Sylvie Beljanski, a French lawyer turned health advocate, author, and entrepreneur, is the founder and president of The Beljanski Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focusing on natural approaches to cancer, and serves as CEO of Maison Beljanski, an international dietary supplement company combining science and nature to create innovative health and beauty products. She is dedicated to continuing the Beljanski family legacy as international leaders in health and environmental research.
Her book, Winning The War On Cancer: The Epic Journey Towards a Natural Cure has received numerous accolades, including the Amazon Best Seller and International Book Awards. In addition to her writing and speaking engagements she hosts The Beljanski Cancer Talk Show, a podcast series dedicated to exploring comprehensive and integrative approaches to cancer treatment and chronic diseases.
Beljanski is also the producer of the Beljanski Integrative Cancer Conference, which brings together world-renowned experts, plus patients and advocates to explore groundbreaking advancements in integrative medicine and cancer care. Her passion for holistic health and integrative medicine has made her a sought-after speaker at global health conferences, where she has educated thousands about scientific breakthroughs in cancer care.
Sylvie Beljanski interviewed by Sheldon Baker
IMCJ: Your father, Dr. Mirko Beljanski, made groundbreaking discoveries about natural compounds and cancer. Please share how his research laid the foundation for your work and also provide an overview of your foundation.
Ms. Beljanski: My father was a PhD in molecular biology. His career centered around the Pasteur Institute in France, the French equivalent to the NIH in the U.S. He joined the Pasteur Institute in 1951 and stayed with them until the time of his retirement in 1988. He was one of the first scientists to look at the environment as a cause, and as a solution to cancer. Most importantly for him was to research natural compounds that would selectively recognize the DNA of cancer cells and selectively inhibit the growth of cancer cells without touching healthy cells. He was able to find a number of plant extracts which are doing exactly that. When you look at them under the microscope, you can see that they surround healthy cells, and they penetrate only cancerous cells.
After my father passed away in 1998, I decided to start a not-for-profit 501c3 organization in New York and carry on with my father’s legacy. I did not want this body of work to disappear. I thought it was just too important and too precious. The first thing I wanted was to confirm his work, meaning those plant extracts were able to destroy different kinds of cancer cells without touching healthy cells, and we were very lucky to work with Columbia University and Kansas University Medical Center researching different kinds of cancer cells. We worked on prostate at Columbia, and with ovarian and pancreatic cancer cells at Kansas University Medical Center. We were able to see that both plant extracts, Pao pereira and Rauwolfia vomitoria, were indeed able to inhibit the development of cancer at different stages of cancer, including inflammation, full-blown cancer, and advanced cancers that do not respond to chemotherapy or hormonal therapy anymore.
This work was done as a confirmation through the funding of the Beljanski Foundation, and we have been able to go beyond that by understanding the different mechanisms of action and also looking at the synergy of action with different chemotherapies.
IMCJ: You have a distinguished background, as a French lawyer turned health advocate, author, and entrepreneur. You’re dedicated to continuing your family legacy with the Foundation and international leaders in health and environmental research. Did any of your business experience help lead you to wanting to continue in your family’s footsteps?
Ms. Beljanski: I followed the family footsteps because I was a lawyer, I grew up in a family of scientists, and I have four generations of scientists behind me. But I never thought I would get involved in the business. As it turned out, my father was prosecuted and persecuted by the French government after helping President Francois Mitterrand who was dealing with the spread of prostate cancer during his second term. The official doctors of the French White House thought that Mitterrand would not finish his second term. But Mitterrand had a mistress who knew about a good doctor with good results on prostate by using my father’s products. Mitterrand took the products and did very well. He was indeed able to finish his second term which at that time in France was seven years.
After Mitterrand left office and passed away, there was a political backlash. A SWAT team from the French army was sent to Red Storm my father’s laboratory. They raided and destroyed him and his research.
I was not involved in my father’s research. Growing up, I had seen a number of people that my parents had helped and who become friends of the family because they had survived their bouts with cancer. They credited my parents for that. As a lawyer digging into the legal file, the more I understood that this was not about justice. This was about suppressing knowledge that could help thousands of people. I said not over my dead body. I’m going to carry the torch to make sure that this knowledge and discoveries are not going to disappear.
IMCJ: Are you still practicing law?
Ms. Beljanski: No. What I’m doing with the Foundation is a 100% full-time job. I have absolutely no time and no interest in practicing law. I feel that what I am doing is reaching out to so many more people than I could have ever done in working in a law firm.
IMCJ: Please clarify, you’re not a doctor.
Ms. Beljanski: Correct. I am a French lawyer who was infuriated with what the French government did, and thus I became a health advocate and the founder of our Foundation. I decided I would find the means to carry on cancer research because I felt it was worth it.
IMCJ: Your book Winning the War on Cancer shares a personal message about your scientific journey. What inspired you to write the book and what key message or messages do you want readers to take away?
Ms. Beljanski: I wrote the book because I wanted to educate. Now that I’ve become a health advocate I wanted to educate as many people as possible about what I have learned. The book is written like the story of what I went through, and I take my reader with me. I share what I learned along the way and as the story unfolds so it reads like a novel, but at the same time I believe it is highly educational and people will learn a lot about cancer research and the natural approach to cancer.
The book is a very easy read and you don’t need a PhD in science. The end of the book includes notes from Dr. Christian Marcowith, a close friend of my father, who was aware of all his protocols. Protocols for several cancers are published at the end of the book.
IMCJ: To be clear, you have not had cancer.
Ms. Beljanski: No. I take my little plant extracts on a regular basis and so far so good. I’ve never been touched by cancer.
IMCJ: In the book, you discuss the role of cancer stem cells and why they’re so important in the fight against cancer. How does your research efforts address this?
Ms. Beljanski: We have seen that those little plant extracts are able to inhibit the growth of cancer cells at different stages of cancer and for different cancers. It seems that the ultimate stage to study was cancer stem cells. Cancer stem cells are not often studied because chemotherapies do not destroy them. So, the oncologist tends to put that under the rug. The problem of stem cells are very important because they are thought to be responsible for recurrence of cancer and metastasis. We wanted to see if those plant extracts which are able to do so much were able to destroy cancer stem cells. We worked with Kansas University Medical Center on ovarian and pancreatic cancer stem cells. And sure enough, we were able to inhibit those cancer stem cells, both in vitro and in vivo in mice. That led to a scientific publication which is available on the website of the Beljanski Foundation (www.beljanski.org).
IMCJ: Another key theme in your book is integrative medicine and how patients can combine natural and conventional therapies for a more effective approach to cancer treatment and possible prevention.
Ms. Beljanski: One of the beauties of the products my father discovered is they are selective to cancerous cells, meaning no toxicity, and no side effects. They are not going to stay in the body if there are no cancerous cells, but they are also working synergistically with chemotherapies and radiotherapy. Radiotherapy and chemotherapy will in some way enhance the activity of those little plant extracts, and that has been documented. We have a number of publications from Kansas University Medical Center with Pao pereira and Rauwolfia vomitoria showing the synergy of action with Gemcitabine and Carboplatine when tested in vitro and in vivo.
IMCJ: With all the advancements in cancer research where do you see the future of natural medicine in oncology? And what role might the Foundation play in moving such treatment forward.
Ms. Beljanski: Natural treatments have always been available. Until the 19th century, there were only natural treatments. Then there was the advancement of chemistry and it became the way to reach out to the mass population in a way that natural treatments can’t because there wouldn’t be enough plant extract to treat the entire population. Coming together with chemistry was patent law and such law provided the opportunity to make a lot of money with chemical compounds. That changed the approach to medicine completely. Thus, the use of patented chemicals became the mainstream way to treat people. It can be reproduceable. And then you have the same molecule given again and again and you can study this molecule and know what the side effects are, and how to use them to create the best possible protocol. However, that doesn’t mean that natural compounds would go away. If you look at some medicines like Taxol, you see that it started as a natural molecule coming from the bark of the pine, and that it was modified to become a synthetic molecule. They used a natural molecule to identify and create a synthetic molecule.
The Beljanski Foundation feels that a problem with synthetic molecules is that very often they become toxic compared to the natural compound.
One line of research we have developed was to help study synthetic compounds that would not be toxic. It’s like the black sheep, but it is doable, and that’s good news. We have identified a synthetic molecule that is quite similar to the natural flavoprotein available as an extract.
IMCJ: Are you seeing any trends coming out of cancer research?
Ms. Beljanski: I’ve noticed that cancer research has explored several approaches that haven’t proven very effective. Initially, there was a strong focus on genomic research and gene therapy. This made economic sense because rare genetic variations in certain cancers were classified as rare diseases, which allowed for faster FDA approvals, and ultimately, more profit.
Next, research shifted toward combining these approaches with immunotherapy. The challenge with immunotherapy, however, is that it can essentially burn out the immune system. While you can override your immune response to some extent, this doesn’t address the root cause of why cancer developed in the first place, and why it’s continuing to spread.
IMCJ: You make several references to money. There’s been a lot of money invested in cancer research by corporations, the government and private individuals. Where does this money go and is this money being used wisely?
Ms. Beljanski: Such money is going mostly to pharmaceutical companies who manage to get NIH grants to develop molecules they sell to the public through hospitals and insurance.
IMCJ: How about the changes in the administration and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as HHS secretary as he tries to Make America Healthy Again?
Ms. Beljanski: When we speak about the war on cancer we see the numbers of cancer around the world and in the United States have been rising. We are far from having won the war despite the tremendous amount of money which has been thrown at the disease. Therefore, it’s time to look at another solution. Another approach to cancer, and has never been done by pharmaceutical companies, is looking at the root of what makes us sick in the first place. I hope that Kennedy will have the means and the time to educate Americans about what makes them sick so people will be empowered to remove causes of disease and live a healthier life. Once they get better they will not need to rely on synthetic medicine, at least as much.
IMCJ: Your Foundation produces the Integrative Cancer Conference. Can you talk about that event?
Ms. Beljanski: The Beljanski Foundation is not only committed to research, but also to share this research through our website, podcasts and events such as our three-day conference. The conference features the best speakers in the world talking about integrative medicine. It’s open to the public, so anybody concerned with cancer can attend and can learn if one of those well-known speakers has an approach that specifically resonates with them. There is also the opportunity to follow up with our guest experts to ask questions and potentially pursue treatment.
IMCJ: With everything you do running the Foundation, you’ve got the supplement portion of your business. Is that part of the Foundation?
Ms. Beljanski: No. It is totally separate. Maison Beljanski is offering plant extracts that stem from my father’s research, plus other supplements that help promote detoxification, quality and natural vitamins.
IMCJ: What’s the best way for readers to learn more about what you have to offer.
Ms. Beljanski: The Foundation website is beljanski.org. For products it’s MaisonBeljanski.com.
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