Why does preventing cancer make less GDP than curing it? That would surely depend on how you're trying to prevent cancer. By prevent do you mean keeping a cance

Why does preventing cancer make less GDP than curing it? That would surely depend on how you're trying to prevent cancer. By prevent do you mean keeping a cancer somewhat under control? > smoothly transporting oil without incident makes less GDP than spilling it. Oil creates huge economic activity when used. It does no good spread over the ocean. The cleanup generates activity, but it's clearly far better for GDP to smoothly transport oil around than constantly lose it, if only because ships constantly sinking would cause people to transport things way less and so markets would be less efficient, yielding less wealth.