page_title: Royal Rife
section_title: Life and work
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Rife / Life and work
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Oryginalny Generator Rife`a
context_page_description: Royal Raymond Rife was an American inventor and early exponent of high-magnification time-lapse cine-micrography.
  He is best known for a claimed 'beam ray' invention during the 1930s, which he thought could treat some diseases through vibration. Years after his death, it was manufactured and sold in several countries as a cure for cancer, AIDS, and other conditions. Many patients died, and multiple promoters were convicted of health fraud and sent to prison.
context_section_description: Little reliable published information exists describing Rife's life and work. In the 1930s, he made several optical compound microscopes and using a movie camera, took time-lapse microscopy movies of microbes. He also built microscopes that included polarizers.
  Rife also reported that a 'beam ray' device of his invention could destroy the pathogens. Rife claimed to have documented a "Mortal Oscillatory Rate" for various pathogenic organisms, and to be able to destroy the organisms by vibrating them at this particular rate. According to the San Diego Evening Tribune in 1938, Rife stopped short of claiming that he could cure cancer, but did argue that he could "devitalize disease organisms" in living tissue, "with certain exceptions". In a 1931 profile, Rife warned against "medical fakers" who claim to cure disease using "electrical 'vibrations'", stating that his work did not uphold such claims.
  Rife's claims about his beam ray could not be independently replicated, and were discredited by independent researchers during the 1950s.  An obituary in the Daily Californian described his death at the age of 83 on August 5, 1971, stating that he died penniless and embittered by the failure of his devices to garner scientific acceptance.  Rife blamed the scientific rejection of his claims on a conspiracy involving the American Medical Association (AMA), the Department of Public Health, and other elements of "organized medicine", which had "brainwashed and intimidated" his colleagues.
caption: Rife machine from 1922
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