarding the ability of post-Whipple procedures patients to process proteins.
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/new-money/2009/01/05/some-arent-buying-steve-jobs-hormone-imbalance.html#1593509 [usnews.com]
For those that don't click through, here's a quote of a portion:
"the person has an unusual level of difficulty digesting proteins, fats, and starches since pancreatic enzyme levels are reduced and since the duodenum is missing. Unlike ferrets (who also get a little understood form of insulinoma, with insulinoma being a topic that needs a lot of study still) humans just don't have a lot of excess pancreas to spare. So, the upshot is that his body now will have more of his food go through without needed nutrients digested. Hence, the weight loss.
Add to this that he is a vegetarian, in fact, a vegan. Vegetable protein is especially difficult to break into usable amino acids. Animal protein is far easier to utilize.
Furthermore, people who have had the Whipple Procedure sometimes find themselves simply not feeling like having the many and frequent small meals the procedure makes necessary, and as a vegan Mr Jobs may resist the foods that settle the belly at such times: full fat yogurts, full fat milk, and cheeses. "
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This is a well known complication of having pancreas surgery. Some patients need pancreatic enzymes supplements afterwards to process proteins.
This sort of thing should not be a "mystery" to Jobs' doctors as the press release says.
Re:Any doctors reading this? (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I've read in various places, consulting doctors for health advice isn't his primary strategy. I've heard the Whipple was only after everything else (quirky diets, 'alternative' healers) failed. Though I suppose there must have been some testing in there to have a diagnosis in the first place.
I don't know what's going on, I'm just pointing out that the doctors you presume are there may not be (at least regularly), nor would they necessarily have a good patient.
Taking the bait (Score:5, Insightful)
I shouldn't reply to this ridiculous posting, which implies that somehow because I am both a doctor and a geek I am not allowed to have an opinion on a media report on a medical issue. But fine, I will take the bait.
I am not Steve Jobs' doctor and I am not trying to be. The OP solicited a doctor's opinion and I gave mine with the little information I could guess at from a media report.
COMMON SENSE would dictate that I am not making an ironclad diagnosis from a media report, but apparently it is because of people such as yourself, who are lacking in this capacity, that people have to post disclaimers at the bottom of their comments and email or whatever that they are only giving their opinion and not a professional service.
Before I posted my earlier message I had a discussion about the media report with one of my colleagues. It would seem then that you would prefer doctors to keep such talk to ourselves. You are quite free to block my comments or refrain from reading them from now on.
shellac.
Re:Taking the bait (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, touchy aren't we? I guess you didn't care too much about the talk regarding McCain's chances of melanoma recurrence either. I think that was an important discussion that I would have chimed in on as well, had I seen a posting here. Just as this discussion is important to certain AAPL shareholders.
But I guess if you don't really have an argument to make you can always attack the individual. Good luck with that.
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or badgers..
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Is this malnutrition or cancer-related cachexia
then maybe it is neither?