ARA Review by JuneGillam of Winning the War on Cancer

[JuneGillam]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, Winning the War on Cancer.]

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5 out of 5 stars

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Winning the War on Cancer by Sylvie Beljanski offers a fresh look at a devastating disease. I was especially attracted to this book after attending a friend’s poetry reading the other day. He had a rare cancer, a blood cancer, and the standard treatment he suffered though has left him barely alive, a shell of his former vigorous self. He could barely get through standing to read from his book telling the tale of his cancer journey by way of his original poetry. And while as his friend, I'm grateful for his recovery and, as a poet and writer myself, his creative way of using the literary arts as a pathway to healing, there is so much more that could have been done for him, and can be for others, to help in the treatment of this dread disease.

In her book, subtitled The Epic Journey Towards a Natural Cure, Beljanski brings hope to so many by explaining the discoveries of her father, Mirko Beljanski, Ph. D., a Frenchman and one of the first green molecular biologists. A natural cure is what is truly wanted and a goal to aim for, according to Beljanski, so as to avoid the harsh and even deadly elements in current traditional cancer treatment. She has divided the book into clearly organized chapters, bonus sections, appendices and resources, including books, movies and articles on the topic of natural ways to treat cancer.

Endorsed by many highly-regarded professionals and loaded with citations of scientific studies and articles, the book is also written in a way accessible to those in the non-scientific world such as myself. As noted in the Foreword, the underlying problem looks to be complex; however, a central aspect is the current connection between money and treatment, natural methods being available at so much less cost than pharmaceuticals. So the author’s remedy to the problem of ineffective and costly treatment seems to be education, a massive undertaking with few medical professionals to walk the pathway with us.

Feljanski’s book walks that journey educating us lay people. It starts by describing how the author found the courage to tell the story of her father’s discoveries about plant extracts and their implications; his work led to his authoring more than 133 peer-reviewed scientific articles. She herself started the Feljanski Foundation where she endeavors to grow this organization and its power to help people heal and stay well. Her book also reached out and touched me personally beyond the agony my poet friend had gone through. The author cites the story of the French President Mitterrand in 1992 having an advanced case of prostate cancer and being given little time left. My own father died of prostate cancer in 1985 and I only wish we had known of the natural extracts the authors talks about which gave the French President three more years to live.

The shocking thing is that the author’s father and his associates were treated like criminals back in the France of the 1990s due to the low-cost alternatives they offered to the established medical system and its use of synthetic drugs produced by pharmaceutical companies. Her father was arrested and very likely poisoned in what looked like an effort to halt his work linking the environment’s impact on DNA and cancer; her father’s Paris laboratory was virtually destroyed and he was arrested along with his wife and other associates; and he was ordered to keep his work secret.

At that time, Sylvie Beljanski was a lawyer in New York City. Long story short, she knew how to get her father, who’d been silenced by the French government, to legally explain his processes from his sickbed in France. She traveled to France to begin resurrecting the work her parents had devoted their lives to. With her agnostic father’s shocking “God bless you” as he lay dying, she returned to America and carried on her family legacy. She explains it well in this important and very readable book, full of scientific evidence and touching stories of individuals helped by her father’s passion to find a natural cure for cancer.

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars because it is essential reading, highly recommended for all human beings concerned about their health and how natural healing stands in stark contrast to the massive power of the pharmaceutical industry. Natural healing just might really help us win the war on cancer.

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