Globalisation and Metastasis

Growing up in a rural town in the 60s I remember the excitement that came with the arrival of the first supermarket. Back then 600 square feet was large. I was oblivious to the effects that it had on local trade and the new times it heralded. But by today’s standards it was totally benign. The mantra ‘Big is Beautiful’ felt like common sense to me throughout my time in industry. How else could an organisation achieve competitive economies of scale? Without skipping a beat I went on to teach such attitudes as a cornerstone of strategic marketing. There was an acceptable Darwinian inevitability about it. Big fish eat little fish; that’s how the world works – Right? Today I’m a lot more circumspect. What happens when the little fish run out? Following on the work of Otto Warburg, researcher Tomas Seyfried explores cancer as a metabolic disease. One of its principal characteristics is that cancer cells show defective mitochondrial respiration. In other words, they are unable to generate all the energy they need through normal means and instead start to burn glucose through a very inefficient fermentation process. The result is that they develop an insatiable appetite for blood sugar, which starves supply from other cells. As the disease progresses, and spreads through the body, victims typically become emaciated as their tumours grow until this unsustainable situation causes death. Along the way ‘heroic efforts’ are made to fight off the illness and oncologists use every weapon at their disposal to kill the tumours before they kill the patient. It seldom works, certainly not in the long term. Researchers have found the DNA of cancer cells to be damaged and have invested billions trying to uncover the nature of mutation so that drugs can be developed to attack them. It’s very similar to the now discredited practice of outlawing cholesterol as the cause of heart disease just because it shows up on autopsy in coronary arteries ‘at the scene of the crime’. In both cases we are distracted from the truth; we pointlessly medicate symptoms rather than curing the cause. Seyfried has shown that cancer cells can be starved by switching to a Ketogenic diet. Ordinary cells can burn glucose or ketones whereas cancer cells just need copious amounts of glucose. When there are only ketones about (from healthy dietary fats) the cancer cells are severely stressed. Similarly, when people choose to do their shopping in the local high street, small businesses get a turn, custom is appreciated and communities thrive. The out of town malls, with their high maintenance costs and international brands suffer from reduced footfall and may eventually prove unviable. While redundancies are painful, cancer surgery generally is, workers can be more easily reabsorbed into buoyant local economies. To me the economic equivalent of ketone bodies is goodwill and co-operation. Megastore operations need much more cash flowing to keep their shareholders happy. Goodwill is too vague an entry for the quarterly balance sheet. Every dollar spent at Walmart is a dollar lost to Mom & Pop operations and the communities they serve. In the same way that we can maintain good physical health by eating intelligently - avoiding sugar and white flour products, we can maintain vibrant local economies and communities by ‘spending your money where you make it’ and avoiding the temptation of ‘low hanging fruit’ - exploitatively low priced clothing and white goods. Take the time to cultivate relationships with the artisans and vendors that have fed us well for eons. An added bonus is cleaner air when we walk to the shops instead of clogging the roads with Chelsea tractors and our lungs with diesel particulates. Time for a new mantra. What about ‘Less is More’?