Winning the War on Cancer

Cancer, or at least its impact, is inescapable. While many billions of dollars and years of manpower have been poured into the subject, not much ground has been won against this enemy. In Winning the War on Cancer, Sylvie Beljanski presents alternatives that might not be the sole weapons used to conquer cancer but are capable of giving those suffering from it a fighting chance. And, they are natural!

Sylvie Beljanski's work is many things: a memoir of her father's studies, a narrative of her own struggles, and a research paper describing several plant extracts with extraordinary properties. The weaving together of the author's personal life and her father's research might have been disjointed if it were not for the sense of hope stringing all of the book's parts together. One avenue for publishing or testing the research closes, and Beljanski just pursues an alternative.

Since a large chunk of the book is about the pursuit to validate the work of the author's late father, Winning the War on Cancer reads almost like a story of vengeance at times. I feel that this is partly because the first time the author is approached to help her family, it is to fight for them in court. Sylvie Beljanski is a lawyer, not an expert in the medical field nor a scientist. Yet, I would say this does not detract from the overarching medical message because the overwhelming majority of scientific information presented is both cited and backed up by clinical studies.

I largely enjoyed reading this book, but the formatting often frustrated me. The author employs quite a few bulleted lists that are not cohesive (indents not justified, some lines are double bulleted). The choice to put a double line space or a single line space between paragraphs also appeared arbitrary. I know that some double line spaces were to delineate a scene break, but roughly half were breaking up directly linked paragraphs. However, my biggest issue with the formatting was the way that the text was italicized. Anything in italics was in a completely different font face from, and considerably smaller than, the rest of the line. Considering italics were used every time one of the extracts was called by name, a flashback was recalled, or the author chose to emphasize a phrase or paragraph, large portions of the text were a struggle to understand.

I ultimately chose to rate Winning the War on Cancer by Sylvie Beljanski at 4 out of 5 stars. While I truly believe there is valuable information to almost any reader in this book, there is extensive editing that still needs to be done. I am not sure if the book was professionally edited based on the number of repetitions of the same errors. If changes were made, I think anyone interested in reading about alternative medicine would enjoy this book. I would find another book if you are not willing to view natural remedies as potentially useful in the fight against disease.