In his first interview since performing Steve Jobs’s liver transplant earlier this year, surgeon James Eason spreads some interesting light on the case.
Namely, he denies Jobs gamed the transplant system; Tennessee has lots of livers for transplantation; the surgeon is the leading experts in recurrences of Jobs’s rare cancer; he treats far more poor blacks than billionaires; Jobs has a pretty good survival prognosis; and the CEO is a “genuinely nice person.”
* Trained at Harvard, Eason is THE leading expert in treating recurrences in the rare type of cancer Jobs had. This is why Jobs went to Tennessee to get a transplant. Jobs always seeks out the best in the field.
* Jobs did not cheat the system to get a transplant. “It’s not gaming the system,” Eason says. “It’s people choosing where they want their health care.”
* Jobs’s prognosis looks good. Eason only performs a liver transplant if he’s certain he can eliminate all the spreading cancer. About 70 percent of patients have healthy organs five years after surgery.
* Memphis has more livers than patients. Or did, until Eason ramped it up. His Memphis hospital performed 35 transplants in 2005 (before he arrived). In 2008, he jacked it to 120 transplants, and 90 so far this year.
* Jobs is “really a genuinely nice person” and “a special person,” says the surgeon. Perhaps he also performed a personality transplant? Or more likely, Jobs made sure not to piss off the man who held his life in his hands.
Link to the Bloomberg interview.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
