In 1987, nearly 20 years ago, Barry Lynes wrote a book about Royal Rife and his early to mid 20th century work on a cancer cure, "The Cancer Cure That Worked!". Supposedly Rife had actually cured several patients of cancer and had initially gotten rave notices from a number of medical doctors familiar with his work.

I have practically worn my copy of this book out, reading it over and again in case I have missed something. I have also been looking carefully at the work of the current experimenters in Rife's area of research. Unfortunately, none of the current efforts are suitable for licensed medical practice, and no doctor can recommend them.

It hasn't helped that there seems to be an acrimonious rivalry between those who think Rife was on to something useful and those who think he was out to destroy their extremely lucrative oncology practices. It looks as though no self-respecting doctor would want to have to compete with a cheap, obviously inferior course of treatment that might leave the patient deceased at the end, although definitely not deceased and bankrupt.

The story told in the book is that the warm reception from the medical doctors turned ugly only after the influential Dr. Morris Fishbein tried to buy Rife out and Rife rebuffed him. However, there is little or no hard proof that this actually happened.

Today the researchers working along the lines of Rife's research are not medical doctors of any kind, no licensed medical professional will touch this project for fear of legal problems. Once in a while even one of the researchers will fail to put the proper disclaimers in his advertising or press releases and get himself thrown into jail.

I would like to see a proper study done on the technology. In order for this to happen, however, someone - some very rich someone, has to come up with at least 100 million for the FDA fees to do the research. This would most likely end up costing much more than even that 100 million and may or may not lead to the "Rife Device" getting FDA approval.

While I can't say I qualify for welfare, I don't have 100 million handy at the moment. I am not so sure I would give it to the FDA if I did.

Meanwhile cancer victims who do not trust their care to oncologists are sending their money off to buy these "Rife Machines" and use them in their homes, or they are packing off to Mexico for Mexican "cancer cures". Unfortunately, the folks who use these things do not keep very good records of how they were treated and so the stories of those who were "cured" are just that, stories - unsuitable for research - even if the "Rife Machine" has "cured" their cancer.

That said, I continue to be very interested in the device itself. Some of the newer ones closely resemble the electric stimulation machines that have been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for many years. They offer several important improvements to the TCM machines in that they can be computer controlled. Thus records of the frequency, time and intensity of the treatment can be automatically generated, making research quite a bit easier.

If you are using a Rife Machine I would like to hear from you. If you would like to read Barry Lynes' book, "The Cancer Cure That Worked" you can get it from Amazon.