Ever since Apple’s (AAPL) co-founder, CEO and resident visionary Steven P. Jobs showed up at the Apple developers’ forum looking like a stick figure in a turtleneck, there has been talk about whether he is suffering from a recurrence of the pancreatic cancer he was diagnosed with in 2004.

“While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than ‘a common bug,’ they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer,” journalist Joe Nocera wrote in a column.

“Because the conversation was off the record, I cannot disclose what Mr. Jobs told me,” Nocera said.

One brokerage analyst says in the NYT, “Apple is Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs is Apple.” The analyst estimates that the company’s share price would fall by as much as 25 per cent if Jobs were to “leave the company unexpectedly” (nice euphemism there). What other event could cause that kind of drop and not be considered material?

In keeping with its usual secrecy, the company held off revealing Jobs’ previous bout with cancer until after his successful surgery. But the fact remains that Steve Jobs accounts for a substantial portion of the value of a publicly-traded company, and that effectively makes it a matter of public interest, whether Apple likes it or not.