Alex Ram

Royal Raymond Rife (May 16, 1888 – August 5, 1971) was an American inventor and early exponent of high-magnification time-lapse cine-micrography. He claimed that using a specially designed optical microscope, only five of which were ever constructed, he could observe a number of viruses which he thought were causal factors in several diseases, most notably cancer. Rife also claimed that a "beam ray" device could destroy or weaken the pathogens by inducing destructive resonances in their constituent chemicals. Rife's claims could not be independently replicated, and active scientific interest in the devices had dissipated by the 1950s.

Interest in Rife's claims was revived in some alternative medical circles by the book ''The Cancer Cure That Worked'' (1987), which claimed that Rife's work was successful. The book also claimed that his cure for cancer was suppressed by a conspiracy headed by the American Medical Association. After publication, a variety of devices bearing Rife's name were marketed as cures for diverse diseases such as cancer and AIDS.

The relationship between these "Rife Devices" and Rife's original equipment is tenuous. An analysis by ''Electronics Australia'' found that one such Rife device consisted of a nine-volt battery, wiring, a switch, a timer and two short lengths of copper tubing, which delivered an "almost undetectable" current unlikely to penetrate the skin. According to ''Popular Science'' magazine in June 1931, Rife made a point of dissociating his theories from ''the claims of medical fakers that they can cure disease by applying electrical "vibrations" to the body of a patient.'' Several marketers of such devices have been convicted for health fraud, and in some cases cancer patients who used Rife machines as a replacement for medical therapy have died. Rife devices are a subset of radionics devices, which have been classified as pseudomedicine.


Adapted from the Wikipedia article Royal Rife, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki