Royal Rife

Who was Royal Rife?

Royal Raymond Rife was an American inventor and early exponent of high-magnification time-lapse cine-micrography. In the 1930s, he claimed that by using a specially designed optical microscope, he could observe microbes which were too small to visualize with previously existing technology. Rife also reported that a 'beam ray' device of his invention could weaken or destroy the pathogens by energetically exciting destructive resonances in their constituent chemicals.

Rife's claims could not be independently replicated, and were ultimately discredited by the medical profession in the 1950s. Rife blamed the scientific rejection of his claims on a conspiracy involving the American Medical Association, the Department of Public Health, and other elements of "organized medicine", which had "brainwashed" potential supporters of his devices.

Interest in Rife's claims was revived in some alternative medical circles by the 1987 book The Cancer Cure That Worked, which claimed that Rife had succeeded in curing cancer, but that his work was suppressed by a powerful conspiracy headed by the AMA. After this book's publication, a variety of devices bearing Rife's name were marketed as cures for diverse diseases such as cancer and AIDS. An analysis by Electronics Australia found that a typical '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. Several marketers of other 'Rife devices' have been convicted for health fraud, and in some cases cancer patients who used these devices as a replacement for medical therapy have died. Rife devices are currently classified as a subset of radionics devices, which are generally viewed as pseudomedicine by mainstream experts.