Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries (22 page)

THE MAN WHO FOUND THE CURE FOR CANCER

In 1913, a man with a love for machines and a scientific curiosity, arrived in San Diego after driving across the country from New York. He had been born in Elkhorn, Nebraska, was 25 years old, and very happily married. He was about to start a new life and open the way to a science of health which will be honored far into the future. His name was Royal Raymond Rife. Close friends, who loved his while being awed by his genius, called h i m Roy. gentleness and humility Royal R. Rife was fascinated by bacteriology, microscopes and electronics. For the next seven years (including a mysterious period in the Navy during World War I in which he travelled to Europe to investigate foreign laboratories for the U.S. government), he thought about and experimented in a variety of fields as well as mastered the mechanical skills necessary to build instruments such as the world had never imagined.

By the late 1920s, the first phase of his work was completed. He had built his first microscope, one that broke the existing principles, and he had constructed instruments which enabled him to electronically destroy specific pathological micro-organisms.

Rife believed that the minuteness of the viruses made it impossible to stain them with the existing acid or aniline dye stains. He'd have to find another way. Somewhere along the way, he made an intuitive leap often associated with the greatest scientific discoveries. He conceived first the idea and then the method of staining the virus with light. He began building a microscope which would enable a frequency of light to coordinate with the chemical constituents of the particle or micro-organism under observation.

Rife's second microscope was finished in 1929. In an article which appeared in The Los Angeles Times Magazine on December 27, 1931, the existence of the light-staining method was reported to the public:

Bacilli may thus be studied by their light, exactly as astronomers study moons, suns, and stars by the light which comes from them through telescopes. The bacilli studied are living ones, not corpses killed by stains.

Throughout most of this period, Rife also had been seeking a way to identify and then destroy the micro-organism which caused cancer. His cancer research began in 1922. It would take him until 1932 to isolate the responsible micro-organism which he later named simply the "BX virus."

THE EARLY 1930s

In 1931, the two men who provided the greatest professional support to Royal R. Rife came into his life. Dr. Arthur I. Kendall, Director of Medical Research at Northwestern University Medical School in Illinois, and Dr. Milbank Johnson, a member of the board of directors at Pasadena Hospital in California and an influential power in Los Angeles medical circles.

Dr. Kendall had invented a protein culture medium (called "K Medium" after its inventor) which enabled the "filtrable virus' portions of a bacteria to be isolated and to continue reproducing. This claim directly contradicted the Rockefeller Institute's Dr. Thomas Riven who in 1926 had authoritatively stated that a virus Deeded a living tissue for reproduction. Rife, Kendall and others were to prove within a year that it was possible to cultivate viruses artificially. Rivers, in his ignorance and obstinacy, was responsible for suppressing one of the greatest advances ever made in medical knowledge.

Kendall arrived in California in mid-November 1931 and Johnson introduced him to Rife. Kendall brought his "K Medium" to Rife and Rife brought his microscope to Kendall.

A typhoid germ was put in the "K Medium," triple-filtered through the finest filter available, and the results examined under Rife's microscope. Tiny, distinct bodies stained in a turquoise-blue light were visible. The virus cultures grew in the "K Medium" and were visible. The viruses could be "light"-stained and then classified according to their own colours under Rife's unique microscope.

A later report which appeared in the Smithsonian's annual publication gives a hint of the totally original microscopic technology which enabled man to see a deadly virus-size micro-organism in its live state for the first time (the electron microscope of later years kills its specimens):

Then they were examined under the Rife microscope where the filterable virus form of typhoid bacillus, emitting a blue spectrum color, caused the plane of polarization to be deviated 4.8 degrees plus. When the opposite angle of refraction was obtained by means of adjusting the polarizing prisms to minus 4.8 degrees and the cultures of viruses were illuminated by the monochromatic beams coordinated with the chemical constituents of the typhoid bacillus, small, oval, actively motile, bright turquoise-blue bodies were observed at 5,000 times magnification, in high contrast to the colorless and motionless debris of the medium. These tests were repeated 18 times to verify the results.

Following the success, Dr. Milbank Johnson quickly arranged a dinner in honour of the two men in order that the discovery could be announced and discussed. More than 30 of the most prominent medical doctors, pathologists, and bacteriologists in Los Angeles attended this historic event on November 20, 1931. Among those in attendance were Dr. Alvin G. Foord, who 20 years later would indicate he knew little about Rife's discoveries, and Dr. George Dock who would serve on the University of Southern California's Special Research Committee overseeing the clinical work until he, too, would "go over" to the opposition.

On November 22, 1931, The Los Angeles Times reported this important medical gathering and its scientific significance:

Scientific discoveries of the greatest magnitude, including a discussion of the world's most powerful microscope recently perfected after 14 years' effort by Dr. Royal R. Rife of San Diego, were described Friday evening to members of the medical profession, bacteriologists and pathologists at a dinner given by Dr. Milbank Johnson in honor of Dr. Rife and Dr. A. I. Kendall.

Before the gathering of distinguished men, Dr. Kendall told of his researches in cultivating the typhoid bacillus on his new "K Medium." The typhoid bacillus is nonfilterable and is large enough to be seen easily with microscopes in general use. Through the use of "Medium K," Dr. Kendall said, the organism is so altered that it cannot be seen with ordinary microscopes and it becomes small enough to be ultra-microscopic or filterable. It then can be changed back to the microscopic or nonfilterable form.

Through the use of Dr. Rife's powerful microscope, said to have a visual power of magnification to 17,000 times, compared with 2,000 times of which the ordinary microscope is capable, Dr. Kendall said he could see the typhoid bacilli in the filterable or formerly invisible stage. It is probably the first time the minute filterable (virus) organisms ever have been seen.

The strongest microscope now in use can magnify between 2,000 and 2,500 times. Dr. Rife, by an ingenious arrangement of lenses applying an entirely new optical principle and by introducing double quartz prisms and powerful illuminating lights, has devised a microscope with a lowest magnification of 5,000 times and a maximum working magnification of 17,000 times.

The new microscope, scientists predict, also will prove a development of the first magnitude. Frankly dubious about the perfection of a microscope which appears to transcend the limits set by optic science, Dr. Johnson's guests expressed themselves as delighted with the visual demonstration and heartily accorded both Dr. Rife and Dr. Kendall a foremost place in the world's rank of scientists.

Five days later, The Los Angeles Times published a photo of Rife and Kendall with the microscope. It was the first time a picture of the super microscope had appeared in public. The headline read, "The World's Most Powerful Microscope."

Meanwhile, Rife and Kendall had prepared an article for the December 1931 issue of California and Western Medicine. "Observations on Bacillus Typhosus in its Filtrable State" described what Rife and Kendall had done and seen. The journal was the official publication of the state medical associations of California, Nevada and Utah.
The prestigious Science magazine then carried an article which alerted the scientific community of the entire nation. The December 11, 1931 Science News supplement included a section titled, "Filterable Bodies Seen With The Rife Microscope." The article described Kendall's filtera b l e m e d i u m c u l t u r e , the turquoise-blue bodies which were the filtered out of the typhoid bacillus, and Rife's microscope. It included the following description:

The light used with Dr. Rite's microscope is polarized, that is, it is passing through crystals that stop all rays except those vibrating in one particular plane. By means of a double reflecting prism built into the instrument, it is possible to turn this plane of vibration in any desired direction, controlling the illumination of the minute objects in the field very exactly.

On December 27, 1931, The Los Angeles Times reported that Rife had demonstrated the microscope at a meeting of 250 scientists. The article explained:

This is a new kind of magnifier, and the laws governing microscopes may not apply to it. . . Dr. Rife has developed an instrument that may revolutionize laboratory methods and enable bacteriologists like Dr. Kendall, to identify the germs that produce about 50 diseases whose causes are unknown .. .

Soon Kendall was invited to speak before the Association of American Physicians. The presentation occurred May 3 and 4, 1932 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. And there Dr. Thomas Rivers and Hans Zinsser, two highly influential medical men, stopped the scientific process. Their opposition meant that the development of Rife's discoveries would be slowed. Professional microbiologists would be cautious in even conceding the possibility that Rife and Kendall might have broken new ground. The depression was at its worst. The Rockefeller Institute was not only a source of funding but powerful in the corridors of professional recognition. A great crime resulted because of the uninformed, cruel and unscientific actions of Rivers and Zinsser.

The momentum was slowed at the moment when Rife's discoveries could have "broken out" and triggered a chain reaction of research, clinical treatment and the beginnings of an entirely new health system. By the end of 1932, Rife could destroy the typhus bacteria, the polio virus, the herpes virus, the cancer virus and other viruses in a culture and in experimental animals. Human treatment was only a step away.

The opposition of Rivers and Zinsser in 1932 had a devastating impact on the history of twentieth century medicine. (Zinsser's Bacteriology, in an updated version, is still a standard textbook.) Unfortunately, there were few esteemed bacteriologists who were not frightened or awed by Rivers.

But there were two exceptions to this generally unheroic crowd. Christopher Bird's article, "What Has Become Of The Rife Microscope?" which appeared in the March 1976 New Age Journal, reports:

In the midst of the venom and acerbity the only colleague to come to Kendall's aid was the grand old man of bacteriology, and first teacher of the subject in the United States, Dr. William H. "Popsy" Welch, who evidently looked upon Kendall's work with some regard.

Welch was the foremost pathologist in America at one time. The medical library at Johns Hopkins University is named after him. He rose and said, "Kendall's observation marks a distinct advance in medicine." It did little good. By then Rivers and Zinsser were the powers in the field.

Kendall's other supporter was Dr. Edward C. Rosenow of the Mayo Clinic's Division of Experimental Bacteriology. (The Mayo Clinic was considered then and is today one of the outstanding research and treatment clinics in the world. The Washington Post of January 6, 1987 wrote, "To many in the medical community, the Mayo Clinic is 'the standard' against which other medical centres are judged.") On July 5-7, 1932, just two months after Kendall's public humiliation, the Mayo Clinic's Rosenow met with Kendall and Rife at Kendall's Laboratory at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago.

"The oval, motile, turquoise-blue virus were demonstrated and shown unmistakably," Rosenow declared in the "Proceedings of the Staff Meetings of the Mayo Clinic, July 13, 1932, Rochester, Minnesota." The virus for herpes was also seen. On August 26, 1932, Science magazine published Rosenow's report, "Observations with the Rife Microscope of Filter Passing Forms of Micro-organisms."

In the article, Rosenow stated:

There can be no question of the filtrable turquoise-blue bodies described by Kendall. They are not visible by the ordinary methods of illumination and magnification . . . Examination under the Rife microscope of specimens, containing objects visible with the ordinary microscope, leaves no doubt of the accurate visualization of objects or particulate matter by direct observation at the extremely high magnification (calculated to be 8,000 diameters) obtained with this instrument.

Three days after departing from Rife in Chicago, Rosenow wrote to Rife from the Mayo Clinic:

After seeing what your wonderful microscope will do, and after pondering over the significance of what you revealed with its use during those three strenuous and memorable days spent in Dr. Kendall's laboratory, I hope you will take the necessary time to describe how you obtain what physicists consider the impossible. . . . As I visualize the matter, your ingenious method of illumination with the intense monochromatic beam of light is of even greater importance than the enormously high magnification . . .

Rosenow was right. The unique "colour frequency" staining method was the great breakthrough. Years later, after the arrival of television, an associate of the then deceased Rife would explain, "The viruses were stained with the frequency of light just like colours are tuned in on television sets." It was the best nontechnical description ever conceived.

"BX" — THE VIRUS OF CANCER

Rife began using Kendall's "K Medium" in 1931 in his search for the cancer virus. In 1932, he obtained an unulcerated breast mass that was checked for malignancy from the Paradise Valley Sanitarium of National City, California. But the initial cancer cultures failed to produce the virus he was seeking.