Royal r Rife

NOBODY can deny that today’s doctorsknow more than ever about the natureand effects of disease, but as technol-

ogy advances, many people are all too awarethat the results often pose more questionsthan they answer. The fact is, the more weknow, the more obvious it becomes that thereis even more that we don’t know.

The growing migration to “alternative”therapies underlines this all too well.Nowadays an increasing number of peopleare turning to all kinds of seemingly strangetherapies where the deficiencies of tradition-al medicine are all too obvious.

One area that has seen a revival in recentyears is electrotherapy – the idea that diseasecan be cured throughthe application of elec-tric, magnetic or elec-tromagnetic fields.There are numerousweird and wonderfuldevices both on themarket and in usetoday. Some aredescribed in this arti-cle, but also, as willbecome clear, this isfar from a new areaand is simply a contin-uation of a trend thatstarted in the late1700s.

In the 18th century,static electricity waswell known. Nobodyknows who first pro-posed experiments touse it as therapy but itwas not uncommon formajor medical schoolsin Europe to conductelectric experiments onpatients, particularlythe poorer ones!This continued wellinto the 19th centuryand became all themore prevalent follow-ing Faraday’s publica-tion of his discoveryof electromagneticinduction.

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Everyday Practical Electronics, April 2001

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�� The early “therapies” in most cases were

little more than applied electric shocks.Numerous interesting, novel and in somecases hilarious ways were found to generateand apply electric potentials, both static andalternating, which were applied seeminglyhaphazardly to patients.

The results were unpredictable to saythe least. Many experiments failed badly,and in some cases the “therapy” was moresuccessful at removing the patient perma-nently than the disease! However, therewas at the same time a growing body ofevidence that indicated that some of these

“quack” cures actually did seem toimprove the condition of seriously illpatients who had not responded to the tra-ditional treatments.

The discovery of radioactivity, X-rays andTesla coils only served to fuel this trend.There was a general perception that if some-thing was mysterious, used hidden rays orenergies and involved high technology (oreven big sparks!) then, in true Frankensteinstyle, it had to be good. An attitude which isnot entirely absent today! Hence it becamealmost common practice to expose patientsto radiation, electric shocks and magneticfields.

In Fig.1 is shown a 19th century sketch ofa Clarke Machine, a typical generator whichwould apply a strong voltage to anyone hold-ing two rods shown in the foreground. Theoperator would crank the machine while thepatient held the rods – ouch!

��Vendors of “mysterious energy” devices

had a field day with these machines. Theycame up with more and more bizarre gad-gets, belts that gave the wearer electricshocks to relieve back pain, weird Tesla andOudin coil contraptions that bathed people inshowers of high frequency sparks, magneticand electric jewellery and so on. A simpleinternet search will show that this kind ofweirdness thrives as much today as it didthen!

It was only a matter of time before itbecame obvious to anyoneother than hard core fanat-ics that these kind ofdevices were at best uselessand in most cases seriouslydangerous. Amidst evermounting calls for regula-tion, the medical establish-ment started to firmlyentrench itself against thiskind of quackery and even-tually succeeded in slowingthe sale and developmentof these devices. Unfor-tunately this was achievedmore through suppressionand intimidation ratherthan education.

Fig.1. A 19th century sketch of a Clarke Machine, an electric generator whichapplied a strong voltage to anyone holding the two foreground rods.

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Although there was a steady back-ground trade in electrotherapy devices thatcontinued, most people were unaware of it,and it was only in the 1960s when “newage” solutions to everything appeared thatit took off again. Ironically, the “new” agematerial is far from new!

But the excesses of the late 19th and early20th century had taken their toll. The medicalestablishment was now more vigilant thanever and ruthlessly determined to stamp outquackery. Unfortunately, this literal counter-reaction had the effect of reinforcing the ideathat conventional medical techniques werethe only ones worthy of consideration andthat any mainstream qualifieddoctor knew better than any-body else, resulting in its ownsemi-fanatical mentality. Andnobody can deny that manydoctors today still show signsof this kind of attitude and arequick to condemn any alter-native therapy that they knownothing about.

� ��The worst side effect of

this attitude was the sup-pression of serious researchinto these therapies whilstmany serious theories of thetime appear ridiculous in thelight of present day knowl-edge, at the time theydeserved a better receptionthan they got. And, ofcourse, the very real andcompelling results obtainedby many serious researcherswere also ignored.

One or two of the oldtherapies have actually creptback into medical favour.But only after being intro-duced slowly and cautiouslyby conservative researcherswho followed the properprotocols of placating themedical establishment.

What is more startling,however, and widely un-known, is that amongst all thesnake oil and quackery of theold electrotherapies were afew gems that did not justseem to have a sound medical basis or bene-fit to them, but might potentially surpass theachievements of the best modern therapies incuring major diseases.

This article concentrates on one of them,a fascinating story about a potential curefor nearly all diseases that is a scientificdetective story in itself, including, if it is tobe believed, blackmail, intimidation, gov-ernment conspiracies, arson, vandalism,theft, bribery and murder. It would make agreat X-files plot but is truth reallystranger than fiction?

�� Whilst I have tried to verify everything in

this article that I can, the lack of objectivematerial has meant that I have had to rely onsecond hand sources for a lot of material. Ihave not personally witnessed some of theeffects claimed and present them here solelyas a matter of interest.

��Our story starts with a man called Royal

Raymond Rife, pictured in Fig.2 (1960). Rifewas not the first to experiment in this field, buthis alleged results remain the most intriguing.

His history is sketchy at best, and ismainly reconstructed from his own notes,newspaper reports and anecdotes of hisassociates. Rife was born on 16 May 1888in Elkhorn, Nebraska USA. No recordsremain of his early history (as far as I amaware) but his work became widely knownaround 1929.

In 1913 Rife was in Germany and wasawarded an honorary PhD by the Universityof Heidelberg. During the course of the nextseven years he supposedly spent further timein Europe performing work for the US

Government and during this period heworked for a time for the Zeiss optical com-pany. It is claimed that he was trained by CarlZeiss himself. He later became famous forhis development of advanced optical micro-scopes. By 1920, he ended up living in SanDiego, California.

From his own lectures, Rife says thataround 1920 he first became interested in thebiological effects of electromagnetic fieldsand their possible therapeutic effect and fromthat point developed the microscopes toobserve the effects of electric phenomena onbacteria. Rife had certainly been influencedby earlier theories and machines. However,the microscopes were the key to his laterresearch and so make a good starting point.

��Rife was determined to develop an optical

microscope with unprecedented magnifica-tion and resolution. He proceeded to look

at the problems associated with highmagnification microscopy from a uniqueangle. There are quite a few problems associ-ated with building a high resolution micro-scope, one of the most important being thelight itself.

Purely theoretical work of the time indi-cated that optical resolutions beyond about20,000 times were impossible because oflimitations imposed by the wavelengths ofthe light itself and effects such as diffractionetc. Also the amount of light that could befocused into an objective at high magnifica-tion was limited i.e., the area being looked atis so small there isn’t much room for the lightto get in!

Vibration was another problem, even mod-ern electron microscopes suffer badly under

ambient vibrations, becausean otherwise imperceptiblemovement becomes all tooobvious at high magnifica-tion, as anyone who has useda modern zoom camera lenswill know. Finally, there isthe question of how one is tostain the specimen to make itvisible.

To expand on that lastpoint, it is usually necessaryto apply some sort of stain toany (optical) microscopicalspecimen, because manymicroscopic cells etc., arebasically transparent at highmagnifications and very littledetail can be seen. A stain,however, is just a chemicaldye of some sort, and unfor-tunately since its uptake can-not be precisely controlled,the stain may not properlypenetrate the specimen andmay even collect in clumps.So under a high enoughmagnification the stain itselfappears as a series of lumpsor spots that do not revealanything much about thespecimen. Furthermore, thestain itself, being a chemical,may kill the organism understudy.

��Rife decided therefore

that he had to dispense withthe stain. But how can one

see the specimen without a stain? The firstobvious answer lay in polarised light.

The theory of polarisation is quite simple.Light is an electromagnetic wave, it consistsof an oscillating electric field in one plane,with a corresponding oscillating magneticfield in another plane at right angles to thefirst.

Normal light consists of a mixture of suchwaves all travelling with their electric andmagnetic fields oriented at arbitrary anglesrelative to each other. Polarised light on theother hand is light in which all the waveshave their electric and magnetic fields in thesame planes.

Fortunately, polarised light (or any elec-tromagnetic wave) is easy to produce. Allyou need is some sort of fine grating in whichthe spacing of the rails is less than the wave-length of the light itself. The waves that havetheir electric fields lined up with the spacesof the grating pass through, the ones with

Fig.2. Royal Raymond Rife in his laboratory, 1960.


their electric fields at an angle are blocked bythe grating in proportion to the angle, at 90ºall light is blocked. This is the principle ofpolarising film and sunglasses, which aresimply fine gratings of this type.

Polarised light is useful, because if youpass it into a compound or specimen, chemi-cals, stresses or density changes in the speci-men itself cause the rotation of the incidentplane of polarisation, By comparing the vari-ably rotated output from the specimen with afixed polarising filter, different rotationsappear as different shades, and in this wayyou can see the density changes, stresses ordifferent chemical structures as shades oflight.

Incidentally, this technique has been used formany years to identify specific chemical com-pounds and is the basis of the designationsgiven to amino acids and com-plex organic molecules i.e.when you see something like L-arginine or D-tryptophan (bothamino acids), the L and the Drefer to Levorotatory andDextro-rotatory respectively,polarising molecules that twistlight to the left (levo) or right(dextro).

��Rife took the reasoning still

further. Not only did hedecide to use polarised light,but he also wanted to avoidthe limitations of backlightinga tiny object. It was much bet-ter if the object could be madeto fluoresce in its own light orreflect the incident light. Mostbiological specimens wouldfluoresce or reflect, but onlyin ultra-violet or other invisi-ble light ranges. And thisdepends on their chemicalstructure.

So he hit upon the idea ofilluminating the object withtwo polarised beams of mono-chromatic light in the UVrange that would heterodyneeach other and the result ofwhich would be fluorescenceor reflection in a visiblerange. It would be the differ-ences in the wavelengths oftwo or more illuminatingsources that would determine the output.

By means of a complex set of polarisersand rotating prisms, Rife developed a way ofmaking any biological sample fluoresce insuch a way that its internal structure wasclearly visible. He didn’t need a stain, thelight itself became the stain. So in this wayone type of bacteria, for example, wouldappear a specific shade of blue, another red,and so on. The actual colour of the resulting“light stain” itself gave a lot of informationabout the chemical structure of the specimenunder study and the polarisation helped dis-tinguish fine structural differences.

After a lot of development work, around1929, Rife finally produced a prototype ofwhat was later to become known as the“Universal Microscope” which used the aboveprinciple. Not much is known about the earlyprototypes but they reportedly succeeded inproducing unprecedented magnifications, sup-posedly up to 60,000 times in some cases. Thiskind of magnification is comparable to a

modern day electron microscope. The photo-graph in Fig.3 is of one of the later UniversalMicroscopes and shows just how complexthese instruments were.

These optical microscopes had one majoradvantage over the modern electron micro-scopes. They allowed the study of live speci-mens. An electron microscope operates in avacuum and bombards the specimen with highenergy electrons; not much can survive that!

�� Now that Rife could clearly see bacteria

and cells using his microscope he beganexperiments in which he exposed the samplesto various electric and magnetic fields. Hethen discovered that he could make bacteriaand single-celled organisms react to thefields.

Curiously, static fields had little obviouseffect, but alternating or pulsed fields causeddramatic changes depending on the frequen-cy he applied. Each different type of bacteriaetc., appeared to respond to one specific fre-quency, and in particular, that frequency ulti-mately caused the destruction of the organ-ism.

The effect, which modern researchers haveduplicated, is very interesting. Supposedly, asyou approach the critical frequency of a bac-terium for example, it appears under themicroscope to have what might be bestdescribed as a “seizure”. The bacteriumchanges shape or becomes agitated. A typicalexample (reported by a modern researcher) iswhere a rod-like bacterium “seizes” into a“C” shape as the critical frequency isapproached.

The frequency range of the effect varieswith the specimen and the intensity of thefield seems to become pronounced withinfive or six Hertz of the critical frequency. If

you give the specimen a short burst of elec-tromagnetic energy near the critical frequen-cy it seizes and then usually recovers after afew seconds. If, however, you proceed toexpose it to the critical frequency, it literallyexplodes.

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Rife repeated his experiments with thou-sands of samples and reproduced the sameeffect every time. What was even more inter-esting, however, was that he was unable tofind any frequency that would cause human(or other mammalian) tissue cells to explodein the same way.

The implications were profound. He hadseemingly found a way to selectively destroybacteria and other pathogens without damag-

ing human cells. If this methodcould be applied to a live humanpatient he could potentiallyeliminate a specific species ofinvading bacteria and therebycure whatever disease that bac-terium caused in the patient.

His first task was to cataloguethe critical frequencies thatdestroyed specific bacteria. Hereasoned that the effect workedthrough simple resonance andthat the bacteria were shatteredby a specific frequency muchlike a wineglass when it isexposed to a specific highpitched sound. So he startedcompiling a list of what hecalled the Mortal OscillatoryRates of specific pathogens(MORs for short).

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At the same time he wanted torefine his equipment to producethe requisite electromagneticfields. He commissioned engi-neers to build a device thatwould emit a field he could tune.He was convinced that light wasan important factor and so hewanted the tuneable device toproduce light as well as otherforms of radiation.

The development of thedevice unfortunately is not docu-mented. But the result was that

the engineers ended up with an X-ray tubewhich was filled with low pressure heliumgas (a normal X-ray tube has a vacuum) dri-ven by a powerful radio frequency transmit-ter that caused the gas to ionise and conductcurrent. The MOR was then created byquenching the carrier at a lower modulatingfrequency. So the original MORs actuallyconsisted of two parameters, a carrier fre-quency and a modulating wavelength. Theend product became known as the “RifeBeam Ray Device”. It allowed Rife to expandupon his experiments.

Rife started conducting lab tests using liveanimals. Most of his notes were laterdestroyed and very few remain. But he clear-ly documented that he was able to apparentlycure the animals of specific infections withonly short exposures to the beam ray device.

We may never know exactly how manyexperiments he performed, or all of what hefound due to the destruction of his notes. Buthis associates later told of literally tens of

Fig.3. One of Rife’s “Universal Microscopes”.

Everyday Practical Electronics, April 2001 3

thousands of experiments he performed andthat he became obsessed with his work,spending days at a time without sleep, tuningthe device and cataloguing effects. His sur-viving research papers also show evidence ofmeticulous work.

��Rife became obsessed with the idea of cur-

ing cancer. He found from his experimentsthat cancerous tumours in animals shrank andeven disappeared at certain frequencies. Buthis observations showed that the tumour cellsdid not explode like the bacteria. Somethingwas killing the tumour cells, but in a differentway.

He then turned his attention to viruses. Atthat time little was known about viruses. Theword virus itself is derived from one of theirproperties, “filter passing”. A virus by defin-ition was some infective agent that was sosmall that it could pass through a filter thatwould block bacteria and other pathogens.

After thousands of further experiments,Rife finally announced that he had isolatedthe “filter passing form” of an infective agentthat would reliably induce cancer in any ani-mal it was injected into. His conclusion wassimple: cancer is caused by a virus and themachine could destroy viruses as effectivelyas bacteria, ergo, he could cure cancer.

At this point it is worth mentioning thatalthough Rife isolated the cancer pathogen,there were other researchers in the 1920s,notably Thomas Glover and M. J. Scott whohad also done so, and probably earlier thanRife – although Rife was probably the firstto actually see the agent with his supermicroscopes.

In the light of this revelation the tumourcell results became clear. The machine didnot directly kill tumour cells. It killed thevirus that was infecting the tumour cell, andwhen the virus died it decomposed into amixture of chemical poisons that effectivelypoisoned and killed the host cell. The deadtumour cells were subsequently reabsorbed

and digested by the host animal’s immunesystem.

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There was a further implication to this.Rife had noted that when he “cured” animalsof various infective agents they often becamemore ill for a short time after exposure to thebeam ray but rapidly recovered. He reasonedthat the destruction of the infective pathogensalways released poisons (which were normal-ly inside the infecting organism) into theanimal’s body and blood stream and that theillness was caused by the effect of thesepoisons.

Since these poisons are often the verysame chemicals that are responsible for thesymptoms of a particular illness in the firstplace, it was therefore not unusual to see aworsening of symptoms after exposure that

rapidly improved as the body disposed of thetoxins. This effect is well known in medicinetoday, it is known as the Jarisch-Herxheimerreaction and it was originally recorded in theantibiotic treatment of syphilis.

Ultimately, Rife succeeded in identifyingtwo different viral agents that caused can-cers. One that caused carcinomas (cancersof covering and lining membranes) and onethat caused sarcomas (cancers in bone, con-nective tissue or muscle). He called thesetwo agents the BX and the BY cancer virus-es respectively.

�� Rife also found direct evidence of pleo-

morphism. Ever since the theory was pro-posed by Antoine Béchamp (the forerunnerof Pasteur and probably the true discoverer ofmicrobial infection) in the 19th century, ithad been the subject of much controversy. Toput it simplistically, it stated that everypathogen had multiple developmental cycleswith different forms in each cycle i.e. a sim-ple bacterium can transform itself literallyinto a viral equivalent (or vice versa).

Rife insisted that he had observed thateach bacterial pathogen had a correspondingviral form, and, depending on the mixture ofproteins that the bacterium digested, it couldtransform reversibly into its viral form andback to bacterial form. He mentioned this invarious research papers and concluded thatthere were only about 10 different classes ofpathogens that were responsible for nearly alldiseases, and even that it was possible for anypathogen in one class to transform into anoth-er pathogen of the same class.

For example, Rife believed that E. Coli, acommon bacterium found in most watersupplies, was the bacterial form of one can-cer virus. It would only produce cancercausing effects in a weakened organismwith a specific chemical balance that madeit revert to viral form. Whilst discredited atthe time, modern researchers are findingincreasing evidence that supports the theoryof pleomorphism.

It is certainly accepted today that somecancers are caused by viral agents, a theorythat was resisted in the 1920s. The “discover-er” of the first officially recognised cancervirus in the late 1940s, Virginia Livingston,had worked with Rife and already knew of

An original Rife Machine, manufactured in San Diego, California, for an unknowndoctor. Exactly how this unit operates is at present not known.

The large tube for the Rife Machine was made in Los Angeles


his results, as well as those of Glover andScott. As far as I know she gave some creditto the “Glover’s theory” but Rife is nevermentioned.

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During this time Rife had periodicallyreleased information to the press about hiswork. He had described and demonstrated hismicroscopes several times and had receivedenthusiastic reviews from doctors andresearchers who had been allowed to usethem. On 3 November 1929 his work wasfeatured on the front page of the San DiegoUnion newspaper, as an article about hismicroscopes.

Numerous other articles followed aroundthis time, including at least two articles in theL.A. Times. He had also mentioned his workon electromagnetic effects and that he hopedone day to be able to cure diseases like can-cer, although it is clear that most of thereporters didn’t understand the implicationsof what he was saying.

By 1931, Rife had announced his results tovarious doctors and university medicaldepartments. He was visited by a stream ofeminent doctors and researchers, most ofwhom enthusiastically endorsed his work.One of Rife’s supporters was Dr MillbankJohnson, president of the Southern Californiabranch of the American Medical Associationand one of the board of directors of PasadenaHospital. Another was Dr Arthur Kendall,Director of Medical Research atNorthwestern Medical School in Illinois.

On 20 November 1931, Johnson arrangeda banquet for Rife at his estate in PasadenaCalifornia, which was attended by 44 of themost eminent medical personnel of the dayand at which they honoured him as the manwho had found “The End to All Diseases”.

From this point on the story takes a twist.Many incidents referred to are documentedand historically verifiable but are the subjectof great controversy. Also the chronology isoccasionally confused.

�� In early 1934, Johnson rented premises in

San Diego for Rife to begin clinical treat-ments. Under his instructions, the Universityof Southern California arranged formal clini-cal trials of the Rife Beam Ray device. Theyappointed a special committee of top doctorsto oversee the project including, apart fromJohnson and Kendall: Dr Rufus Klein-Schmidt (President, University of SouthernCalifornia), Dr Edward Kopps (MetabolicClinic, La Jolla, California), Dr GeorgeFisher (Children’s Hospital, NY), Dr KarlMeyer (Hooper Foundation, San Francisco,California), Dr Whalen Morrison (ChiefSurgeon, Santa Fe Railway), Dr GeorgeDock and Dr Alvin G. Foord, a pathologist.

Sixteen cancer patients from the PasadenaCounty Hospital volunteered to be treatedwith the machine. The brief was for thepatients to be treated at Rife’s clinic in SanDiego and after three months the doctorswould perform an in-depth examination ofany of the surviving patients at that time. Rifereportedly treated the patients with threeminute exposures to the beam ray device atthe cancer frequencies once every three days.

Initial daily treatments were suspendeddue to extreme Jarisch-Herxheimer reactions.At the end of three months, however, all thepatients were still alive and were examined.

The doctors were amazed to pronounce that14 of the 16 showed no signs of cancer andwere pronounced clinically cured. Theremaining two went for further treatments.

Rife reasoned that maybe they were infect-ed with a mutated form of the cancer virusand made some slight frequency adjustments.Four weeks later the remaining two patientswere examined and also pronounced clinical-ly cured. The results were stunning, it was amajor breakthrough.

There is some discrepancy in the accountsof what happened next, but the most likelyexplanation is that the members agreed to dofurther work before publicising the results.

��Johnson then introduced Rife to Dr

Mildred Schram of the International CancerFoundation in Philadelphia. However, onhearing of the work, Schram allegedly madedemands for experiments that Rife insistedwould not and could not work. Followingmuch argument, he eventually refused tohave anything further to do with the founda-tion. Schram supposedly admitted years laterthat Rife had been right.

In the meantime (1935) Johnson had set upa clinic in Los Angeles to treat people usingthe beam ray device and Kendall and otherswere continuing experiments and treatingpeople with it. In 1937, the medical commit-tee who oversaw the clinical trials ended uparguing over when and how they shouldrelease the results with no actual decisionever being reached. By now they had plentyof evidence to support Rife’s claims but theyfound themselves pressured by the medicalauthorities and feared that they would not bebelieved.

A press release went ahead, however, andon Friday 6 May 1938, the San DiegoEvening Tribune published a front page arti-cle entitled “Dread Disease Germs Destroyedby Rays, Claim of S.D. Scientist”. However,the clinical trials were not mentioned andRife was cautious not to claim that the devicerepresented an absolute cure for cancer.

�� During this time, a new player emerged.

Dr Morris Fishbein was editor of the Journalof the American Medical Associationbetween 1924 and 1949. However, Fishbeinwas a very rich and powerful man who by

that time owned all the stock of the AMA andhad extremely powerful political connec-tions. Fishbein approached Rife with an offerto buy the exclusive rights to the beam raytechnology. Rife refused.

The details of the offer are unknown butFishbein had made similar offers to otherinventors of medical technologies claimed tocure cancer. In one case Fishbein made anoffer to the creator of a herbal cancer curecalled Harry Hoxey in which Fishbein wouldreceive all profits from the invention for nineyears and thereafter, at Fishbein’s discretion,he would pay 10 per cent of future profits toHoxey. When Hoxey refused, Fishbein effec-tively destroyed him. Hoxey was allegedlyarrested 125 times in 16 months at Fishbein’sinstigation. The charges never stuck butHoxey was ruined.

Fishbein then did the same to Rife. AMAofficials started visiting doctors who wereusing Rife’s machines and informed themthey would be struck from the medical regis-ter if they did not stop immediately. Manygave in and surrendered the machines toAMA investigators or allowed the machinesto be destroyed. Others held out and refused.Many were arrested or had equipment andnotes seized and destroyed by FDA (FederalFood and Drug Administration) agents.

Fishbein refused to allow publication ofany reference to Rife’s work in the AMAjournals and also supposedly pressured othermedical journals insisting that they shouldnot publish anything about Rife’s workbecause it was all a fraud. A number of doc-tors actively opposed this, including Johnson.But many of the doctors who had attendedJohnson’s banquet for Rife in 1931, fearingthe loss of their medical licenses, starteddenying that they had ever heard of Rife,even though many had been photographedwith him at the banquet.

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By this time, Rife had established his owncompany to market the device. The corpora-tion became known as Beam Rays Inc.However, in 1939, an engineer called PhilipHoyland, an employee of the company,brought a lawsuit against Beam Rays Inc.,claiming that he and not Rife had inventedthe machine and that he had developed theinitial theory that was now claimed by Rife.

Interior of the 1947 Rife Machine


Despite the fact that he had only joined Rifearound 1937 and Rife had published detailslong before that.

Another factor that emerged at this timewas that there was some difference betweenRife’s original machine and newer Hoylandvariants that the company had been shipping.Rife’s original machine created the MOR fre-quency using a variable carrier wave whichwas then modulated with a super-regenera-tion wave at other frequencies (ranges of15kHz to 11MHz appear in Rife’s lab notes).Table 1 gives carrier frequencies in kilohertzand super regeneration wavelengths inmetres, compiled from his original lab notes.

Table 1. Rife’s Original CarrierFrequencies and Super Regeneration

Wavelengths.Pathogen Carrier (kHz) SRW (m)

B. Coli 8,581 27Bubonic Plague 160 585Cancer (BX) 11,780 17.6Typhoid 900 345Anthrax 900 1,100Catarrh 1,800 175Diphtheria 800 275Syphilis 900 108Tetanus 700 19,000Tuberculosis 583 554Actinomycosis 678 1,607Gonorrhoea 600 1,990Glanders 986 407Influenza 1,674 154Leprosy 743 1,190Pneumonia 1,200 785

The MOR frequencies studied by Rifewere mostly in the hundreds of kilohertz tomegahertz range. The details of the differ-ence between the original Rife and Hoylandmachines are unclear, but Rife complains in aletter of 14 May 1939 to Dr Gonin, head ofthe London School of Tropical Medicineabout Hoyland’s machines:

“I spoke only Friday Evening to a Mr. JohnChanblin, a radio man now connected withBeam Rays inc., about the redesign and build-ing of a device according to the old originalRife Ray principles; as the present instrumenthas been so deviated away from that old prin-ciple that it is nowhere near the same.

“I know nothing about the experimentalmachines you have, as I was never even asked

to see them or to pass on them in any waybefore they were shipped to you. But Henrystated in one of his last letters that he hadtried one of them on a culture of his bacteriaand it had failed to do the work. I would con-sider from that, that those devices which youhave are merely working on a harmonic andnot a true frequency; and in our research onelectronics, we definitely know that there isno possible way of controlling electrical har-monics of a frequency.”

Nobody knows why Hoyland started a law-suit he couldn’t possibly win, or why he pro-duced non-working Rife machine variants,except that it is alleged that Hoyland’s legalcosts were funded by the owner of a majorpharmaceutical company. Rife’s invention waspotentially lethal to the multi-billion dollarpharmaceutical industry. Rife eventually wonthe lawsuit but the costs bankrupted Beam RaysInc., putting it out of business. And Rife’s repu-tation had been damaged by inferior machinesthat had been shipped out by Hoyland usingRife’s name. After this, Rife started drinkingheavily and became depressed and discouraged.

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Around this same time Rife’s laboratorywas subject to a spate of thefts, his micro-scopes vandalised and finally, it was burnedto the ground (and most of his notesdestroyed) in an arson attack. Nobody wasever caught or prosecuted for it. Another doc-tor, a Dr Nemes who had set up an indepen-dent laboratory and confirmed some of Rife’sresults was killed in a laboratory fire and allhis notes and research lost. A third laboratoryworking on confirming Rife’s work, theBurnett Laboratory, also mysteriously caughtfire and burned to the ground with allresearch destroyed.

In 1940, two other doctors who had sup-ported Rife, Cooperson and Clayton wereraided by Federal officers who confiscatedtheir equipment and notes. Later each wasfound dead, supposedly having committedsuicide by poison.

In 1944, Johnson arranged a press confer-ence and let it slip that he would announcepublicly the clinical results and that the curefor cancer had been found. There are allega-tions that Johnson had already beenapproached by “representatives of the phar-

maceutical industry” who offered him moneyto suppress information about Rife’s work.Supposedly he refused. He had also certainlybeen pressured by Fishbein.

The night before the press conference,however, Johnson died suddenly and mysteri-ously and all his notes were pronounced as“lost” by the executors of his estate. Hisdeath was recorded as “accidental death”although I have no details. There are claimsthat his body was later exhumed by FBIinvestigators who concluded that he had beenmurdered by poison.

Dr Arthur Kendall, one of Rife’s mostprestigious and influential supporters sud-denly accepted an unprecedented pension of$250,000 to retire to Mexico and effectivelydisappeared from the scene. George Dock,another of Rife’s clinical team, and also high-ly respected and influential, also took a hugeand unprecedented gratuity to retire early.

Many of Rife’s supporters were convincedthis was the work of drug companies whowere anxious to suppress a technology thatwould make virtually all drug treatmentsobsolete.

Rife was hounded by the FDA and theAMA. He was unable to practice withoutofficial intervention and continued a steadydecline into alcoholism. This didn’t stop him,however, trying to continue his research. Inthe early 1950s Rife teamed up with a mancalled John Crane under the auspices of anew company (owned by Crane) called LifeLabs Inc.

�� Here the record becomes confused again.

Crane worked on the development of severalnew machines. One in particular was quite dif-ferent, it used a pad which had to be placed incontact with the body. Crane claimed that heand Rife had developed the machine together,and Rife was certainly associated with the com-pany because he wrote letters on its behalf. Butapart from Crane’s statement there is no directevidence to suggest that Rife developed orendorsed the pad machine. Because of this thereis some confusion as to what constitutes a real“Rife Machine” because some people (particu-larly those selling such devices) claim the for-mer and others the latter.

Users claim both are effective, but theoriginal plasma device has the advantage thatit can be used to treat the whole body (or evenseveral bodies at once!) since it has an effec-tive operating radius of around 20 to 30 feet(6m to 9m) depending on power level anddoes not require any body contact.

Modern researchers who made contactwith Crane studied circuit diagrams thatCrane gave them and concluded that not onlycould the circuits not work as they were, butCrane did not seem to know very much aboutelectronics. However, some of the circuits didwork with minor modifications, indicatingthat Crane had probably taken the diagramsfrom prototype notes of other engineers whohad worked for him.

Crane’s involvement led to a secondsource of confusion. Crane published lists ofMOR frequencies which were all in the lowaudio range. Clearly there was a big differ-ence between Crane’s frequencies and Rife’s.A popular list of frequencies (Table 2) whichwas obtained from Dr Robert P. Stafford MD,who is claimed to have used a “Rifemachine” (probably a “Crane machine”) forclinical trials between 1957 and 1963 andwhich is often advertised as Rife’s original


Front panel of the 1947 Rife Machine. The knob on the left changes the frequencyband and the knob on the right changes the amplitude or power.

6

frequency list, is in fact a copy of a documenthe received from Crane.

Table 2. Crane’s List of MORFrequencies

Microorganism Frequency (Hz)Tetanus 120Treponema 660Gonorrhoea 712Staphylococci 728Pneumococci 776Streptothrix (fungus) 784Streptococci 880Typhoid Bacteria 712Typhoid Virus 1862Bacillus Coli Rod Form 800Bacillus Coli Virus 1552Tuberculosis Rod Form 803Tuberculosis Virus 1552

(same as B-Coli)Sarcoma (all forms) 2008Carcinoma (all forms) 2128

Interestingly, these frequencies have beenclaimed to be effective for Rife type plasmamachines by modern researchers, but they areobviously not Rife’s original frequencies.

In 1971 Rife was admitted to hospital,details are unclear, but I’ve seen accounts thatattributed it either to a car accident or analcoholic binge. Either way it is reported thathe died following accidental injection of amassive overdose of Valium.

��

Following his death, Rife’s work was for-gotten. Most of his original notes had beenlost in the fires and/or supposedly destroyedby AMA/FDA agents. But some of his associ-ates remained alive, particularly Crane whowrote a book about the work (supposedly verylong winded and not very technically accurateaccording to those who have read it). Cranewas arrested numerous times for promotingRife’s work and spent three years in prison forit. And there were still a few old doctors whoclaimed to have been successfully using thedevice for treatments (mostly in secret) overthe years and still had working machines.

Even Rife’s microscopes were forgottenexcept for odd articles of historic interest.For example, a 1944 report from the boardof the Smithsonian Museum stating basi-cally that the microscope worked and thatRife’s results had been validated. Theauthor, Dr Raymond Seidel reportedly sur-vived a subsequent assassination attempt in1945, after which he refused to mentionRife ever again.

An original Rife microscope (which, how-ever, had probably been tampered with byHoyland) resides today in the ScienceMuseum in London, unfortunately brokenand not on display. The microscope was for-merly used at the London School of TropicalMedicine, but following a dispute betweenDr Gonin, the British doctor who used it andBeam Rays Inc., (probably Hoyland), themachine was supposedly smashed by a mys-terious man who arrived from America. Itwas later donated to the Science Museum byDr Gonin’s family after his death.

Even the newspaper reports were hard tocome by. Some of the newspapers toldresearchers that they had lost the specific edi-tions with reports of Rife’s work, note onlythose editions. Luckily there were peoplewho did still have copies.

�� The whole matter was revived suddenly

around 1986. As far as I know, the recentefforts appeared after a book about Rifecalled The Cancer Cure that Worked waswritten by an author called Barry Lynes.Whatever the cause, several modernresearchers tried to build duplicates of theoriginal beam ray devices, most of themsucceeding in producing allegedly bio-active machines, but none of them trulyoriginal.

Eventually these modern researchers man-aged to make contact with the few survivingdoctors who had worked with Rife and hismachine and slowly the details began toemerge.

Although Rife had used a variable carrierwave in his original prototype machine, latermodels of the machine used by other doctorsused fixed carriers with amplitude modula-tion. It is not known whether these machineswere Rife’s, Hoyland’s or Crane’s. The mod-ulation was a square wave pulse with fast risetime. Calibration and measurement of dialsettings on the old machines revealed that theactive frequencies of modulation were all inthe low audio range corresponding to the listspublished by Crane.

One explanation of the discrepancybetween Rife’s original notes and the derivedfrequencies may be explained in terms of har-monics. The higher harmonics of a squarewave pulse represent odd multiples of thefundamental frequency (Fourier’s theorem)and so the square wave produces a range ofdifferent (higher) frequencies for any givenfundamental frequency.

Another theory is that the microorganismshave more than one mortal frequency. Thereis some support for the latter idea in letterswritten by Johnson which indicate that at onestage, he and Rife stumbled on to a “super-frequency” which would kill almost anymicroorganism. Unfortunately this frequencywas never recorded.

The modern researchers took variousapproaches to reproducing the machine.Some used old X-ray tubes filled with lowpressure helium or argon, others hadtubes made, and some even made themthemselves.

��One of the most popular recent incarna-

tions of the Rife machine was developed by aDr James Bare. Bare took a minimalistapproach to the problem and modified a CBtransmitter and power amplifier to increasethe bandwidth and to drive the tube at a car-rier frequency around 27MHz. Using theaudio input of the transmitter to introduce themodulating pulses, he then proceeded to per-form experiments to verify Rife’s work.

I don’t know exactly which experiments hedid (I haven’t read his book) but he claimsthat the device worked just as Rife describedand he has had photomicrographs takenwhich allegedly show the device destroyingsingle-celled organisms like Blepharisma.You can download a Windows AVI video fileshowing the process via the internet (address-es at the end of the article). Bare also sellsvideos of other experiments.

The book of Lynes, and the work of Bareand others caused a virtual explosion ofactivity in this field. Today, it is estimatedthat nearly 5000 people have Rife machines(or at least modern equivalents) in active use

and an enormous amount of anecdotal datahas been compiled through amateur efforts tocure specific diseases. Although many of theanecdotes are purely subjective, a great manyclaim to have been verified by doctors andsome contain considerable clinical detail.

It is not unusual to see comments in whichusers have stated definite biometric measure-ments of their own diseases both before andafter treatment with the device. One thing isoverwhelmingly clear a large number of peo-ple are convinced that the device works.Fantastic as it may seem, many people claimto have experienced improvements in casesof the most dire diseases, such as cancer andeven AIDS.

What is even more interesting is the num-ber of people who have reported relief fromthe symptoms of diseases that are not knownto have any viral or bacterial component, orthe cause of which is still officially unknown.The devices have also allegedly been widelyand successfully employed in veterinarypractice as well, implying that the results arenot simply due to the placebo effect.

��As a result of all these efforts, there now

exist a number of frequency lists (all freelyavailable on the internet) which give specifictreatment frequencies for just about everydisease imaginable. Others are classified bythe microorganism species. Another interest-ing point worthy of note is that whilst Rife’soriginal work only concentrated on MORsfor bacteria and viruses (he knew it affectedyeasts etc., as well), the modern researchersclaim to have found MORs for yeasts andmoulds, various protozoa-like amoebas,worms and parasites like flukes and evensome insects.

The consensus seems to be that low fre-quencies are deadly to simple organisms. Themore complex organisms like mammals (atfirst sight, see comments later) seem to beimmune to these frequencies.

�� Advocates of the machine are very keen to

point out that there do not appear to be anynegative side effects (apart from theinevitable Jarisch-Herxheimer reactions) andso far nobody claims to have identified anybad or dangerous frequencies. My own feel-ing is that this is not strictly true and there isample evidence of possibly bad frequencies.However, to someone dying of a terminalcancer the risk is worth the potential reward.

��By now you are no doubt longing to know

how does it work? The answer is that nobodyknows for certain. Although there are manyclues to be found in modern research into theeffects of electric and magnetic fields on bio-logical systems. Unfortunately, this wholearea of research still appears to be vehement-ly opposed by the mainstream medical estab-lishment and very little (compared to otherfields of medical research) serious and rigor-ous research is being done.

At first sight it appears that the electro-magnetic waves emitted by the plasma tubeof the device are inducing fields or currentsinto body cells. However, many researchersare quick to point out that putting the deviceinside a Faraday Cage (which will block allelectromagnetic waves) does not impair itseffectiveness. Nor will a simple aerial pro-duce the same effect.


��Some have speculated that the light from

the tube is involved, but once again the deviceappears to work well with covered tubes. Ihave seen various theories that claim the exis-tence of a mysterious new type of energycalled a plasma wave, but my personal feel-ing is that this is too fanciful and there is asimpler explanation.

�� At this point I would like to digress to look

at some other machines of a similar naturethat may throw some more light on the puz-zle before returning to the question of what isactually happening.

On 14 March 1991, two researchers,William Lyman and Steven Kaali, at theAlbert Einstein School of Medicine,announced to the First InternationalSymposium on Combination Therapies thatthey had found they were able to inactivatethe HIV virus in blood samples, by passing atiny electric current (less than 100microamps) through the blood itself. A simi-lar paper was published around the same timeby a team in Japan. The interesting thing herewas that they didn’t kill the virus, they justmade it inert.

The virus reportedly was unable to pene-trate and infect body cells after exposure.Either way, the result was more or less thesame, it provided a clue to a potential cure.The Einstein team were quick to file a patent(US Patent 5,139,684) in which theydescribed a hypothetical device which couldbe connected to the patient’s circulatory sys-tem and in which the blood would passthrough a set of electrodes which would inturn pass a current through the blood, the“deactivated” blood being returned to thepatient’s body. Other researchers were alsoquick to confirm that the effect wasn’t justlimited to HIV, it worked just as well withother bacteria and viruses as well.

�� This led to more amateur experimentation.

A host of “new” machines emerged from var-ious experimenters. I qualify the word “new”because all of them are just modern rehashesof the old 19th century electrotherapymachines. They basically fall into two mainclasses: those that pass a low voltage alter-nating current through the body (ideallyacross some major artery) and supposedlypurify the blood according to theLyman/Kaali principle, and others that pro-duce intense magnetic field pulses.

People who claimed to have tried thesedevices for the most part reported that theyprovided an amazingly rapid relief fromsymptoms. Of further interest was the factthat many people reported a consequentJarisch-Herxheimer reaction. To put it sim-ply, if you kill enough microbes you get aJarisch-Herxheimer reaction.

��

Vendors (the snake oil and quackeryindustry is still healthy!), claim that thesemachines (which typically produce about28 volts peak-to-peak a.c. square wavesacross the skin for the electric machines),and magnetic pulsers which work by dis-charging capacitors charged up to a fewkilovolts into a magnetic coil, have no dele-terious side effects and are completely safeto use.

I am personally sceptical about most of theclaims made for these devices and very muchso about the safety of some of them. I believethat they do provide some of the symptomaticrelief that they claim and not simply througha placebo effect. However, the long termeffect of using these machines has never beenproperly studied.

Some of these devices are supposed to befrequency dependent, others not. Although asfar as I can tell, the Rife machine still remainsthe clear winner.

None of these devices have been acceptedby the mainstream medical establishment.However, many hospitals today use pulsedmagnetic field therapy to speed up the heal-ing of broken bones. This highlights thehypocrisy of some medical people who onone hand declare that there is no possiblebenefit to these kind of therapies, yet happilyuse them to heal fractures.

As an interesting aside, there is a modernitem of “bush-lore” widely accepted and usedby travellers in certain parts of the world, andeven endorsed by many doctors, that anexcellent therapy for venomous snake bites isto apply a strong electric shock to the site ofthe bite which apparently somehow neutralis-es most snake venoms.

You can get manuals on how to perform aninstant bush cure using the ignition coil of acar. It’s supposed to work great forRattlesnake bites, although I must admit Ihaven’t found this to be much of a problem inBerkshire!

��Returning to the question of what is hap-

pening. I have frequently seen it suggestedthat electroporation, or voltage dependentgating, may account for the effects of electricand magnetic fields on bacteria. I don’tbelieve this to be the case and I think theseideas arise from an inadequate understandingof cell structure. To explain, let’s start bylooking at cells.

Bacterial, plant and yeast cells are verydifferent from the kind of cells found in thehuman (or other animal) body. Pathogens likethe ones listed earlier tend to have a thick cellwall and an internal cell membrane thatencloses them. There is a major distinctionbetween the cell wall and the cell membrane.The cell wall is typically about 200nm thick,and the cell membrane usually consists of a

layer of two protein molecules bondedtogether and is about 5nm to 10nm thick,depending on which protein is involved.

A typical body cell does not have the cellwall, it only has the cell membrane. Simplyput, a bacterium or fungal cell has a coatingmany times thicker and stronger than a bodycell. See Fig.4.

Electroporation, an effect often used bygenetic engineers to introduce DNA strandsinto cells, occurs in cell membranes. Cellmembranes have natural pores due to the sta-tistical movement of the molecules that theyare made of. The molecules move about leav-ing momentary holes. If the movement of themolecules is increased by electrical stimula-tion, they tend to leave bigger (sometimespermanent) holes and the cell membranebecomes more porous. A large enough holewill destroy the cell.

��

Voltage Dependent Gating (VDG) is a dif-ferent effect in which a protein molecule justa bit longer than the width of a cell mem-brane, typically helical in shape, tends to bur-row its way through the cell membrane liter-ally like a corkscrew. This creates what isknown as an ion bridge and under the influ-ence of an electric potential the ion bridgeturns on like a switch and carries ions acrossthe cell membrane. This mechanism occursin many biological subsystems, most notice-ably nerve cells.

The theory I have seen advanced for theoperation of the Rife machine is that one orboth of these effects results in an ion imbal-ance in the bacterial cell (but not the bodycell) which results in an osmotic pressure dif-ferential that ultimately causes the bacteriumto blow up like a balloon and then explode.

��

��But the two effects above both operate on

cell membranes (I don’t know if they operateon cell walls) and so it follows logically thatthey are much more likely to damage a nor-mal body cell than a pathogen.

To put it more simply, imagine a bacterialcell to be rather like a football, and a bodycell to be rather like a child’s balloon. If youblow air into both the football and the balloonat the same rate, the balloon is going to


Fig.4. A bacterial/mould/plant cell (left) and (right) an animal cell.

explode much more easily and much soonerthan the football, because the football isthicker and stronger.

So this explanation is unlikely becauseobservation supposedly shows the opposite tobe happening.

��If the reports are to be believed, the real

explanation must lie in some electrochemicalproperty that cell walls have that cell mem-branes don’t.

The answer may lie in what are known asion exchange membranes (IEMs for short).The full technical explanation is too long andcomplex to reproduce here, but to simplify, acell wall acts like an IEM, a cell membranedoesn’t. An IEM promotes the exchange ofions either side of it when an electric poten-tial is applied.

Simplistically speaking, I personallybelieve that the electric potential inducedacross a cell wall by an external magneticfield (or local electric current) causes ionexchange across the cell wall, which resultsin profound changes in the chemical environ-ment of the cell, for example pH (acidity).

Under the influence of such changes, theproteins that hold together both the cell wallsand the cell membranes denature, depolariseor lose their hydrogen bonding i.e. theychange shape from nice regular helixes intorandom strands. As such, they firstly losetheir ability to properly participate in thechemical reactions that keep the cell aliveand, secondly, result in the weakening of thecell wall which eventually ruptures anddisintegrates.

This would explain both the Rife explod-ing bacteria effect and the Lyman/Kaali bac-terial inactivation.

Mild denaturing of the cellular proteinswill inactivate the pathogen’s ability to bondto other cells or participate in chemicalexchanges with body cells, a more pro-nounced denaturing will destroy thepathogen’s cell wall.

I have greatly oversimplifed this explana-tion because molecular electrochemistry isnot an easy subject to master. I hope, howeverthat I have conveyed a simplistic pictureof what may be happening and why Ihave doubts about the more conventionalexplanations.

�� Having said all that, I must urge caution.

Whilst the mechanism of these electrotherapydevices may have a greater effect on bacteriaetc., than normal body cells, it would be agreat mistake to assume that body cells arenever damaged by these effects. Any bodycell relies on an extremely complex system ofelectrochemical reactions to operate.

Clearly an electric, magnetic or electro-magnetic field applied close to the body willinduce electrical potentials across cell mem-branes (and those of organelles) and willinevitably disrupt normal body cellularelectrochemical processes as well as those ofbacteria.

Two real questions remain: firstly whetherthese devices have any beneficial effect at alland secondly whether the gentler devices likethe Rife beam ray machine (as opposed tosomething like the magnetic dischargemachines) are really completely safe.

Of course, a degree of “collateral damage”(to borrow a military term!) may well beacceptable when you are treating a serious

disease such as cancer. Undoubtedly existingtraditional radiation and chemotherapy tech-niques which are commonly used to treatcancer (and even in some cases antibiotics)do cause serious “collateral damage” to nor-mal body cells.

Another point to consider is that if you cankill a tumour cell by exploding a virus insideit, it follows that you can kill a normal cellthe same way.

Up to this point I’ve been relating storiesand theories secondhand. Now I’d like to justmention some experiments that I’ve done inthis field. I would like to stress that I am giv-ing this information for completeness andbecause it is interesting. I am not suggestingthat anyone else should try this, it might bedangerous.

��

�� As an experiment, I decided to try making

a simple machine. Basically I designed a verysimple magnetic pulse generator. I made asimple driver circuit that accepts square wavepulses from a TTL input and drives them atabout 36 volts with a current capacity of up tofour amps into a 35mH magnetic coil. Theresulting magnetic field is quite intense.

I then hooked the machine up to a signalgenerator and tuned it to various knownCrane MOR frequencies for commonpathogens that most people have and held thecoil near to my body in various places.

Interestingly, I felt nothing at most fre-quencies but got a noticeable reaction when Ituned to certain frequencies, for example464Hz, which turns out to be the MOR forCandida Albicans (a parasitic yeast that justabout everybody has in some degree). I wassuffering from a gastric ulcer i.e., gnawingpain under the ribs when my stomach wasempty, bleeding etc. I also have a hiatus her-nia (weak stomach valve) which for manyyears has caused almost continuous indiges-tion and acid burning.

I normally have to take antacids every cou-ple of hours and certainly after every meal.Having had no results from any conventionaltherapy in the past, I figured I had nothing tolose by trying the machine. I tried setting themachine to 676Hz, the modern MOR fre-quency for Helicobacter Pylori, which is theusual cause of ulcers.

After about three minutes exposure at676Hz I felt a bit dizzy. About an hour later Ihad a particularly bad attack of acid and painwhich lasted for about two hours. But nextmorning when I woke up, the usual painunder the ribs was much less. Later that day Itried again, this time two six-minute expo-sures, one at 676Hz and the other at 464Hz(the Candida frequency).

I discovered that 676Hz makes me feeldizzy and 464Hz gives me stomach gas. Thistime I got a much smaller attack of pain butalso this time I got a spate of red blotches onthe skin followed by itching all over, again last-ing for about two hours. I figured the first wasa Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction to the 676Hzand the second the reaction to the 464Hz.

The next day, I woke up again with hardlyany pain at all. During the whole day I onlyhad to take one antacid tablet which isunprecedented. After four days of similartreatments all pain had gone and I was gettingno detectable reaction at all to either of thefrequencies. What is more I had no indiges-tion for the first time in years and there was

no more bleeding. I stopped the treatments atthat point.

At the time of writing it is now nearlythree months since I performed this experi-ment. I have had no pain, no bleeding andfeel better than I have done in years.

A few weeks ago, I got the symptoms of amild cold for a couple of days. The indiges-tion returned for a day, although not as badlyas before. I tried the machine again, tuningrandomly through various frequencies andlooking for reactions. I got strong reactions atfrequencies which I later discovered wereknown MORs for Adenovirus (a commonrespiratory infection) and also ChlamydiaPnuemonia (also a respiratory pathogen).Two days treatment as before at the new fre-quencies has once again removed all symp-toms and the indigestion is gone.

��It’s not very scientific but I’m convinced it

works. If anything it has convinced me thatthis whole field is too important to ignore andthe more serious research and experimenta-tion that is done the better.

Sceptics will, of course, argue that this is aclassic placebo effect, but having tried vari-ous remedies over the years without anythinglike these results, I believe otherwise.

I also tried a further experiment withmoulds. I took a piece of bread, dampened itand left it out overnight. I then broke thebread into two similar pieces and put eachpiece in a separate, sealed, sterile container. Itook one container and exposed it to a rangeof different anti-mould frequencies of themagnetic pulser. The first container was leftuntouched.

After four days, the containers were com-pared. The first, untouched container was fullof mould, the second was completely clear.Since the only difference between the twowas the exposure to the magnetic pulser Iconcluded that the magnetic pulser had killedall the mould spores in the second container.

�� For anyone interested in doing further

experiments, the circuit diagram of a second,very simple prototype of my pulser is shown in(Fig.5). The input is a simple TTL squarewave at the frequency of interest. The circuitconsists of two simple buffer/inverter stages,around transistors TR1 and TR2, to translatethe TTL signal into a larger voltage swing todrive the two parallel MOSFETs in the outputstage, shown combined as TR3, into hardconduction.

The MOSFETs are wired in parallel toincrease their current capability and mountedon a big heatsink, although they have a verylow on-resistance and so the dissipation ofthe circuit is low. The 20V Zener diode, D1,wired from the drain to gate of the MOSFETsprevents inductive voltage overshoot andgives the MOSFETs a very hard switch offedge, which is supposed to be ideal for bioac-tive effect.

The power supply is a simple 21 volt unreg-ulated supply (a rectified 15V a.c. transformerwith a 4700µF smoothing capacitor) but whichneeds to have a high surge capacity as the tran-sients generated by the coil can overload thetransformer and rectifier.

The second prototype uses a 200VA trans-former and 10A rectifier which works well.My first prototype used only a 100VA trans-former and died suddenly in a cloud ofsmoke!


The coil, L1, consists of approx 333 turnsof 22swg enamelled wire wound on a plasticformer of about 13cm diameter (a standardplastic waste pipe coupler) in eight layers,across a span of about 25mm. The turns ofthe coil need to be tightly wound and wellvarnished into place to prevent oscillationand heating in operation. The prototype coilgets mildly warm in normal use, about 40°C.

��

�� Again I urge everyone

to take care. I only experi-ment on myself; the cardi-nal rule for me is don’t tryto treat anybody else. I amaware of the risks I takeand accept them, otherpeople may not be. I alsodon’t encourage anyone totry this on themselves, butonly to perform properexperiments with microor-ganism samples with dueprecautions under scientif-ic conditions. There is stilltoo much that is not prop-erly understood about thistechnology.

I personally believe thatthe Rife type plasmamachine is the saferoption. However, thesemachines are difficult toobtain and very over-priced (ready-built). I haveasked a few manufacturersfor specs but I’ve found that many are unwill-ing to give proper specifications, and in somecases the advertising claims are simplyuntrue.

If there are any decent r.f. engineers outthere (high power r.f. design is not my spe-ciality) I for one would be interested in amodern design for a Rife plasma device builtfrom the ground up and optimised, not justbased on modified CB radios. It should alsowork with lower carrier frequencies as thereis some evidence that carriers in the range of3MHz to 11MHz are more effective than the27MHz CB range.

Currently, I am working on the design of ahigh accuracy digital frequency synthesizerthat I intend to use for further experiments.

I must add that, despite my opinions, I amnot specifically endorsing any of thesedevices in any way. I am only presenting thisinformation as a matter of interest.

�� Amongst the scientific literature I have

discovered there is a wealth of informationas yet not properly compiled together, andusually buried in incomprehensible techni-cal gibberish. I have seen research reportswhich indicate that weak magnetic fieldpulses at 16·7Hz can stimulate the bodyinto increased production of T-lympho-cytes. I have seen other reports that indi-cate that other frequencies inhibit the samelymphocytes.

There are also reports that claim similareffects at various frequencies that inhibit can-cer cell growth and ones that stimulate it.Most of the current research, however, hasfocused on the effect of power line frequen-cies i.e. 50/60Hz. Most reports indicate thatthese frequencies are dangerous, I have notseen any evidence of any beneficial effects

reported at these frequencies.One thing that does seem to be confirmed

repeatedly by research is that weak electricand particularly magnetic fields have a mostprofound effect on growing cells. The fasterthe rate of cell growth, the more pronouncedthe effect. This implies that any low frequen-cy magnetic field may be particularly danger-ous to children, and especially to unborn chil-dren. Also prolonged exposure to any lowfrequency magnetic field may cause VDGand/or electroporation and consequent cellu-lar damage.

It is now widely accepted by manyresearchers that any field in excess of 150nT islikely to have an immediate bioactive effect oncellular metabolism and much weaker fieldsmay have effects after a longer exposure.

��

� �� Despite numerous well founded and inten-

sive research studies on the bioactive effectsof l.f. electric and magnetic fields, both theUK NRPB (National Radiological ProtectionBoard) and the US NCRP (NationalCommittee on Radiation Protection) insistthat their official position is that there is noproven risk of adverse health effects from l.f.fields.

Many informed observers believe that thisis a short sighted view motivated by politicalconsiderations, for example, both authoritieshave close ties to power generation compa-nies that obviously would be reluctant toadmit that their product might be dangerousto consumers.

In the United States at least, this has led toconflict between various government agen-cies, for example the NCRP and the EPA(Environmental Protection Agency). TheEPA has allegedly petitioned various US gov-ernment authorities to classify l.f. radiationas “a possible human carcinogen”, but hasmet with concerted resistance from the powercompanies and their lobbyists. In addition,numerous lawsuits have been filed by con-sumers and environmental groups againstpower generation companies, citing researchand statistical studies that supposedly show astrong correlation between childhoodleukamia and proximity to power lines emit-ting l.f. electric and magnetic fields.

The fact remains, that whilst these author-ities insist that there is no proven risk from

l.f. fields, they are talking in the context ofnormal domestic power lines, and on thebasis of projected field strengths and expo-sures in normal use. Neither authority isactively denying that l.f. fields have bioactiveeffects per se, although there is controversyover the field strengths that might have aneffect, and whether or not the effects are tem-porary or permanent.

The NRPB in the UK has publishedreports in which it admits that some strongl.f. fields might have temporary bioactiveeffects. The NCRP is also at the centre of a

controversy over a “leaked”internal draft recommendationof 1995 by its own researchteams which makes variousrecommendations, citing spe-cific bioactive effects of lowintensity l.f. fields and whichconcludes:

Based on available evidence,the committee concludes that itis desirable to reduce humanexposure to electric and partic-ularly to magnetic fields overthe frequency range from near-zero to 3kHz. This may beaccomplished, particularly inareas with frequent and pro-longed human occupancy, byrecommending an exposurestandard, or a set of safetyguidelines; or by recommenda-tions that fall short of establish-ing either a standard or guide-line, but offer guidance to limitexposure.

�� Perhaps the most interesting twist to the

whole story comes in the form of two newreports by the US FDA, the very organisa-tion that tried to shut down Rife. These lat-est two reports consider the use of pulsedelectric and magnetic fields for foodpreservation on the basis that acceptedresearch shows that pulsed electric andmagnetic fields can kill bacteria, virusesand other pathogens.

These two reports (which are availableon the Internet, addresses later) citeimpressive figures for kill rates of specificbacteria at specific pulse rates of a strongmagnetic field. But the conclusion of thereports is that pulsed fields do not qualifyfor approval as a method of food preserva-tion because the mechanism of action isunknown, and also because of inconsistentresults, in some cases the fields appear toenhance the action of bacteria, in othersthey kill them and some appear to have noeffect at all.

The interesting conclusion the FDA drawsfrom this is that the effect is obviously fre-quency dependent and also is influenced byfield strength, exposure time and the natureof the material exposed. This is almost exact-ly what Rife was saying in the first place.

��

� ��Here is an extract from the FDA magnetic

field report:Exposure to a magnetic field may stimu-

late or inhibit the growth and reproduction ofmicroorganisms. A single pulse of intensityof 5T to 50T and frequency of 5kHz to500kHz generally reduces the number ofmicroorganisms by at least 2-log cycles


Fig.5. the author’s experimental pulser circuit.

10

(Hoffman 1985). High intensity magneticfields can affect membrane fluidity and otherproperties of cells (Frankel and Liburdy1995). Inconsistent results of other inactiva-tion studies, however, make it impossible toclearly state the microbial inactivationefficiency of magnetic field or to make anypredictions about its effects on microbialpopulations.

��I have deliberately tried to keep this article

simple, trying to find a balance between com-pleteness, common sense and scientificoverkill! I hope that I have at least stimulatedsome readers to research this fascinatingsubject themselves.

�� Photographs of the 1947 Rife Machine

were downloaded from http://www.rt66.com/~rifetech/rife.html and repro-duced by kind permission of JamesBare.


��Ions, Electrodes and Membranes. J. Koryta. 1992. John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 0-471-

93080-6. A good introductory book on cellular electrochemistry.http://www.lvstrings.com/quack.htm. Jeff Behary’s Turn of the Century Electrotherapy

Museum. A wonderful site with descriptions and many photos of the plethora of extremelyweird, wonderful and hilarious early electrotherapy devices.

http://www.mtn.org/~quack/. Another wonderful on-line “quackery” museum with linksto many sites.

http://www.rife.org/. Site of the Rife Plasma Digest, a very good site with scanned copiesof numerous original Rife documents and correspondence.

http://www.rt66.com/~rifetech/. James Bare’s web site, lots of information and greatlinks. Check out the AVI video of the exploding Blepharisma!

http://www.rife.de/. The Rife Information Forum Europe, useful links and informationabout clinical trials.

http://patent.womplex.ibm.com/details?patent_number=5139684. A link with detailsof the Einstein team’s patent for their proposed HIV treatment with details of numerous sub-sequent similar patents.

http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/ift-omf.html. FDA Report (2000) on use of pulsed mag-netic fields for food preservation.

http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/ift-pef.html. FDA Report (2000) on use of pulsed elec-tric fields for food preservation.

http://www.nrpb.org.uk. The official web page of the UK National RadiologicalProtection Board (NRPB)

http://www.ncrp.com. The official web page of the US National Committee onRadiological Protection (NCRP).

http://www.microwavenews.com/ncrp.html. A link to a copy of the “leaked” 1995NCRP Draft recommendations for l.f. field exposures.

11

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Royal r Rife