PART VII : WAS RIFE SUPPRESSED? WAS HE A QUACK?

Was Rife a Serious and Successful Scientist, or A Scam Artist?

The strongest anti-Rife opinion I found on the net comes from someone named Harry H Conover. Harry's claims are:

1. Rife's scam was based upon the very successful scam promoted by Abrams.

Here's what I don't get. What kind of a scam artist spends 18 - 40 years slogging away in a lab? Rife must be one of the strangest scam artists ever to have scammed a scam. What is his supposed connection to Abrams? Did the two ever meet?

2. Rife's education was limited to that of a machinist (as) an optical instrument maker (optician).

What about that research fellowship in Biochemistry from the Andean Anthropological Expedition? Would you not let a person educated in dentistry, for example, turn a hose on your house and put out a fire? Are credentials more important than results?

3. Rife's discoveries have all long since been refuted by contemporary micro-biology.

I'd like to know more about this. Which discoveries? Cancer is caused by virus? Germs can be killed with vibrations? That they can be made to glow?

4. His universal microscope didn't offer performance significantly different from any instrument of comparable aperature.

Perhaps you didn't see the pictures? 23,000X is a lot more resolution than 5,000X. Are the photos taken with the Universal Microscope (comparing it to the new electron microsope) in the 1944 Annual Report of the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution some kind of hoax or a mistake?

5. The quack term 'vibration' surfaces in almost every pseudo-scientific scam that has ever surfaced.

I don't get it. Does this person not believe that anything vibrates? Would a list of hard science instruments that rely upon "vibration" be helpful? Are atomic absorption spectrophotometers now a tool of pseudo-science?

6. It was all done for show. Rife's box contained a high-frequency generator, a cross between a Tesla coil and a 75-Watt ham transimitter with an 807 tube which he attached to a Geissler Tube type discharge device. This produced an effect like the plasma discharge globes sold today at Radio Shack and other chain retailers. He also modulated his high-frequency (r.f.) generator with the output of an off-the-shelf audio oscillator.

An interesting proposal. Rife did work with a millionaire and he purchased a lot of fancy equipment. Could it have all been some kind of a stage show? The idea of someone spending years of careful research just to pull off a hoax doesn't fit the profile. If there was any scam at all, perhaps he was under pressure to produce something after spending all that money. Perhaps he did run a scam in desparation at the end after years of failure?

7. The audio, not the r.f. frequency, which has probably never (been) measured, is the basis of the Rife treatment frequencies shown.

11,780,000 hertz is the r.f. used for cancer and it was modified by the audio frequencies. I agree that this is the most fuzzy part of the story. What does "modified" really mean?

8. Curing entire rooms full of people by simply exposing them to the effects of his "Rife Generator" flies in the face of Rife's claims that specific frequencies of 'vibration' were associated with specific types of cancer.

I may not understand this criticism either. I thought Rife said that there are only two different frequencies that killed all cancer. Anyway, you can certainly expose rooms full of people to as many specific frequencies as you like. What do you think musicians do for a living?

9. Almost all of Rife's cures happened in patients that who had never been diagnosed with cancer in the first place.

How does he know that? Is there some list of Rife's cures somewhere that I haven't seen?

"Just for what it's worth, this entire discussion makes me ill. It is very offensive to me that people at the close or the 20th Century would fall for this silly nonsense (how has education failed them), and even more so to believe that there are people that consider themselves human that would sink to such a despicable exploitive act. If there is a Hell, I trust and hope that the souls of both Abrams and Rife have found there way there, because that's exactly where they belong. Harry C."

Always check character by looking at someone's other writings. Looking around a bit more on the net we find this exchange:

Another Opinion

Harry H Conover: I've been posting actual engineering information addressing technical aspects of selling power back to the grid.

Nick Pine: Trouble is, a lot of it's wrong.

Harry H Conover: Oh? Which part bothers you...?

Nick Pine: One of the things that bothers me about your postings is that you don't understand the difference between a stand-alone inverter and a simple synchronous inverter. You made this quite evident in your previous posting. Ignorance is excusable. So is stupidity. So is mispelling. But when you combine all this with arrogance I find it amusing, and a waste of time. Nick

So What Happened to Rife and His Cure?

Here, unfortunately, we get into one of those areas of conspiracy that like the murder of JFK, can never really be proved. Also, it is scary enough that you want to avoid it, true OR false. There are claims that authors have even been bumped off for digging too much in this area. I certainly wouldn't want to believe such a thing, but here is the basic claim:

"First, arsonists burned the Burnett Lab in New Jersey, which was validating Rife's work. Then, someone fatally poisoned Dr. Millbank Johnson, president of the Southern California American Medical Association. He died hours before a press conference where he was to announce to the world that Rife's electronic therapy had cured every patient (16 out of 16) in that medical study supervised by the University of Southern California. (First thought to be accidental death, the poison was discovered years later by federal investigators when Dr. Johnson's body was exhumed). Dr. Nemens, who had duplicated some of Rife's work just 40 miles from Rife's lab, was killed in a mysterious fire which destroyed his lab. Rife himself was finally killed at Grossmont Hospital by an accidental lethal dose of Valium. Following Dr. Milbank Johnson's murder, threats, and a string of other incidents, doctors who had actually been photographed with Rife denied they ever met him. Dr. Isaac Kendall, Rife's chief research associate and Dean of Northwestern Medical School, disappeared for years after receiving $200,000 in grants." 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100

Find a Cure, Go to Jail?

Some say Rife and others were destroyed by the owners of the electron microscope and the pharmaceutical companies.

One sleazy trial lawyer MAY have caused more needless deaths by cancer than all the world wars combined. According to one alternative medicine site, going to jail for being too successful in your field is not uncommon:

"After nearly 20,000 unsuccessful attempts, Rife finally isolated and identified the human cancer Virus, and named it "Cryptocides Primordiales". Rife inoculated 400 lab animals with this virus, created 400 tumors, and then eliminated every cancer tumor by using his instrument to modify its electronic signature. This is all chronicled in "The Cancer Cure That Worked" [ 22 ]

Suppression or Quackery?

Has a miracle of science been suppressed? Some claim so. Here are the two sides of the suppression claim:

I communicated with a Dr. from the Quackwatch web site a few times regarding another issue. He did both claim and seem to be a serious scientist. I found it unfortunate, however, that he did not have time to give me the scientific reasons behind his position. I was deflected, and never did get to the heart of the problem. He was quite nice, however.

In fact, if I recall correctly, just as I was starting to understand why some people say one thing and others disagree, I was banned from discussing the topic further due to my "obsession." Perhaps I asked too many pointed questions, or perhaps I just really did take up too much of their time with my attempts to understand. I don't know.

( This was involving amalgam fillings with Mercury. The Dr. in question declined to be quoted, but the gist was that I should spend a few years studying biochemistry, then I'd get that he was right. )

Getting back to the Rife stuff, suppression or not, we might have an even more SERIOUS population problem on our hands overnight if this cancer cure worked. As they say, "Be careful what you wish for!"

CONCLUSION:

We have only claims on both sides of this debate because no one has done and reported research that proves or disproves Rife's theory as far as I know. Was he suppressed? Were people killed to keep this secret? Think what you will. I hope not.