Atlas›Domain XII · Complementary, energy & biofield›Guide 076
Guide XII-076

Rife frequency devices

Royal Raymond Rife1930San Diego
A 34 · L 54 · M 1210 interventions in the Trinity explorer
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[source: …] where a claim comes from[uncertain] not confirmed in a primary source[synthesis] the writer's reconstruction

1. What it was

Version followed: historical account of Royal Raymond Rife's 1930s "beam ray" claims, the post-1987 revival of "Rife machines" (clinic, home-clinic and mail-order devices prosecuted in the US and investigated in Australia), and today's consumer "Rife" or "frequency" generators sold online. Not a treatment for any disease; this is a harm account for clinicians.

Who and when. Royal Raymond Rife, an American inventor who came to San Diego in 1906 and died there in 1971 [source: San Diego Reader] (birth year given as 1888 [uncertain: secondary, unverified]), built a high-magnification optical microscope that the Los Angeles Times wrote about in 1931 [source: San Diego Reader], and in the 1930s developed a frequency generator; the frequency said to destroy an organism was called its "mortal oscillatory rate" [source: Healthline]. He claimed a "Beam Ray" could destroy specific microorganisms without harming others, ideas scientists disputed [source: San Diego Reader]. A San Diego newspaper reported in May 1938 that he had isolated a cancer organism and a way to arrest it, while quoting him that the organism might not be the direct cause of cancer; in 1939 the San Diego Medical Society banned use of his instruments [source: San Diego Reader, summarising the San Diego Evening Tribune]. That he later blamed the rejection of his work on organised medicine is [uncertain: secondary, unverified]. Cancer Research UK dates the devices to the 1920s and calls them "Rife frequency generators" [source: Cancer Research UK]. The Sydney Morning Herald places the idea in a line running from Albert Abrams through Rife to James Bare: the theory that disease-causing organisms can be destroyed by specific electrical frequencies, a theory it reported mainstream scientists unanimously reject [source: Hills 2000, SMH].

The revival. Barry Lynes's book The Cancer Cure That Worked (1987) [source: San Diego Reader] revived interest in Rife machines in the 1980s, claiming that the American Medical Association and government agencies had covered up evidence for Rife's work [source: Healthline]; the American Cancer Society's description of the book as written in a style typical of conspiracy theorists is [uncertain: secondary, unverified]. From then on, devices bearing Rife's name were sold for cancer, AIDS and many other conditions, delivering radio waves, pulsed electric current or pulsed electromagnetic fields [uncertain: secondary, unverified]. In Australia the Lynes book and about 60 websites supported sales; devices were advertised in an alternative-health magazine with a free-call number as a "Walkman-style" device for everything from colds to cancer [source: Hills 2000, SMH].

Stated rationale (as supporters hold it). Every medical condition has its own electromagnetic frequency; the machine "finds" that frequency and sends a matching impulse to kill or disable diseased cells or organisms [source: Cancer Research UK; Full Fact]. A recurring sales story is that a proven cure was buried by the cancer industry to protect profits [source: Logically Facts]. Social-media versions claim Rife's device can cure "over 5000 diseases including all cancers" [source: Full Fact]. These are the method's own claims. Evidence status in one line: Cancer Research UK states there is "no reliable evidence that the Rife machine works as a cure for cancer", and the device has not been through standard scientific testing [source: Cancer Research UK].

How it was sold to patients and referrers.

  • Through practitioners and clinics: at least a dozen Australian clinics offered "Rife therapy" in 2000, some run by qualified doctors, charging by the hour [source: Hills 2000, SMH]; in Washington State a couple ran a clandestine clinic from their home, where the husband posed as a medical doctor without any licence or degree and earned about $808,000 in fees from 1995 [source: Willmsen & Berens 2007, Seattle Times].
  • Direct to consumers: one San Diego seller, James Folsom, with co-conspirators, shipped more than 9,000 units for over $8 million between 1997 and 2008 under names including NatureTronics, AstroPulse, BioSolutions, Energy Wellness and Global Wellness; prices were roughly $1,000–1,200 to distributors and nearly $2,000 retail [source: San Diego Business Journal; NBC San Diego 2010]. The distributor tier was described by the American Cancer Society (1994) as a "pyramid-like, multilevel marketing scheme" [uncertain: secondary, unverified].
  • With a regulatory veneer: Folsom's devices were labelled "for investigational purposes", which prosecutors said led buyers to believe he had an FDA exemption [source: San Diego Business Journal]. In Australia one device was "listed" with the Therapeutic Goods Administration in 1996 without any test of effectiveness; the listing was cancelled in April 2000 [source: Hills 2000, SMH].
  • At conferences: more than 300 people attended a 2006 Rife International Health Conference in Seattle where dozens of unregistered devices were sold [source: Willmsen & Berens 2007, Seattle Times].
  • Today: online posts and videos repeat the suppressed-cure story [source: Full Fact; Logically Facts]; devices cost from hundreds to thousands of pounds [source: Cancer Research UK].

2. What was actually done

A typical course, as courts, regulators and journalists reported it. No frequencies, settings or session lengths are given here.

  1. Finding it. The person, often recently diagnosed with cancer or another serious illness, meets the idea through a book, website, video, conference, magazine advertisement or an acquaintance who sells devices [source: Hills 2000, SMH; Seattle Times 2007]. The pitch: every illness has a frequency, the cure was suppressed, there are no side effects [source: Cancer Research UK; Logically Facts].
  2. "Assessment" and selection. Selection was by diagnosis or by symptom list: the operator or the buyer chose the programme labelled for the named illness. Folsom's buyers were directed to settings for conditions ranging from AIDS and diabetes to stroke, ulcers and worms [source: San Diego Business Journal; NBC San Diego 2010]. Related "energy medicine" devices sold alongside Rife machines also claimed to diagnose disease, and the Seattle Times reported them being used to misdiagnose [source: Willmsen & Berens 2008, Seattle Times].
  3. Consent, pressure and secrecy. Patients were told medicine had suppressed the cure. At the Washington home clinic, patients, their families and undercover state investigators were told to keep quiet because the clinic would get into trouble for its "unapproved and clandestine" work [source: Willmsen & Berens 2007, Seattle Times]. Practitioners presented themselves as doctors or as running "experimental" treatment [source: Seattle Times 2007; Hills 2000, SMH]. Patients sometimes refused surgery or other treatment their own physician had urged [source: Willmsen & Berens 2007, Seattle Times].
  4. Setting and staff. A private home, a back-room clinic, a naturopathic or "complementary medicine" clinic, or the person's own home with a bought device; staff were usually without medical training [source: Seattle Times 2007; Hills 2000, SMH].
  5. The session. The person is connected to the machine: electrical energy is usually delivered through the hands or feet, by holding electrodes, resting on pads, or with a hand-held glass "plasma" tube connected to the machine [source: Cancer Research UK]. In home units, users attached themselves to the device and turned a dial to the setting for their illness [source: San Diego Business Journal]. One Australian device examined by an electronics magazine was a battery, wiring, a switch, a timer and copper tubing, delivering an almost undetectable current [source: Hills 2000, SMH].
  6. Frequency and duration of the course. Sessions were repeated over weeks to months, for example more than a year of treatment for one man with testicular cancer [source: Willmsen & Berens 2007, Seattle Times]. Clinic fees accrued per session; home buyers paid up front, sometimes by borrowing against pensions or selling property [source: Hills 2000, SMH].
  7. Named variants. Rife machines were also called wave-form generators and were used together with other unregistered devices such as a "Vibe Machine" and a pain-relief device [source: Willmsen & Berens 2007, Seattle Times]. Other branded lines: NatureTronics, AstroPulse, BioSolutions, Energy Wellness, Global Wellness [source: San Diego Business Journal]; Australia's "PET" (Personal Electro Therapy) machine [source: Hills 2000, SMH].
  8. Judging "progress". Progress was judged by testimonials, how the person felt, and coincidental changes. A temporary remission in one man with prostate cancer was credited to the machine, after which he discarded his prescribed medication; the cancer returned and spread [source: Hills 2000, SMH].
  9. Non-response and refusal. When illness progressed, the response reported was more of the same or escalation abroad: one family took a young child from radiotherapy to a Rife machine and then to a Rife clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, where he died [source: Hills 2000, SMH].

3. How it caused harm

  • Abandonment or delay of effective treatment (the main mechanism). The device does nothing to the disease, so the harm is what the person stops or never starts.
    • Washington State: a 32-year-old man with testicular cancer refused the immediate surgery his physician recommended, paid several thousand dollars for device treatments over more than a year, and died of cancer in December 2004, leaving a wife and three young children. The FDA investigator wrote in the search warrant that unless the device use stopped, "these persons will likely die" [source: Willmsen & Berens 2007, Seattle Times].
    • Australia and New Zealand: at least four people died after switching to Rife therapy by 2000. They included a 69-year-old with inoperable prostate cancer (died 1997) and a five-year-old with jaw cancer taken out of hospital treatment; his oncologist estimated a 60–70 per cent chance of cure with conventional therapy [source: Hills 2000, SMH].
    • Minnesota: practitioner Shelvie Rettmann was fined US$100,000, ordered to refund patients and banned from the health-care industry after two patients died of cancer; the Wisconsin and Minnesota attorneys-general called the therapy "health quackery at its worst" [source: Hills 2000, SMH].
    • Related energy devices: a woman in Tulsa relying on a device instead of doctors died of undiagnosed leukaemia; an infant in Los Angeles was taken out of chemotherapy for an electromagnetic pulsing machine and died within months [source: Seattle Times 2007].
  • Misdiagnosis and false reassurance. Devices sold as able to "find" disease gave false results; one widower examined his late wife's device software and found it appeared to generate results randomly [source: Seattle Times 2007].
  • Direct physical harm. Supporters claim no side effects, but electrical shocks and rashes have been reported [source: Cancer Research UK].
  • Financial harm. Families sold homes or borrowed against pensions [source: Hills 2000, SMH]; a retiree with cancer emptied her bank account to buy a device [source: Seattle Times 2007]; sellers took millions [source: NBC San Diego 2010].
  • Psychological sequelae [synthesis]. Hope followed by collapse when disease advances; guilt and regret in patients and surviving relatives; isolation produced by secrecy instructions; family conflict between members who supported and opposed the choice; complicated grief after a death judged preventable; shame at having been defrauded.
  • Who was most at risk. People with newly diagnosed or frightening cancers; people with curable cancers who feared surgery or chemotherapy; children, whose treatment decisions were made by parents [source: Hills 2000, SMH; Seattle Times 2007]; older people on pensions; people already distrustful of medicine [synthesis].

Legal outcomes.

  • 2007–2008: Donald and Sharon Brandt of Mount Vernon, Washington, were indicted on three counts involving misbranded and adulterated medical devices (wave-form generators and a "Vibe Machine") after an FDA and Washington State Department of Health investigation [source: Willmsen & Berens 2007, Seattle Times; US Attorney's Office, W.D. Washington, December 2007]. In 2008 both pleaded guilty to causing the introduction of an adulterated medical device into interstate commerce and were sentenced in federal court in Seattle to custody or home detention and a joint fine [source: US Attorney's Office, W.D. Washington, August 2008].
  • 2009–2010: James Folsom was convicted by a federal jury in San Diego on 26 felony counts and sentenced to 51 months in prison and a $250,000 fine [source: San Diego Business Journal; NBC San Diego 2010].
  • 2007–2008: Washington's Attorney General and Health Secretary asked the FDA to ban unproven energy devices industry-wide, noting sellers simply rename or repackage machines [source: Willmsen & Berens 2008, Seattle Times].

4. Recognising it today

Phrases and rationales that signal it [source: Cancer Research UK; Full Fact; Logically Facts; Hills 2000, SMH; San Diego Business Journal]:

  • "Every disease has its own frequency"; "matching the frequency of the cancer cell"; "resonance"; "Mortal Oscillatory Rate".
  • "The cure that was suppressed"; "the cancer industry buried it to protect profits"; "The Cancer Cure That Worked".
  • "Cures over 5000 diseases"; one device for cancer, AIDS, Lyme, parasites, diabetes, stroke and colds.
  • "No side effects"; "gentle, non-invasive"; "you can do it at home".
  • "For investigational purposes", "experimental", or "research use" labels that suggest regulatory permission.
  • Product words: Rife machine, Rife therapy, frequency generator, wave-form generator, plasma tube, zapper, PET machine, and brand rebrandings (NatureTronics, AstroPulse, BioSolutions, Energy Wellness, Global Wellness).
  • A related zapper built on near-identical circuitry was sold under Hulda Clark's name [uncertain: secondary, unverified]; see also other device entries in this family.

How it reaches clients now [synthesis, drawing on the sources above]. Social-media videos and posts; online forums for chronic or contested illness; distributor and multilevel-selling networks; alternative-health conferences; practitioners who rent session time on a device; family members who buy a device for a relative with cancer. Washington officials noted that sellers rename or repackage devices when one is targeted [source: Willmsen & Berens 2008, Seattle Times].

Red flags in a colleague's or service's practice [synthesis].

  • A device in the room offered to clients for physical illness, or referrals to someone who runs one.
  • Claims that a device can detect or diagnose disease, organisms or "blockages".
  • Advice, even indirect, to delay or decline surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy or medication.
  • Requests for secrecy from the client's doctors or family (a documented feature of the Washington home clinic) [source: Willmsen & Berens 2007, Seattle Times].
  • Selling devices, frequency programmes or distributorships to clients, or recruiting clients into sales; payment by large up-front sums.
  • Use with children, or with anyone whose treatment team has not been told.

How legitimate techniques differ [synthesis, with sourced points marked].

  • Regulated medical uses of energy (for example radiotherapy, which uses high-energy radiation) are prescribed by treating clinicians, tested in trials and delivered under medical supervision [source: Cancer Research UK contrasts the low energy of Rife machines with x-rays and radiotherapy]. High-intensity focused ultrasound has a good evidence base for some cancers [source: Full Fact]. Some low-energy wave research exists, but it is experimental, used different frequencies from Rife machines, and is not a reason to use a consumer device [source: Cancer Research UK].
  • Relaxation, sound and music practices used in psychotherapy aim at calm and coping; they do not claim to kill organisms or tumours, are never offered instead of medical care, and involve no electrical contact with the body.
  • Integrative oncology (entry 172) is complementary to standard treatment, never instead of it.

5. What to do instead and how to help those harmed

Recommended alternatives. For the physical illness: the treatment the person's oncology or medical team recommends, with second opinions from accredited centres where the person wants one; palliative care when cure is not possible; integrative oncology services that offer complementary support alongside, never instead of, standard care (entry 172) [synthesis]. Cancer Research UK advises not stopping conventional cancer treatment for an unproven therapy and offers a nurse helpline [source: Cancer Research UK]. For the psychological side: psycho-oncology, and for health anxiety or somatic symptom presentations, the established approaches in Domain II. The psychotherapist never uses, sells, recommends or supplies a frequency device. Everything below is the therapist's own work and is [synthesis] unless a source is tagged.

Asking about device use without judgement

  • Purpose: Find out early whether a client, or someone they care for, is using or considering a frequency device, so risk can be seen. Use at intake with anyone facing serious illness and whenever a client mentions "frequencies", "Rife", "zapping" or a suppressed cure.
  • Steps: Ask routinely about all treatments, conventional and complementary. Ask what device, who supplied it, whether the treating doctor knows, whether any treatment has been stopped or delayed, and what it has cost. Record it factually in the notes.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Lots of people facing cancer try things outside the hospital. Is there anything you're using or thinking about, such as devices, supplements or clinics? I ask everyone, and I'm not here to judge."
  • Watch for: Hesitation or secrecy (secrecy was a documented feature of the Washington clinic [source: Willmsen & Berens 2007, Seattle Times]); a missed or declined appointment; disclosure that grows as trust builds. Working: the client tells you more over time and starts to mention it to their doctor.

Exploring meaning, hopes and the explanatory model

  • Purpose: Understand what the device offers emotionally: control, hope, avoidance of feared surgery or chemotherapy, distrust of medicine, belonging to an online community, or loyalty to the relative who bought it.
  • Steps: Ask how they understand the illness and the device. Reflect the need underneath (control, safety, being heard). Explore past experiences with doctors. Separate the need, which is legitimate, from the device, which is the vehicle.
  • Example language (illustrative): "What does using the machine give you that the hospital hasn't?" "It sounds like what matters most is feeling that you have some say in this."
  • Watch for: Fear of a specific treatment (pain, disfigurement, side effects) that could be addressed by the medical team; conspiracy framing that hardens when challenged. Working: the client names the fear itself, not only the belief.

Autonomy-respecting decision support

  • Purpose: Help an adult with capacity make an informed, values-based choice about their medical care without coercion, from the therapist or from sellers or family.
  • Steps: Ask what the client knows about the doctor's recommendation and expected outcomes, and whether they have heard these directly. Help them write questions for their oncologist (chance of benefit with and without treatment, what delay would mean, side-effect management). Ask what the device seller has promised and whether that would survive the same questions. Offer neutral information sources such as the Cancer Research UK page and nurse line [source: Cancer Research UK]. Accept the client's decision; keep the door open. Do not debate the theory.
  • Example language (illustrative): "It's your decision, and I'll keep working with you whatever you choose. Before you decide, would it help to get the same kind of clear answers from your oncologist and from the person selling the device?"
  • Watch for: Decisions made under pressure, deadlines or secrecy; a seller discouraging contact with doctors; doubts about capacity (delirium, brain metastases, severe depression), which need medical assessment. Working: the client has a conversation with the treating team and makes a decision they can explain in their own terms.

Coordinating with the treating physician, oncology and palliative teams

  • Purpose: Make sure the people responsible for the physical illness know what is happening.
  • Steps: Ask consent to contact the treating doctor; share only what is needed. Encourage the client to tell their doctor themselves, and rehearse it if helpful. Where the client is stopping or delaying treatment, ask the team for a frank, non-shaming discussion and early palliative-care involvement where appropriate. Leave questions about medicines to the prescriber or pharmacist.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Would you be OK with me letting Dr X know you've been using the machine, so they can talk it through with you properly?"
  • Watch for: Refusal of consent (respect it, record it, revisit it); risk that overrides confidentiality, such as a child's care. Working: the client attends appointments and the team is informed.

Working with families: conflict, children and safeguarding

  • Purpose: Address family conflict over a relative's choice, and protect children.
  • Steps: With adults, help family members move from argument to concern, from "you're being conned" to "I'm scared of losing you"; support carers who bought the device. With children, treat removal from effective cancer treatment, or substitution of a device for medical care, as a safeguarding concern: two documented deaths involved young children taken out of chemotherapy or radiotherapy [source: Hills 2000, SMH; Seattle Times 2007]. Follow local child-protection procedures and inform the child's treating team. Seek the child's assent and views in an age-appropriate way.
  • Example language (illustrative): To a parent: "I can see how much you want your child to get better. Because they're no longer having the treatment their doctors recommended, I have to share this with the people responsible for their safety. I'd rather do that with you than around you."
  • Watch for: Pressure on the child to keep secrets; missed hospital appointments; plans to travel abroad for treatment (one documented death followed this route [source: Hills 2000, SMH]). Working: the treating team and safeguarding services are involved promptly.

Grief, regret and guilt after harm

  • Purpose: Support people whose illness progressed, or whose relative died, after choosing a device over treatment.
  • Steps: Assess for complicated grief, depression and suicide risk using standard risk-assessment practice. Validate that the choice was made under fear and deliberate deception; sellers were prosecuted precisely because they targeted vulnerable people. Work with self-blame and blame of others (including the relative who chose the device). Use grief-focused and compassion-focused methods; refer for palliative or bereavement services.
  • Example language (illustrative): "You made the best choice you could with what you were told, and what you were told was false. Both of those things are true."
  • Watch for: Rumination on "if only"; family rifts over who is to blame; anger turned inward. Working: the person can hold regret without being consumed by it.

Financial harm and exploitation

  • Purpose: Address losses and ongoing exploitation: device purchases, clinic fees, distributorships, borrowed money [source: Hills 2000, SMH; NBC San Diego 2010].
  • Steps: Ask directly about money spent and debts. Help the client stop further spending and leave distributor arrangements. Signpost to consumer-protection advice, debt advice and refund routes. For a vulnerable adult who is being exploited, follow adult-safeguarding procedures.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Can we look at what this has cost so far, and whether there's anything you want to stop paying for?"
  • Watch for: Shame preventing disclosure; continued payments; recruitment of others. Working: spending stops and the client seeks redress if they wish.

Reporting

  • Purpose: Get harmful selling stopped.
  • Steps: With the client's consent where possible: report devices sold with health claims to the national device regulator (US investigations of Rife sellers were led by the FDA with the state Department of Health [source: Willmsen & Berens 2007, Seattle Times]; in Australia the Therapeutic Goods Administration cancelled a device listing [source: Hills 2000, SMH]; in the UK the MHRA [uncertain]). Report misleading advertising to the advertising or consumer regulator or state attorney-general (attorneys-general in Washington, Minnesota and Wisconsin acted [source: Willmsen & Berens 2008, Seattle Times; Hills 2000, SMH]). Report a registered professional who offers or promotes the devices to their licensing board. Use child and adult safeguarding routes where relevant.
  • Example language (illustrative): "What happened to you may be happening to others. Would you like help reporting the seller?"
  • Watch for: Fear of retaliation or of being judged as foolish. Working: the report is made and the client feels it was their choice.

Ethics for the therapist

  • Purpose: Keep the therapist's own conduct clear.
  • Steps: Never sell, supply, recommend or operate frequency devices; decline any referral or commission arrangement; keep notes of disclosures and actions; consult a supervisor on confidentiality-versus-risk decisions. Check your professional body's ethics code on harm avoidance and conflicts of interest [synthesis].
  • Example language (illustrative): "I don't use or recommend these devices, but I'm glad to keep talking about what you're going through."
  • Watch for: Pressure from clients or colleagues to endorse a device. Working: your role is clear and the relationship holds.

Problems you may meet

  • Client gets defensive or leaves: stop arguing the science; return to their fear and hopes; say the door stays open.
  • Client insists the device is working: ask how they and their doctor will know (scans, tests), and agree to look at that evidence together. A temporary improvement was credited to a device in a documented death [source: Hills 2000, SMH].
  • Family pushes the therapist to "make them stop": explain your role; offer family sessions.
  • Overwhelm near end of life: prioritise comfort, palliative referral and meaning over the device question.

Sources

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