CANCER'S CAUSE, CANCER'S CURE by DPM Morton Walker Read Free Book Online

study of even smaller living units, primarily bacteria, viruses, and fungi. His preliminary studies allowed him to select the methods of analysis which were to become essential in his subsequent research.
    Once again he conferred with his mentor, Professor Macheboeuf. Macheboeuf recognized Beljanski’s courage, imagination, and persistent nature; he understood how Mirko was quite different from the other young graduates. In place of philosophizing or intellectualizing, the new Ph.D. preferred working alone, driven by an inner need to sculpt and establish his own beliefs and find his own truths. Beljanski found great rapport with Macheboeuf and was overjoyed to share the byline with him on four published scientific papers or any other kind of work under his mentor’s direct supervision.
    From the beginning of his research career, Mirko Beljanski was a man connected to experimentation, from his laboratory animals to his lab benches where various microscopes, test tubes, Bunsen burners, and beakers were strewn about ready for use.
     
    Starting a New Life
    In 1951 as Mirko completed his Ph.D. in biochemistry, he also had other things on his mind. With a new doctoral diploma and a French paycheck to take home, he decided to propose marriage to the French girl he had been dating, the young and beautiful Mademoiselle Monique Lucas. Very much in love, she accepted and the couple was married in Yugoslavia.
    The bride’s middle-income French parents set them up in a pretty little apartment on a Paris back street, not too far from the Pasteur Institute. Mirko wanted his young wife to be by his side as much as possible, so he persuaded the bride to enroll in a school for laboratory and bacteriology technicians. Monique passed the two-year course with honors. She became newly certified as a laboratory assistant in Professor Michel Macheboeuf ’s laboratory and entered the CNRS, the French National Center for Scientific Research. CNRS has been a long-time research partner of the Pasteur Institute and is now a governmentfunded research organization under the administrative authority of France's Ministry of Research. That same year, Mirko also joined the CNRS as a researcher.
    That first working arrangement for them was the beginning of over a quarter-century of joint research undertakings. Mutual respect for each other lasted for the rest of their lives, united in work that was pure joy, a symbol of their togetherness, and the source of many intellectual adventures.
    At the Pasteur, Beljanski continued his investigations into antibiotics and genetics. The newlyweds worked intensively on experiments involving bacterial resistance to antibiotics. They cooperated well together as laboratory colleagues. Beljanski was a man possessed, and during several interviews with Monique, she recounted to me some of their more interesting adventures. Once, Mirko awoke Monique at 3:00 a.m., dragged her out of bed and into the cool Paris streets so that they could dig some Petri dishes out of the laboratory garbage at the Pasteur Institute. They had thrown them away the day before because they thought the experiment in those dishes had failed. But in the middle of the night, Mirko wondered if all of the bacterial colonies in this particular lab test could have, in fact, mutated instead of only making the expected isolated, random changes. Monique and Mirko climbed the fences surrounding the Institute, ran to the trash bins in order to beat the garbage collector, and found that, in fact, every cell had mutated. These petri dishes became important to later research because Mirko was able to turn back the same type of mutations with a specific chemical taken from blood. Ultimately, all this (and much more) led Beljanski down the research path to his discoveries of cancerous DNA.
    Here again was another gigantic “what if” in the story of his amazing discoveries. What if Beljanski had not awoken that early morning years ago and insisted his wife accompany