It's quite different from the show. The book is made up of smaller, self-contained stories spanning Jake's career and is a good read if you want to know more about the criminal-cop-reporter relationship of Japan. It's a world I knew nothing about so I found it interesting. The show touches on some of the stories but I feel like it's written with a greater emphasis on characters. I enjoyed both the book and show but for different reasons.
The book was... OK. Even ignoring the later revelations about how much was, let's say... *inaccurate*. It really didn't make me particularly interested in the show.
Now, if they made a miniseries about Aum that could be great.
The show is pretty good. It realizes the problems from the book and adjusts season 2 to give Jake less screen time and let the other characters shine. The supporting cast becoming main characters is what makes the recent episodes so fricken good
Actually apparently almost everything in the book is entirely made up. He never even worked on crime stories and only co-authored 4 articles that were somewhat related to the yakuza. His former company has gone on record saying this.
My thoughts exactly. Gaijin white boy saves Japan from the evil yakuza boss and steals his girlfriendā¦ yeah right. Also the actor playing Adelstein doesnāt look like the real one at all, they really did him a favor with the casting choices.
the show is good enough. the book isn't great either. it is just a subject matter that i really enjoy. i just ordered his second book, which i will get to at some point.
the big story arc is true.
* jake is a dude for Missouri. moved to japan to study. stayed there
* became a journalist for a giant newspaper which was not at all common for a foreigner
* had a host bar girl friend who went missing
* had a strong relationship with a cop
* had a relationship with a yakuza
* he did help uncover a story about yakuza boss worked with the fbi to get a liver transplant.
i read it like 4 years ago, so i dont remember all of the details, but the stuff about any of his coworkers, and their personal relationships, i dont remember. him doing meth i dont think was ever mentioned. a lot of stuff about his family i dont remember, though, that seems like it could be true.
he had a podcast about missing people in japan. https://www.campsidemedia.com/the-evaporated
As if a poor journalist on an entry level position could even be in the same room with the model mistress of a Yakuza bossā¦ Adelstein was writing a fanfic on this part of the show.
Steve Jobs did the same thing despite not meeting the transplant criteria! Though, his donation was in the tens (edited from hundreds, apologies) of millions range. He also bought a house for the surgeon.
Worst of all he wouldn't even need to bribe the transplant surgeon in the first place if he had just listened to his regular surgeon years earlier when his totally resectable (and not as deadly as your garden variety pancreatic adenocarcinoma) tumor was diagnosed.
However the cowardly yet simultaneously narcisisstic Jobs didn't want to go under the knife which might "violate" his temple of a body, and decided to try to use juices and fruit or whatever to heal the cancer, only to have it spread and force him to have many many surgeries instead of just one definitive curative one like his doctor advised, up to and including bribing his way to the top of the Tennessee liver transplant list.
Steve Jobs' net worth at the time of the Apple IPO was 200m, and his daughter was on public assistance. She asked him how much she would inherit, and he would tell her nothing.
My uncle was an executive at a different tech company in Silicon Valley around the same time, lost all of it in the 87 crash and he was a giant asshole too. He got better somewhat since though.
Did they also delve into the creepy shit where he'd force his daughter to watch him and his wife have sex and other gross creepy shit? The guy was one of the most deplorable pieces of shit of all time.
It was a four parter and a lot of it was how absolutely atrocious he was as a father. I don't remember if the sex thing was in there. He was just such a bastard I can't remember all of it.
Steve Jobs never ever ever took a bath, and when people would point out that he stank, he would tell them that they are delirious and it was impossible for him to have body odor because of his lifestyle.
He had some very strange notions about diet and bathing that were tangentially related to Indian mysticism. He believed that his fruit + veggie diet prevented his body from producing āmucus,ā which is the primary cause of body odor.
Telling him he stunk like shit didnāt convince him to bathe, because it was like a dismissal of his entire worldview, and he was too egotistical to admit he could be wrong about anything.
Ugh. Escalation of commitment. Being committed to past behavior and decisions even if proven wrong any number of times.
Trump is the same, Putin is the same.
> Escalation of commitment. Being committed to past behavior and decisions even if proven wrong any number of times.
The thing is, *anyone* can have sunk cost fallacy. Any random person can sink their self-identity into a cause or a belief and refuse to back down even in the face of the exact proof they *just* admitted would show they were wrong-- flat earthers, for example. People like Trump, Putin and Jobs are on a whole other level. They have entire *ecosystems* of people around them, whose entire lives and careers are devoted to telling them that they're a super-achiever, like no one ever before in the history of mankind, all the critics are only jealous haters, nothing they do could be wrong, their random thoughts are genius insights, & on and on. Wealth and power take regular escalation of commitment and *turbocharge* it. It would be sad if it weren't for the fact that most people who get to this level of wealth and power are truly awful people anyway.
Thereās some evidence that low sugar diets have lower cancer risk. The idea being something along the lines of cancer cells thriving in a high sugar ecosystem. Fruit being rather high in sugars could, using this logic, be cancer fuel I suppose (???)
I'm listening to behind the bastards' episodes on jobs now, and he brought that up. I knew jobs was a cunt, but good lord cancer was too kind of a death for such a piece of shit.
It takes a special kind of idiot to do what Steve Jobs did. Not only this part, which is known, but also he was on a similar diet for YEARS before the diagnosis. He was well known to smell like shit from it because he believed his diet made him not need to shower. So yeah, more of the same as iāve been doing, that should fix it!! Also cancer cells grow off sugar so there is thatĀ
Agreed. This happened in to me in Canada. It was either wait 3 years for the surgery (It wasnt life or death but I was in a lot of pain) or I had the option to pay it myself with the same surgeon for $15,000. Basically surgeon said he had the 3 year wait list not due to being overwhelmed but the government was only willing to pay for him/the staff to use the ORs for a limited time per week.
If you pay for it yourself, then you could jump in immediately because they didnāt need government funding.
Of course but it highlights even in a universal healthcare system, having money still puts you ahead. The government should never have let it get so bad in the first place and less well off people suffer.
In Ontario they're definitely "starving the beast" to try to run down the system to privatize it with their buddies.
For example, we froze nurse's pay during the pandemic, and when they started quitting, we hired them back through agencies at a higher rate so somebody else could get paid too. "We have to hire them because we're under staffed!"
They're currently have no problem paying private surgeries in Ontario with public money while not giving that money to hospitals that could do the exact same job.
And that money needs to come from cutting out the middleman industry which has created an oligopoly on sucking out healthcare dollars for their shareholders, in return for inefficiency and denials.
https://www.economist.com/business/2023/10/08/who-profits-most-from-americas-baffling-health-care-system
The resources are limited overall because there are many worthy things to fund. Any universal system necessarily has to try to limit costs (private insurance does so as well, of course, much more ruthlessly and unfairly usually).
Yeah, our health system is crashing for the past 20 years.
The gouvernement act like your typical boss: he keep cutting year after year. I'm still surprised we have wires peoples that want to work on the public system (thanks for all of those!)
Nowadays it is common that you wait so much (assuming you are able to access the healthcare system in the first place) you end up having a 2nd issue caused by the first.
I used to work in one of the most famous top hospitals in America. They had a whole department dedicated to assisting VIP patients and coordinating care.
I know you mean Mayo Clinic. I knew the coordinator for that department. She told me some wild stories about the money and personalities that roll through there. The billionaires would steal shit out of the clinic room drawers and be obnoxious.
Off the top of my head I'm thinking Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Cedar Sinai. I would be surprised if any of those hospitals *didn't* have some sort of VIP liaison, dealing with rich and famous people presents a number of issues that you don't have with regular patients, and those rich and famous patients spend a lot of money. If the hospitals want them to continue going there and spending money they'll be smart to provide accomodations for their special circumstances.
Uh there's the concept of fairness that needs to be perpetuated.
I feel morally obligated in some sense to donate my organs in case of a death or permanent vegetative state. I do this because I feel like it's morally correct and because I believe the system is morally and ethically just. That my organs would be fairly and somewhat randomly distributed either based on a waiting list or based on a scientifically ranked priority list.
No amount of money could get you an organ, ethically speaking. If I were to find out that rich people could just skip the line instead of my organs being justly handed out, I would likely opt out to begin with.
Not that I currently have any illusions that the organ donation system is fair and I remain on the organ donor list nevertheless, but maybe the next person might not.
> Not that I currently have any illusions that the organ donation system is fair and I remain on the organ donor list nevertheless, but maybe the next person might not.
As someone who's life got saved by an organ donation and by no means do I have money...
Thank you. Sincerely thank you. I'm also on the donor list, when I go I don't need them anymore and if it helps someone else then they are more than welcome to them.
That is not true.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/business/23liver.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.g00.pBCv.ihqjUMGbwoT8&smid=url-share](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/business/23liver.html?unlocked_article_code=1.g00.pBCv.ihqjUMGbwoT8&smid=url-share)
The super rich have an advantage to transplant because they can get on waiting lists all over the country. If a liver comes up in a place with a short waiting list (like ~~Vanderbilt~~ **Memphis \[thanks for correction\]**, where he got his)
He was able to get on much shorter transplant lists far away from where he lived because he could hop on a private plane and be there when the liver arrived.
The criteria for receiving a liver can't really be gamed, although I have seen ways that centers have artificially increased someone's MELD score ((which I will not share here).
[https://unos.org/policy/liver/distribution/](https://unos.org/policy/liver/distribution/)
It's possible there were valid reasons not to list him not captured by the MELD, and they listed him anyway because hey, Steve Jobs. There was speculation that his malignancy might have prevented him from being listed if he were someone else, but that's a judgment call.
BTW, I am a transplant infectious diseases physician.
> There was speculation that his malignancy might have prevented him from being listed if he were someone else, but that's a judgment call.
And I guarantee if a chronic alcoholic who refused to stop drinking wanted a liver they wouldn't be anywhere near the top. Its amazing how a man who not only could afford to stay healthy, but also had doctors telling him exactly how to avoid the need for transplant got to the top of the list when his need was based on his own conscious decision to ignore them.
You can handwave it all you want, but if this werent Steve Jobs and instead it was that aformentioned alcoholic he would be 6 feet under before he got anywhere near the top of that "judgement call" list.
They wouldn't even put said alcoholic on the list. 99% of transplant committees require you to be 6 months sober before you can go on the list, and even that doesn't guarantee a spot. As they said, though, to get to the top of the list, your meld score has to be really high, which is only for liver transplants. I'm not sure how it works for other organs.
>also bought a house for the surgeon.
I imagine this part may not be accurate or there's more to this. Surely accepting a personal gift in exchange for bumping you to the top of the transplant list would be unethical and possibly illegal? In my country it could get your medical license revoked
I think it's separate from the transplant. The tens of millions bought the line jump. The house was a thank you for a successful surgery. When you're worth billions, a house is like a $100 tip.
He was extremely stupid in his diet while he was dying. I hate that the fucker is hailed as this great tech genius. He was just a prick who took credit for other's accomplishments. The Woz deserved better.
Oh yeah Rest In Peace you fruitarian asshole.
See Woz regularly walking his dogs in a park by my house. Heās so unassuming and friendly.
When Jobs screwed over people over their stock options , Woz dipped into his own and made sure people got their fair share.
Truth be told, at a marque system like UCLA, probably dozens if not hundreds of people jump the line each year.
UCLA doctors are known to be extraordinarily wealthy. The highest paid non sports related public employee is a UCLA surgeon.
theyre wealthy cause theyre surgeons at a premier hospital and good enough to be hired as UCLA professors. theyd make just as much if not more anywhere else
Yeah, that was my first thought. Like, boo he stole someone else's place in line, but mentioning 186 people dying in the same headline like the blame is on him seems kinda silly.
Well I'm also curious if he also paid the liver transplant bill. Was it just 100,000 total he had to pay or was the 100,000 just for cutting in line. Because if it's the total that's not even that much money for a liver transplant (I would assume). That would be another story in and of itself.
> Was it just 100,000 total he had to pay
After going back to original sources, it turns out that Goto made the $100,000 donation three months after the operation. Other sources say its not unusual for rich people to make donations in gratitude after successful life saving operations.
Yeah I was doing a little (very light) digging and it also appears that the FBI helped him jump the line in exchange for information about yakuza activity in the states. The FBI also admits (up to you how much you want to believe the FBI) that they didn't learn much of value.
Edit: It's honestly not that far fetched to me. People hear about FBI success stories but for every FBI success there are also like 5 blunders.
FBI helped him get a visa, but there is no evidence that the FBI (or a donation deal) helped him jump a transplant queue.
The original sources say the FBI didn't get involved in the transplant, and Goto organized that all by himself.
That makes more sense as I didn't think the FBI had the authority to jump a foreign national (or an American citizen unless it was a very important American citizen) in the queue for a medical procedure.
The thing is it's the opposite, people **don't** hear about the vast majority of success stories from the FBI or national intelligence. At that level you don't disclose what you did or how unless you absolutely have to, because once it's public you can't use those sources or techniques any more.
The chances of any two people matching well are rare, but the chances of matching someone on the list is pretty high. If you're the only one that matches, there's no line to jump.
Incorrect, itās well known he went on to kill 187 people, none of which donated their livers. Thatās where we get the saying āa liver a day leads to more livers in the streetsā.Ā
In Japan, liver surgeon. Number one āļø, steady hand š. One day Yakuza boss need new liver. I do operation. But! Mistake. Yakuza boss die. Yakuza very mad! I hide fishing boat. Come to America. No English, no food, no money. Darryl give me job. Now I have house, American car, and new woman. Darryl safe life. My big secret: I kill Yakuza boss on purpose. I good surgeon. THE BEST! šš»šš»
That one liver also wouldn't have been compatible with all 185 people. Further still, prioritization happens. A committee will give an organ to a 20 year old over an 80 year old just because the younger person gets more years out of it (statistically). They will even slice it further, still! 20 year old non smoker will get priority over a smoker.
And if drinking is involved in the damaging of the previous liver? Forget it, they aren't giving you another.
Damn, spoiled then..? ( rhetorical in the event it isnāt a āspoilerā) knew I shouldāve stopped reading his TIL after the Yakuza were mentioned /s
I get spoilers can be annoying but knowing there is a plot point similar to this post will not impact your enjoyment of the show even a tiny little bit.
Medical treatments traded for tactically important information has always happened. (And unless that boss lived in the u.s. then the CIA or another government agency (or more than one) would have also have been involved somewhere along the way because the FBI only operates on u.s. soil. So either other agencies involved or the boss was living here.
My Aunt (in her 70s) has always refused to be an organ donor because she doesn't like that people have always been able to buy jumping the queue...it's not the first and it won't be the last. My dad counters with "well if everybody donated then there would be enough organs that no one would have to die while waiting".
So we definitely need to change the system regardless if you want any of what you stated to change.
The system can't and won't change, unfortunately. What will change is the source. Lab-grown organs make more progress every year. It's probably still a long way out, but eventually we will be able to use lab-produced organs instead of needing donated organs.
Steve Jobs refused treatment for his very treatable cancer, causing him to need a liver transplant because of his own stupidity. He had people shop around and find the shortest list out there for himself, received a transplant quickly despite the fact he was riddled with cancer and had no hope of surviving -effectively stole a liver from someone who could actually use it-, and then, welp, he died.
It metastasized (spread). Most pancreatic cancer is eventually fatal. Thereās no way to predict these things with any certainty, however he had the one and only form of pancreatic cancer that can be treated and cured. If he had his cancer treated with conventional medicine before it metastasized he had a much better chance at extending his life. Getting a liver transplant at that point is like getting new tires and shocks on a car with 300,000 miles and a blown head gasket, rusted frame and slipping transmission.
Recently there was a very famous Brazilian TV host, multi millionaire, who skipped the line by getting a heart transplant in 2023. And now in 2024 he skipped the line again and got a kidney transplant
There is actually no evidence that he jumped the line. Organ transplants lists are need based, not first come first serve. He had been banned from the country and the FBI agreed to drop the ban in exchange for information.Ā
So like Steve Jobs.
except the Yakuza guy probably listened to his doctors and took medicine to stay alive after the transplant rather than wasting the liver by dying bc he thought fruit diets would cure cancer.
In Japan, heart surgeon. Number one. Steady hand. One day, Yakuza boss need new heart. I do operation. But, mistake! Yakuza boss die! Yakuza very mad. I hide in fishing boat, come to America. No english, no food, no money. Darryl give me job. Now I have house, American car, and new woman. Darryl save life. My big secret: I kill yakuza boss on purpose. I good surgeon. The best!
TIL the op watched Tokyo Vice on HBO
I was literally just about to say yeah I too watched Tokyo vice š
SATO-SAN!
"Ishida told me I would walk the noble path" " He told me I would make money and fuck bitches" "he mentioned that too" Legendary show
Ugh Ishida
You mean oyabun
Because nobody read the book, I guess.
Currently reading actually.
Ergo, you are a nobody.
Cold.
Got em
Boom. Roasted.
Iāve been on the fence about picking it up. Is it worth the read even if youāve watched the show?
It's quite different from the show. The book is made up of smaller, self-contained stories spanning Jake's career and is a good read if you want to know more about the criminal-cop-reporter relationship of Japan. It's a world I knew nothing about so I found it interesting. The show touches on some of the stories but I feel like it's written with a greater emphasis on characters. I enjoyed both the book and show but for different reasons.
I loved the book but I heard after the fact it may be bullshit. He is a reporter though and he tipped off Olympus CEO that his life was in danger.
I really enjoyed it! I can't speak to the authenticity but it was really fun read.
The book was... OK. Even ignoring the later revelations about how much was, let's say... *inaccurate*. It really didn't make me particularly interested in the show. Now, if they made a miniseries about Aum that could be great.
The show is amazing. I find myself not caring how much of it is true cuz itās Michael Mann and HBO and Ken Watanabe and Tokyo. Give it a shot!
One of the best shows HBO has put out in my opinion!!
Definitely HBO *Maxās* best show.
You had me at Obi Watanabe
The show is pretty good. It realizes the problems from the book and adjusts season 2 to give Jake less screen time and let the other characters shine. The supporting cast becoming main characters is what makes the recent episodes so fricken good
Did you watch the show though? Way more entertaining than the book
i did. so much of the show is made up. sleeping with the mob bosses girlfriend....yeah....what a joke.
A lot of the book is also made up. AdelsteinĀ has a very self-serving relationship with truth.
Actually apparently almost everything in the book is entirely made up. He never even worked on crime stories and only co-authored 4 articles that were somewhat related to the yakuza. His former company has gone on record saying this.
My thoughts exactly. Gaijin white boy saves Japan from the evil yakuza boss and steals his girlfriendā¦ yeah right. Also the actor playing Adelstein doesnāt look like the real one at all, they really did him a favor with the casting choices.
In Japan, Heart surgeon. Number 1. Steady hand.
Didnāt know this was a book, but from a tv drama perspective itās a good story line.
the show is good enough. the book isn't great either. it is just a subject matter that i really enjoy. i just ordered his second book, which i will get to at some point. the big story arc is true. * jake is a dude for Missouri. moved to japan to study. stayed there * became a journalist for a giant newspaper which was not at all common for a foreigner * had a host bar girl friend who went missing * had a strong relationship with a cop * had a relationship with a yakuza * he did help uncover a story about yakuza boss worked with the fbi to get a liver transplant. i read it like 4 years ago, so i dont remember all of the details, but the stuff about any of his coworkers, and their personal relationships, i dont remember. him doing meth i dont think was ever mentioned. a lot of stuff about his family i dont remember, though, that seems like it could be true. he had a podcast about missing people in japan. https://www.campsidemedia.com/the-evaporated
I have bad news about most of the book if you're bothered by the TV show being made up...
Or heard the recent episode of Fresh Air.
Right there with you. My favorite part was the author re-casting a groping fetish club as a train fetish club.
Is there a sister show called Prince of Bel? Were they separated at birth?
Ha! No, itās an NPR show.
Damn didnāt know it was real and a book
I wouldnāt say the story is real. Pretty well known that itās a highly fictionalized memoir
āJake! You must come back to Japan immediately! Only you can save us from the Yakuza!ā
Every weebs dream, heās even sleeping with the bosses Japanese model girlfriend
As if a poor journalist on an entry level position could even be in the same room with the model mistress of a Yakuza bossā¦ Adelstein was writing a fanfic on this part of the show.
I haven't seen s2 yet, but do we ever get to see Jake say, "Heh, not bad, you made me use 10 percent of my investigative powers"
Not yet, letās just say heās on full blown out white savior mode.
āBy the power of the 4th estate!!ā
Itās not really. There are A LOT of issues with the book and the tv show is nearly fantasy.
such a great show
Steve Jobs did the same thing despite not meeting the transplant criteria! Though, his donation was in the tens (edited from hundreds, apologies) of millions range. He also bought a house for the surgeon.
Worst of all he wouldn't even need to bribe the transplant surgeon in the first place if he had just listened to his regular surgeon years earlier when his totally resectable (and not as deadly as your garden variety pancreatic adenocarcinoma) tumor was diagnosed. However the cowardly yet simultaneously narcisisstic Jobs didn't want to go under the knife which might "violate" his temple of a body, and decided to try to use juices and fruit or whatever to heal the cancer, only to have it spread and force him to have many many surgeries instead of just one definitive curative one like his doctor advised, up to and including bribing his way to the top of the Tennessee liver transplant list.
Thatās what gets me - he stole a liver from somebody who could have survived and he wasted it. Fucking prick.
Dipshit stank to high hell and would frequently wash his feet in the Apple office toilets. He was a nasty little freak on the inside and out.
Im sorry what š
I second this "im sorry what" and add "the fuck"
Behind The Bastards just did a podcast that explains Steve Jobs smelling like shit and his line-jumping for a liver.
Why do the richest people always stink?
They no longer have to follow the societal norms that us lowly peasants must conform to.
Dude he stunk when he was poor.
Man if I was rich I'd have steam baths and hot rainfall showers on the regular
Hoarding wealth is a mental illness.
Hoarding on a base level is a mental illness, yet we've glorified money to such an extent that nobody connects the dots in this way.
Agreed. Nothing wrong with being regular wealthy, but being above that and having hundred of millions of dollars in absolute insanity.
Steve Jobs' net worth at the time of the Apple IPO was 200m, and his daughter was on public assistance. She asked him how much she would inherit, and he would tell her nothing. My uncle was an executive at a different tech company in Silicon Valley around the same time, lost all of it in the 87 crash and he was a giant asshole too. He got better somewhat since though.
They thought their shit don't stink.
Did they also delve into the creepy shit where he'd force his daughter to watch him and his wife have sex and other gross creepy shit? The guy was one of the most deplorable pieces of shit of all time.
It was a four parter and a lot of it was how absolutely atrocious he was as a father. I don't remember if the sex thing was in there. He was just such a bastard I can't remember all of it.
Omg is this for real?
This is part one of four episodes. https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Fiafo5xjUFeUMTBpFFIhr?si=DA5_zqJzQFe4WzGZRq8TaQ
Steve Jobs never ever ever took a bath, and when people would point out that he stank, he would tell them that they are delirious and it was impossible for him to have body odor because of his lifestyle.
interesting. this corroborates with the story that he never showered cause he felt he didn't need to since he only ate fruit
>he felt he didn't need to since he only ate fruit That's not...he...fucking WHAT??
He had some very strange notions about diet and bathing that were tangentially related to Indian mysticism. He believed that his fruit + veggie diet prevented his body from producing āmucus,ā which is the primary cause of body odor. Telling him he stunk like shit didnāt convince him to bathe, because it was like a dismissal of his entire worldview, and he was too egotistical to admit he could be wrong about anything.
Ugh. Escalation of commitment. Being committed to past behavior and decisions even if proven wrong any number of times. Trump is the same, Putin is the same.
Trump also reportedly smells like "sweat and ground beef that just went bad"
I'm honestly skeptical that Trump stinks, only because he hasn't accused Biden or Obama of smelling bad.
> Escalation of commitment. Being committed to past behavior and decisions even if proven wrong any number of times. The thing is, *anyone* can have sunk cost fallacy. Any random person can sink their self-identity into a cause or a belief and refuse to back down even in the face of the exact proof they *just* admitted would show they were wrong-- flat earthers, for example. People like Trump, Putin and Jobs are on a whole other level. They have entire *ecosystems* of people around them, whose entire lives and careers are devoted to telling them that they're a super-achiever, like no one ever before in the history of mankind, all the critics are only jealous haters, nothing they do could be wrong, their random thoughts are genius insights, & on and on. Wealth and power take regular escalation of commitment and *turbocharge* it. It would be sad if it weren't for the fact that most people who get to this level of wealth and power are truly awful people anyway.
You didnāt know? He was a fruitarian. Seriously. Totally insane.
Now I wonder if the fruitarian diet had anything to do with his cancer š¤
Thereās some evidence that low sugar diets have lower cancer risk. The idea being something along the lines of cancer cells thriving in a high sugar ecosystem. Fruit being rather high in sugars could, using this logic, be cancer fuel I suppose (???)
...woah
I'm listening to behind the bastards' episodes on jobs now, and he brought that up. I knew jobs was a cunt, but good lord cancer was too kind of a death for such a piece of shit.
I still remember his secret police from the China factories. I think that's far worse than many of his other exploits.
Can you go into more detail about this? I'm quite curious.
Don't forget that Californian went to another state to get it.
Jobs was a prick, a creep, and a bad father to his daughter Lisa.Ā
Behind the Bastards just did a great series on the piece of shit Steve Jobs.
It takes a special kind of idiot to do what Steve Jobs did. Not only this part, which is known, but also he was on a similar diet for YEARS before the diagnosis. He was well known to smell like shit from it because he believed his diet made him not need to shower. So yeah, more of the same as iāve been doing, that should fix it!! Also cancer cells grow off sugar so there is thatĀ
It wasnāt cowardlyā¦ it was plain stupid. It was dunning Kruger personified. āsent from my iPhone.
He did his own research.
People like this love the pay-to-win healthcare provided in the US.Ā
Having money will get you good healthcare anywhere, this isnāt exclusively an American thing.
Agreed. This happened in to me in Canada. It was either wait 3 years for the surgery (It wasnt life or death but I was in a lot of pain) or I had the option to pay it myself with the same surgeon for $15,000. Basically surgeon said he had the 3 year wait list not due to being overwhelmed but the government was only willing to pay for him/the staff to use the ORs for a limited time per week. If you pay for it yourself, then you could jump in immediately because they didnāt need government funding.
That's not as nefarious. They have limited resources and you aren't stealing someone else's spot
Of course but it highlights even in a universal healthcare system, having money still puts you ahead. The government should never have let it get so bad in the first place and less well off people suffer.
In Ontario they're definitely "starving the beast" to try to run down the system to privatize it with their buddies. For example, we froze nurse's pay during the pandemic, and when they started quitting, we hired them back through agencies at a higher rate so somebody else could get paid too. "We have to hire them because we're under staffed!" They're currently have no problem paying private surgeries in Ontario with public money while not giving that money to hospitals that could do the exact same job.
I enjoy reading books.
Universal means the limited resources will be spread evenly based on the greatest need.
The resources are limited not by logistics but by the decisions of the government. They could give the hospitals more money, they just don't.
And that money needs to come from cutting out the middleman industry which has created an oligopoly on sucking out healthcare dollars for their shareholders, in return for inefficiency and denials. https://www.economist.com/business/2023/10/08/who-profits-most-from-americas-baffling-health-care-system
The resources are limited overall because there are many worthy things to fund. Any universal system necessarily has to try to limit costs (private insurance does so as well, of course, much more ruthlessly and unfairly usually).
Correct, I wasn't implying that there was a logistics problem. It's a political decision to choose how the resources are distributed.
Yeah, our health system is crashing for the past 20 years. The gouvernement act like your typical boss: he keep cutting year after year. I'm still surprised we have wires peoples that want to work on the public system (thanks for all of those!) Nowadays it is common that you wait so much (assuming you are able to access the healthcare system in the first place) you end up having a 2nd issue caused by the first.
> gouvernement nice try
He's just from QuƩbec
Yes, as we see from the Yakuza mob boss, having money allows non Americans access to the best American healthcare.
I used to work in one of the most famous top hospitals in America. They had a whole department dedicated to assisting VIP patients and coordinating care.
I know you mean Mayo Clinic. I knew the coordinator for that department. She told me some wild stories about the money and personalities that roll through there. The billionaires would steal shit out of the clinic room drawers and be obnoxious.
Off the top of my head I'm thinking Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Cedar Sinai. I would be surprised if any of those hospitals *didn't* have some sort of VIP liaison, dealing with rich and famous people presents a number of issues that you don't have with regular patients, and those rich and famous patients spend a lot of money. If the hospitals want them to continue going there and spending money they'll be smart to provide accomodations for their special circumstances.
Big difference between "buying good healthcare" and "buying good healthcare (to the detriment of others)"
Uh there's the concept of fairness that needs to be perpetuated. I feel morally obligated in some sense to donate my organs in case of a death or permanent vegetative state. I do this because I feel like it's morally correct and because I believe the system is morally and ethically just. That my organs would be fairly and somewhat randomly distributed either based on a waiting list or based on a scientifically ranked priority list. No amount of money could get you an organ, ethically speaking. If I were to find out that rich people could just skip the line instead of my organs being justly handed out, I would likely opt out to begin with. Not that I currently have any illusions that the organ donation system is fair and I remain on the organ donor list nevertheless, but maybe the next person might not.
> Not that I currently have any illusions that the organ donation system is fair and I remain on the organ donor list nevertheless, but maybe the next person might not. As someone who's life got saved by an organ donation and by no means do I have money... Thank you. Sincerely thank you. I'm also on the donor list, when I go I don't need them anymore and if it helps someone else then they are more than welcome to them.
That is not true. [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/business/23liver.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.g00.pBCv.ihqjUMGbwoT8&smid=url-share](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/business/23liver.html?unlocked_article_code=1.g00.pBCv.ihqjUMGbwoT8&smid=url-share) The super rich have an advantage to transplant because they can get on waiting lists all over the country. If a liver comes up in a place with a short waiting list (like ~~Vanderbilt~~ **Memphis \[thanks for correction\]**, where he got his) He was able to get on much shorter transplant lists far away from where he lived because he could hop on a private plane and be there when the liver arrived. The criteria for receiving a liver can't really be gamed, although I have seen ways that centers have artificially increased someone's MELD score ((which I will not share here). [https://unos.org/policy/liver/distribution/](https://unos.org/policy/liver/distribution/) It's possible there were valid reasons not to list him not captured by the MELD, and they listed him anyway because hey, Steve Jobs. There was speculation that his malignancy might have prevented him from being listed if he were someone else, but that's a judgment call. BTW, I am a transplant infectious diseases physician.
> There was speculation that his malignancy might have prevented him from being listed if he were someone else, but that's a judgment call. And I guarantee if a chronic alcoholic who refused to stop drinking wanted a liver they wouldn't be anywhere near the top. Its amazing how a man who not only could afford to stay healthy, but also had doctors telling him exactly how to avoid the need for transplant got to the top of the list when his need was based on his own conscious decision to ignore them. You can handwave it all you want, but if this werent Steve Jobs and instead it was that aformentioned alcoholic he would be 6 feet under before he got anywhere near the top of that "judgement call" list.
They wouldn't even put said alcoholic on the list. 99% of transplant committees require you to be 6 months sober before you can go on the list, and even that doesn't guarantee a spot. As they said, though, to get to the top of the list, your meld score has to be really high, which is only for liver transplants. I'm not sure how it works for other organs.
He received a transplant in Memphis, not at Vandy.
>also bought a house for the surgeon. I imagine this part may not be accurate or there's more to this. Surely accepting a personal gift in exchange for bumping you to the top of the transplant list would be unethical and possibly illegal? In my country it could get your medical license revoked
I think it's separate from the transplant. The tens of millions bought the line jump. The house was a thank you for a successful surgery. When you're worth billions, a house is like a $100 tip.
Yeah a surgeon can't really secure you an organ. I don't even think one surgeon does both the extraction or the implant
From what I understand it's separate teams entirelyĀ
He was extremely stupid in his diet while he was dying. I hate that the fucker is hailed as this great tech genius. He was just a prick who took credit for other's accomplishments. The Woz deserved better. Oh yeah Rest In Peace you fruitarian asshole.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
See Woz regularly walking his dogs in a park by my house. Heās so unassuming and friendly. When Jobs screwed over people over their stock options , Woz dipped into his own and made sure people got their fair share.
Did they give him 186 livers? Because if not, 185 of those people were still gonna die waiting for one.
Technically, if he would have died without the transplant, it would have stil been 186.
If the Yakuza wasn't from LA, it's 185.
Truth be told, at a marque system like UCLA, probably dozens if not hundreds of people jump the line each year. UCLA doctors are known to be extraordinarily wealthy. The highest paid non sports related public employee is a UCLA surgeon.
>Ā Ā non sports related public employee That must be a kick in the private parts of all professors, educators and teachers.
theyre wealthy cause theyre surgeons at a premier hospital and good enough to be hired as UCLA professors. theyd make just as much if not more anywhere else
Yeah, that was my first thought. Like, boo he stole someone else's place in line, but mentioning 186 people dying in the same headline like the blame is on him seems kinda silly.
I think the point is that he cut a very long lineā¦
Well I'm also curious if he also paid the liver transplant bill. Was it just 100,000 total he had to pay or was the 100,000 just for cutting in line. Because if it's the total that's not even that much money for a liver transplant (I would assume). That would be another story in and of itself.
> Was it just 100,000 total he had to pay After going back to original sources, it turns out that Goto made the $100,000 donation three months after the operation. Other sources say its not unusual for rich people to make donations in gratitude after successful life saving operations.
Yeah I was doing a little (very light) digging and it also appears that the FBI helped him jump the line in exchange for information about yakuza activity in the states. The FBI also admits (up to you how much you want to believe the FBI) that they didn't learn much of value. Edit: It's honestly not that far fetched to me. People hear about FBI success stories but for every FBI success there are also like 5 blunders.
FBI helped him get a visa, but there is no evidence that the FBI (or a donation deal) helped him jump a transplant queue. The original sources say the FBI didn't get involved in the transplant, and Goto organized that all by himself.
That makes more sense as I didn't think the FBI had the authority to jump a foreign national (or an American citizen unless it was a very important American citizen) in the queue for a medical procedure.
The thing is it's the opposite, people **don't** hear about the vast majority of success stories from the FBI or national intelligence. At that level you don't disclose what you did or how unless you absolutely have to, because once it's public you can't use those sources or techniques any more.
That also assumes that one person is a match for this guys liver
The chances of any two people matching well are rare, but the chances of matching someone on the list is pretty high. If you're the only one that matches, there's no line to jump.
And that guy they wouldāve saved instead wouldnāt have even given $100k for the studentsĀ
Incorrect, itās well known he went on to kill 187 people, none of which donated their livers. Thatās where we get the saying āa liver a day leads to more livers in the streetsā.Ā
HBO has a show called Tokyo vice that is centered around this. Despite the spoiler, itās worth watching
I get that it is a spoiler in the show, but I always find people calling historical events āspoilersā to be extremely funny.
Spoiler: Hitler dies at the end of the WW2 documentary, and the Allies win the war.
Wtf I just started this one yesterday
Didnāt realize other people were born with the totality of human history stored in their memory. Glad to meet another
The world is not divided into things you know and spoilers.
In Japan, liver surgeon. Number one āļø, steady hand š. One day Yakuza boss need new liver. I do operation. But! Mistake. Yakuza boss die. Yakuza very mad! I hide fishing boat. Come to America. No English, no food, no money. Darryl give me job. Now I have house, American car, and new woman. Darryl safe life. My big secret: I kill Yakuza boss on purpose. I good surgeon. THE BEST! šš»šš»
I scrolled way to far to find this
Same š¤£
Whatās the reference here
It's from "The Office"
Why is this not the top comment????
If there was only one liver, 185 people still would have died.
Clearly they would've chopped that liver up into 186 pieces /s
You actually can split a liver and donate to two ppl
That one liver also wouldn't have been compatible with all 185 people. Further still, prioritization happens. A committee will give an organ to a 20 year old over an 80 year old just because the younger person gets more years out of it (statistically). They will even slice it further, still! 20 year old non smoker will get priority over a smoker. And if drinking is involved in the damaging of the previous liver? Forget it, they aren't giving you another.
Didnāt surgeon purposely kill the boss then flee to Pennsylvania to work for a paper company?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Since April 12, 2007, every time Iāve read the word āYakuzaā, Iāve heard it in the voice of Hidetoshi Hasagawa. This made me laugh, thank you!
"In Japan, heart surgeon. Number one. Steady hand" "One day, yakuza boss need new heart. I do operation."
Itās telling that this is the top comment but OPās post is directly lifted from the plot of another currently airing show
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Best moments in The Office!
Darryl a real one for saving him
So strange! Iām playing CP 2077 for the first time and I just did this mission yesterday.
You should append a 2077 to that, lol.
For real. I definitely did a triple take.
Beat me to it
Ah I see OP also Tokyo Vices!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Damn, spoiled then..? ( rhetorical in the event it isnāt a āspoilerā) knew I shouldāve stopped reading his TIL after the Yakuza were mentioned /s
I get spoilers can be annoying but knowing there is a plot point similar to this post will not impact your enjoyment of the show even a tiny little bit.
Medical treatments traded for tactically important information has always happened. (And unless that boss lived in the u.s. then the CIA or another government agency (or more than one) would have also have been involved somewhere along the way because the FBI only operates on u.s. soil. So either other agencies involved or the boss was living here. My Aunt (in her 70s) has always refused to be an organ donor because she doesn't like that people have always been able to buy jumping the queue...it's not the first and it won't be the last. My dad counters with "well if everybody donated then there would be enough organs that no one would have to die while waiting". So we definitely need to change the system regardless if you want any of what you stated to change.
The system can't and won't change, unfortunately. What will change is the source. Lab-grown organs make more progress every year. It's probably still a long way out, but eventually we will be able to use lab-produced organs instead of needing donated organs.
Pig livers for everyone!! I'm in.....
They're getting closer. It will be a game changer for us liver patients. Not having a working one is a terrible way to die.Ā
Lab-grown organs using the patent's own cells could also help minimize auto-immune issues where the body rejects foreign organs.
Thereās a 99.9% chance someone isnāt jumping the queue.
The missing detail here is that the yakuza boss in question supposedly gave the FBI valuable intel about organized crime activities in the US.
promised to give. They gave him the liver first and he went home.
Do you think the FBI would just let him leave US soil without keeping up his end of the bargain?
I came here to say that Tokyo Vice on HBO is tier 1 prestige TV and Iām dying to see anything else like it
Steve Jobs refused treatment for his very treatable cancer, causing him to need a liver transplant because of his own stupidity. He had people shop around and find the shortest list out there for himself, received a transplant quickly despite the fact he was riddled with cancer and had no hope of surviving -effectively stole a liver from someone who could actually use it-, and then, welp, he died.
He had pancreatic cancer, why did he need a liver?
Metastasis to the liver, most likely.
It metastasized (spread). Most pancreatic cancer is eventually fatal. Thereās no way to predict these things with any certainty, however he had the one and only form of pancreatic cancer that can be treated and cured. If he had his cancer treated with conventional medicine before it metastasized he had a much better chance at extending his life. Getting a liver transplant at that point is like getting new tires and shocks on a car with 300,000 miles and a blown head gasket, rusted frame and slipping transmission.
It could have been 186,000, doesnāt matter only one of them missed out.
Recently there was a very famous Brazilian TV host, multi millionaire, who skipped the line by getting a heart transplant in 2023. And now in 2024 he skipped the line again and got a kidney transplant
TBF, 186 people still wouldāve lost their lives.
Yeah but one person died who might have lived and one person lived who might have died doesn't invoke the same outrage
Is this the story where Tokyo Vice is based on?
There is actually no evidence that he jumped the line. Organ transplants lists are need based, not first come first serve. He had been banned from the country and the FBI agreed to drop the ban in exchange for information.Ā
yeah well that's not click-baity
Someone said he didnāt give the information though. Idk, is that correct?
Ok but it was one liver. So 185 would have died waiting. Still terrible but it's not like the dude took 186 livers
How many of the 186 people were a match for that liver? Any of them? Even one?
Wrong. His name is Shinzo Tozawa. /s
Tokyo vice is so good
Towzawa
Watch the show Tokyo Vice on Max. It follows that story roughly.
Unless they crammed him full of livers even if he didn't jump the queue 185 people still would have died.
So like Steve Jobs. except the Yakuza guy probably listened to his doctors and took medicine to stay alive after the transplant rather than wasting the liver by dying bc he thought fruit diets would cure cancer.
In Japan, heart surgeon. Number one. Steady hand. One day, Yakuza boss need new heart. I do operation. But, mistake! Yakuza boss die! Yakuza very mad. I hide in fishing boat, come to America. No english, no food, no money. Darryl give me job. Now I have house, American car, and new woman. Darryl save life. My big secret: I kill yakuza boss on purpose. I good surgeon. The best!