The cover story of the latest Ode Magazine details Dr. David Servan-Schreiber’s battle with cancer. In “Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: How Diet, Exercise, and a Positive State of Mind Can Help Prevent Cancer”, he describes the mental, emotional, and physical trials of becoming a patient, rather than the healer.
He advocates for holistic treatment of cancer, including diet, exercise, meditation, and positive state of mind, but also touches on the lack of true scientific support for these therapies. He does an admirable job of advocating for an ounce of prevention, but misses a terrific opportunity when addressing the economic implications of prevention and treatment.
True scientific studies require large budgets and willing participants, both of which are hard to come by for alternative therapies. Big Pharma can fund studies on potential blockbuster drug therapies, but who would pay for a study involving the effect of meditation on cancer patients? Doctors, for their part, are very cautious not to promote therapies that are not based on scientific studies, and since most of us trust our doctors as the most knowledgable source of information about our health, it typically takes a leap of faith or true desperation (when the cancer has eluded conventional treatments) for people to give alternative therapies a solid try.
Prevention, of course, is preferable to treatment, but it’s hard to ‘sell’ prevention, especially given all the uncertainties surrounding the causes of cancer. Dr. Servan-Schreiber, who also wrote Anticancer: a New Way of Life, on Diet, Exercise, and Taking Life Seriously, addresses this key problem as a chicken and egg phenomenon. When asked why there is so little interest in fighting the root cause of cancer, he replies, “[Because] there’s no money to be made from prevention.”
Most Ecopreneurist readers might think otherwise. In future posts, I will address a series of ventures that might allow aspiring ecopreneurs to explore the world of cancer prevention as a business they can feel very good about. A common theme will be how to market your services. I would be remiss not to mention the very real dangers of over-promising cancer prevention in a business model. However, properly messaged, there are distinct business ideas that can help people lead a healthy life and that may help prevent them from life-threatening illnesses and disease.
Know someone I should interview or a business I should profile? Send them to me at ScottCoooney75@gmail.com.
Scott Cooney is the author of Build a Small Green Business: Profitable Ways to Become an Ecopreneur (McGraw-Hill).
About Scott Cooney
[...] a previous post, in which I profiled Dr. David Servan-Schreiber’s battle with cancer, as chronicled in Ode [...]