The Amazing Discoveries of Royal Rife

There are all sorts of treatments for cancer, but to date a “cancer cure” has not been found – or so I thought. In fact, we can’t even agree on the cause or causes of cancer. One thing is for sure: treating cancer – whatever the cause -- is big business and growing.

For some time now I have been reading about the history of cancer research, including Dr. Devra Davis’ book “The Secret History of the War on Cancer” which focuses on environmental toxins and carcinogens. The theme of this book is that economic interests – not science – drives public health policy. The tobacco industry’s 30 year campaign to undermine evidence linking cigarettes to lung cancer is but one example Davis cites. If cell phones were definitively proven to lead to brain tumors, do you think the cell phone industry would act any differently than the tobacco companies did?

Another book, “Toxic Treatments: Surviving the Cancer Wars” by Penelope Williams, speaks to how offshore alternative treatments, offered in places like Bermuda and Mexico and often condemned as being scams operated by medical quacks, have, in fact, been started by dedicated cancer researchers who were formerly employed at some of the world’s most prestigious cancer research centers. No doubt there are some medical quacks selling false hope to cancer patients. But surely some alternative treatments have merit, even if the science for why something works is not understood. Being unorthodox and working outside established medical dogma, however, looks to be a lousy career choice for cancer researchers.

One of my friends, who use to work as a consultant to the National Cancer Institute, explained to me how difficult it is to get cancer research funded unless the proposed research falls within the realm of known science and is already “practically proven.”

I think by now anyone interested in cancer research has heard of John Kanzius, a Cape Coral cancer patient who was experimenting with radio waves and nano particles to treat cancers of all sorts. Kanzius was featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes in 2008 as the unlikely, self-taught medical-industry-outsider who just may have found a cure for cancer. The basic idea Kanzius came up with is to inject patients with metallic nano particles that attach to cancer cells and then heat the particles and destroy the cells using harmless radio waves. It’s a breakthrough idea, but it is not exactly new.

Dr. Royal Rife acclaimed by his biographer as “one of the greatest scientific geniuses of the 20th century” was a respected microbiologist and physicist. Rife began researching a cure for cancer in 1920. By 1932 he had isolated a virus found in every form of cancer, called the BX virus, and learned how to destroy it with electromagnetic (radio) frequency waves (the way sound waves can destroy glass.)

Rife worked with the most respected researchers in America in that era. In 1934, a Special Research Committee at University of Southern California oversaw the laboratory research and cancer clinic that treated 16 terminally ill patients with Rife’s frequency machine. All 16 patients in the famous 1934 clinic were “cured” of their cancer within months.

Follow-up clinics run by USC and independent physicians between 1935 and 1937 confirmed the results. So why has no one heard of Royal Rife and his fantastic cancer cure? In the 1987 book called “The Rife Report” biographer, Barry Lynes, assigns primary blame to Morris Fishbein, alleged to be a shakedown artist who headed the all powerful American Medical Association from the mid-1920s until 1949.

When Fishbein’s overtures to buy Rife’s technology were turned away, Lynes alleges Fishbein used his position to shut down Rife’s company and discredit his reputation and research. It’s a complex tale well worth reading.

A Dose of Reality

I’m participating in a double-blind, Stage III study of a lung cancer vaccine. Every six weeks I drive just over 2 hours from Punta Gorda to New Port Richey to receive my injections. (Because it’s a blind study, I don’t know if I am getting the experimental drug or sugar water.) On my visit this past Monday I saw my study doctor, who exclaimed, “This drug must be working!” I said to the physician, “How can you know that? This is a double blind study. Neither you nor I know if I am getting the real deal or a placebo.”

The study doctor admitted that he doesn’t know for sure. But, he explained, it’s highly unusual for someone to do as well as I appear to be doing, given my diagnosis. He naturally concluded that it must be the trial drug.

Then I asked him: “In your 30 year career as an oncologist, how many inoperable Stage IIIA lung cancer patients have you seen survive 5 years or more?” His answer was depressing. “Only one…and that woman survived just over five years after undergoing chemo nearly the entire time.”

The conversation was a real downer for me. I should be encouraged by the fact I am doing so well relative to most lung cancer patients. But his comment about late stage lung cancer’s low survival rate shocked me back into the reality of my diagnosis. Despite my healthy appearance, I face a low probability of being a long term survivor. The drug I am taking has been shown in previous trials to help extend life for one to three years, but it is not a cure. Eventually, the cancer returns. That reality hit me this week like a ton of bricks.

Until Monday I was thinking of myself as “cured”. In fact, a few weeks ago I ordered a vanity license plate for my car that reads “I m Cured”. Now I hope I haven’t jinxed myself! My next CT/PET scan is in a few weeks. We’ll see what the results bring.

This past December I elected to have my infusion port removed. It was an act of faith that I will not need more chemotherapy in the foreseeable future. It gave me a psychological lift to have that lump of metal out of my chest. I felt restored to my former self and more optimistic about the future.

The only other reminders that I have lung cancer have been my cloudy eyesight and the neuropathy in my feet and hands. I had my eyes checked a year ago and was shocked to learn that I have developed cataracts in both eyes. I did not know it at the time I was having treatments, but apparently the steroids used in chemotherapy can cause cataracts.

I noticed that my eyesight has gotten worse. I can hit a golf ball but I can’t see it land. It’s hard for me to read the computer screen at work and at night the glare of on-coming headlights has made it harder to see the road.

My vision has deteriorated to the point where I decided I need to do something about it. After consulting with my colleague from the community clinic, Dr. David Klein, I decided to go ahead with cataract surgery and take care of this problem now rather than wait. Were I to have a recurrence of cancer that requires chemotherapy, corrective eye surgery would most definitely be off the table.

On Thursday I went into the hospital to have the cataract in my right eye removed and an artificial lens implanted. I stayed home Friday to recover. That’s three out of five days of work missed this week for health related issues. Worst of all, golf is out of the question this weekend.

I guess I should be grateful I’m doing so well!