David Servan-Schreiber in 2004. He believed in the body’s natural defences.
David Servan-Schreiber, who has died of brain cancer aged 50, was a psychiatrist and best-selling author. As a rising star of American psychiatry in the early 1990s, he was part of a team at the University of Pittsburgh that was testing brain activity using MRI scans. To support its young researchers, the university hospital allowed them to use its MRI scanners in the late evenings to map the brain activity of "guinea pig" students, who would lie in the scanners doing difficult mental puzzles. When one test subject failed to show up, David agreed to take his place in the machine. His colleagues brought David the grim news that they had discovered a walnut-sized tumour in his prefrontal cortex.
David received conventional treatment and the cancer went into remission, only to return. After his second surgery and chemotherapy, he asked his oncologist for advice to avoid a relapse. He reported being told: "There is nothing special to do. Live your life normally … If your tumour comes back, we'll detect it early." Unconvinced by this answer, David began years of research that led him to believe that the body's natural defences have a critical role to play in battling cancer and can be used in support of established medical treatments.
These beliefs led to him write Healing Without Freud or Prozac (first published in French in 2003, and titled Instinct to Heal in the US) and his masterwork, Anticancer (2007), which was translated into 35 languages, with more than 1m copies printed and a stint on the New York Times bestseller list. Through these books, David communicated his ideas about integrative approaches to the prevention and treatment of cancer. He focused on a healthy diet and lifestyle, including exercise, yoga, vegetables, green tea and the avoidance of inflammatory foods.
When his cancer returned for a third time, he reflected on the extra years he was convinced that these lifestyle changes had afforded him, writing that death was also a part of life in his final book, On Peut Se Dire Au Revoir Plusieurs Fois (We Can Say Goodbye Several Times), co-authored with Ursula Gauthier and published in France in June.
David was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, the eldest of four sons of the French politician and author Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber and his wife Sabine Becq de Fouquières. David studied mathematics and physics at the Académie de Paris; and medicine in Paris and at Laval University in Québec. His family moved to Pittsburgh when his father was appointed to the staff of Carnegie Mellon University in 1984. David became a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, where he co-founded the Center for Complementary Medicine. He said that telling his father he had brain cancer was like "plunging a dagger into his heart".
David first volunteered with the medical aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Iraq in 1991, travelling through the mountains with Kurdish refugees fleeing from Saddam Hussein. He later wrote that the experience of seeing so many people suffering woke him up to what he could do back at his hospital in Pittsburgh. Before his diagnosis, he enjoyed riding motorcycles and smoking Turkish cigarettes, counting on the "French paradox" to protect his health. He also served energetically as one of the founding directors of MSF USA, joining me and others on its fledgling board of directors in 1992 and later volunteering on missions in Guatemala, Tajikistan, India and Kosovo. The organisation was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1999 during David's period of service.
David is survived by his wife, Gwenaëlle, and their three children; his mother; and three brothers, Franklin, Emile and Edouard.
• David Servan-Schreiber, psychiatrist and writer, born 21 April 1961; died 24 July 2011
David received conventional treatment and the cancer went into remission, only to return. After his second surgery and chemotherapy, he asked his oncologist for advice to avoid a relapse. He reported being told: "There is nothing special to do. Live your life normally … If your tumour comes back, we'll detect it early." Unconvinced by this answer, David began years of research that led him to believe that the body's natural defences have a critical role to play in battling cancer and can be used in support of established medical treatments.
These beliefs led to him write Healing Without Freud or Prozac (first published in French in 2003, and titled Instinct to Heal in the US) and his masterwork, Anticancer (2007), which was translated into 35 languages, with more than 1m copies printed and a stint on the New York Times bestseller list. Through these books, David communicated his ideas about integrative approaches to the prevention and treatment of cancer. He focused on a healthy diet and lifestyle, including exercise, yoga, vegetables, green tea and the avoidance of inflammatory foods.
When his cancer returned for a third time, he reflected on the extra years he was convinced that these lifestyle changes had afforded him, writing that death was also a part of life in his final book, On Peut Se Dire Au Revoir Plusieurs Fois (We Can Say Goodbye Several Times), co-authored with Ursula Gauthier and published in France in June.
David was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, the eldest of four sons of the French politician and author Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber and his wife Sabine Becq de Fouquières. David studied mathematics and physics at the Académie de Paris; and medicine in Paris and at Laval University in Québec. His family moved to Pittsburgh when his father was appointed to the staff of Carnegie Mellon University in 1984. David became a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, where he co-founded the Center for Complementary Medicine. He said that telling his father he had brain cancer was like "plunging a dagger into his heart".
David first volunteered with the medical aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Iraq in 1991, travelling through the mountains with Kurdish refugees fleeing from Saddam Hussein. He later wrote that the experience of seeing so many people suffering woke him up to what he could do back at his hospital in Pittsburgh. Before his diagnosis, he enjoyed riding motorcycles and smoking Turkish cigarettes, counting on the "French paradox" to protect his health. He also served energetically as one of the founding directors of MSF USA, joining me and others on its fledgling board of directors in 1992 and later volunteering on missions in Guatemala, Tajikistan, India and Kosovo. The organisation was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1999 during David's period of service.
David is survived by his wife, Gwenaëlle, and their three children; his mother; and three brothers, Franklin, Emile and Edouard.
• David Servan-Schreiber, psychiatrist and writer, born 21 April 1961; died 24 July 2011
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