Apple beat Wall Street estimates for its latest quarter's revenues and profits yesterday, but worried shareholders with unimpressive guidance for the next quarter. During the conference call, Apple executives refused to answer an analyst's question about CEO Steve Jobs's health, replying: ""Steve's health is a private matter." Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget disagrees:
If you ever selected a plastic surgeon or LASIK doctor based on a random YouTube video, it's probably apt that that video only happened as a result of an under-the-table payment and the doctor was really incompetent and now you walk around blind and ugly. But what about the victims of the future? Plenty of doctors have gone right ahead and offered patients rebates or huge discounts in exchange for posting glowing videos about their procedures online, although something like that would be patently unethical in the "regular" media. Docs are like, "Huh, rules, really? I just thought it would be nice!" Patients are like, "Sweet, cheap surgery!" The loser is you, the affluent, narcissistic consumer. A couple of typical videos are after the jump; just because "a famous celebrity (name undisclosed for privacy)" gets LASIK from Dr. Feinerman doesn't mean you have to, too:
Neatly encapsulating the prevailing foodie conventional wisdom, science-fearing New York Times contributor Michael Pollan has famously advised America to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He also believes we should eat like our ignorant, backward ancestors ("Don't eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food") instead of like modern human beings. But as regular Gawker readers know, heavily-processed, contemporary American fast food has preserved an inordinate number of its inventors and purveyors well past any reasonable life expectancy. This morning's Times brings word of the death of hamburger chain founder Wilber Hardee at the ripe old age of 89. Granted, he was felled by a heart attack. But he joins no fewer than four other fast food pioneers who have kicked the bucket over the past six months at extraordinarily advanced ages:
Disappearing singer Amy Winehouse has been diagnosed with emphysema, according to her father. "'The doctors have told her if she goes back to smoking drugs it won't just ruin her voice, it will kill her,' he was quoted as saying in the Sunday Mirror. 'The doctors have said that if she had continued the way she was going she could have ended up an invalid-she wouldn't have been able to breathe.' He added: 'She's got emphysema. It's in its early stages, but had it gone on for another month they painted a very vivid picture of her sitting there like an old person with a mask on her face struggling to breathe.'"
Sixty-year-old David "Doc" Searls, a ramblingly lucid blogger who has mentored many a protégé, is recovering very slowly in a hospital near Harvard University. Doc has spent the week suffering a series of increasingly outlandish medical malfunctions that would make for a classic Doc Searls blog post if they weren't so lethal. Searls, a Santa Barbara resident who currently holds a Harvard fellowship, scared the bejeezus out of friends and followers this week by detailing his increasingly preposterous illnesses on his blog and on Twitter. As conferencegoers frantically tried to figure it all out by reading his posts in reverse, Valleywag phoned Doc in his hospital room to get the 100-word version.
The body-ravaging horrors of movie-theater concessions aren't especially breaking news to anyone whose pores ever oozed yellow grease for two days after dropping $15 on one of those beloved Regal "Family-Trough" snack specials. But when couched in riveting metrosexual terms by Dave Zinczenko and the crew at Men's Health, the grim numbers yield a far more haunting context: A large popcorn with butter = 1,283 calories and 78 grams of fat; large nachos with cheese = 1,101 calories and 59 grams of fat.
Since the LA Times earlier this week floated reports that Paul Newman is suffering from lung cancer, the only developing news about the actor's condition is that no one will confirm it. With Newman's rep on one hand saying he is "doing nicely" and old pal A.E. Hotchner on the other acknowledging only "cancer of some sort" (alluding a few breaths later to previous surgery "in the lung area"), the AP today issued a statement saying it stands by its original report on Newman's condition.
When you're advertising potentially nasty medical-related products or causes, take a cue from the pharmaceutical industry. Those guys can make an ad for Irritable Bowel Syndrome treatment look like a beloved home movie. On the other end of the sensitivity spectrum is this ad from Thailand's Red Cross , urging people to donate their eyes when they die so that others may see. Good cause. But my god, is a huge dump site full of wasted, disembodied eyeballs really the best way to get your message across? (No). The horrifically misguided full ad is below—not for the squeamish.
Apple PR has finally come up with an unconvincing explanation for Apple CEO Steve Jobs's all-too-evident skinniness: Jobs was suffering from a "common bug" when he spoke at Apple's WWDC event, a spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal. Spin aside, there's no hiding the fact that Apple CEO Steve Jobs used to have more heft a decade ago. Some continue to worry about his brush with cancer, or an overly strict diet imposed by wife Laurene Powell-Jobs, or a case of manorexia. But it's not like Jobs slimmed down overnight. The ever-shrinking Jobs in pictures, from 1998 to 2008, below.
We knew Paul Newman was ailing when he retired from acting last year, but the diagnosis only trickled out in the last day or so in reports suggesting the 83-year-old Oscar-winner (and former chain smoker) is suffering from terminal lung cancer. The Dish Rag picked up the story last night at the LA Times:
Martin Bashir, the current Nightline broadcaster, just announced that he has a "potentially life-threatening" brain tumor. Bashir, who made his name with big, probing, salacious TV interviews of Princess Diana and Michael Jackson, said that he plans to "get on with his life" and continue working. In that, he is hardly unique; among many cancer victims, the urge to continue with one's career is a powerful one. And that goes double for those in entertainment and the media, where many personalities are so intimately tied to a very public line of work.
The Kennedy brothers have spawned so many conspiracy theories that it seems excessive to add to the directory. But there's some speculation among medical professionals about Ted Kennedy's brain cancer diagnosis, which we're going to air. In particular: why was the recent operation to remove part of the senator's tumor conducted at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina and not in Kennedy's home state?
Does the New York Times have an intern who just reads copies of the Wall Street Journal from last year and suggests story ideas to steal? Has our explanation of the rules for stealing news stories legitimately had no impact on Times whatsoever? (No). Yesterday Anemona Hartocollis wrote a story for the Times about family-style therapy, largely focusing on the work of a Beth Israel treatment center. That's....been done:
Earlier this month we told you about Jake Adelstein, the American reporter who spent 15 years covering organized crime in Japan and who now, unfortunately, finds himself and his family marked for death by an angry gangster. Adelstein's tormentor, Yakuza boss Tadamasa Goto, has been very sick lately; Adelstein's hope was that Goto would pass away, so he could return to America to be with his family without fear of assassination. Well, bad news: it's been revealed that Goto and three of his henchmen got precious, lifesaving liver transplants in Los Angeles (while many others died waiting). Thanks, science!
Following in the footsteps of 71-year-old miracle of modern medical technology John McCain, Barack Obama released information on his medical health. Instead of 1,200 pages, like McCain, Obama just put out a simple note from his doctor that concluded he was in "excellent health." Before that, though, it said a full-body (ahem) examination revealed the Democratic presidential candidate's "build was lean and muscular with no excess body fat," which you kind of knew, but it's nice to get confirmation from someone who has seen Obama, you know, all over. Also, "his diet was balanced with good intake of roughage and fluids." But what is the doctor trying to tell us with this: "A complete review of systems was unremarkable." Either that's a nod to the monstrous-in-more-ways-than-one vice president, or he just means Obama isn't a walking catalog of ailments like McCain, whose health (or lack thereof) is lampooned in the Daily Show clip after the jump.
Doesn't anyone just sniff Rush anymore? "Health officials are warning New Yorkers to stay away from an illegal aphrodisiac made from toad venom after the product apparently killed a man. The city's poison control center issued the warning Friday after receiving a hospital report that a 35-year-old man who ingested the hard, brown substance died earlier this month. The product is sold under names including Piedra, Love Stone, Jamaican Stone, Black Stone and Chinese Rock at sex shops and neighborhood stores. It is banned by the Food and Drug Administration."
John McCain is in mostly good health. He's had melanoma three times but now "appears cancer-free." He's arthritic and takes cholesterol meds and has precancerous lesions removed periodically, but his heart is super-strong! He also has vertigo. The cancer probably won't come back within the next 8 years, though there's a chance of it. Also, "aides said McCain has had no mental evaluations in the past eight years and none was included in the documents." Meanwhile, have you heard that Barack Obama is terribly unhealthy? It's true, some guy at HuffPo says the Senator is totally unfit for duty.
Because some stories are nothing but blatant cries for condemnation, we're going to allow our disgust to swing around 180 degrees so that we support this idea: A Park Avenue plastic surgeon is offering a $500,000 package deal that includes a summer house rental in the Hamptons, and all the plastic surgery you want! "Within reason," of course. He's also throwing in a chauffeur, personal chef, and a nurse to tend to the surgically wounded. And tickets to the hottest parties, to show off your healing scars! This development is... a good thing.
John McCain, who is running for president, will release his medical records to the media. To a select group of reporters, anyway. Only two print journos. It's 400 pages, and no one can make copies. And it will happen on the afternoon before a three-day weekend. Hah. An amazing example of the Friday Night Newsdump. But we've all become sooo media savvy that it just looks pathetic and worrying. What the hell is in there? For that matter, what's up with his wife's tax returns? She won't say, though she will pose for Vogue looking all saucy on a couch. Click to enlarge! Surely if McCain is healthy enough for that fox, he's healthy enough to lead the nation! [Radar, WT]
