David Servan-Schreiber

David Servan-Schreiber (April 21, 1961 – July 24, 2011) was a French physician, neuroscientist and author. He was a clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He was also a lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine of Université Claude Bernard Lyon .

Servan-Schreiber was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine. He became co-founder and then director of the Centre for Integrative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Following his volunteer activity as a physician in Iraq in 1991, he was one of the founders of the US branch of Médecins Sans Frontières, the international organization that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. He also served as volunteer in Guatemala, Kurdistan, Tajikistan, India and Kosovo.

In 2002 he was awarded the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society Presidential Award for Outstanding Career in Psychiatry. He is the author of Healing Without Freud or Prozac(translated in 29 languages, 1.3 million copies sold), and Anticancer: A New Way of Life (translated in 35 languages, New York Times best-seller, 1 million copies in print) in which he discloses his own diagnosis with a malignant brain tumor at the age of 31 and the treatment programme that he put together to help himself beyond his surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

He was also a regular columnist for Ode magazine and other publications.

Having been treated twice for a malignant brain tumor, Servan-Schreiber became a leading figure in his engagement for integrative approaches to the prevention and treatment of cancer. He popularized his knowledge through teaching seminars, lectures, books, a blog and audiobooks. However he died of brain cancer in Fécamp on July 24, 2011, almost 20 years after his cancer diagnosis. One of his last blogs was on the link between cell phones and cancer. David Servan-Schreiber was the eldest son of the late French journalist, author and politician Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber.