Unless you’ve been a regular reader of the Opinion Page of the New York Times, or more recently, have been watching 60 Minutes, you may not know that Mr. D. has been somewhere in public view for years.
Then, one day, having fulfilled a life wish to buy a home in the Connecticut woods (Tehran is probably safer), he felt a large squishy lump stuck firmly in his scalp, and WHC readers know where this story is going. Douthat documented his years of seeking to be cured of his chronic Lyme. He saw “everybody” and describes his quest in the well written, “The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery.”
He finally ended up getting physical and emotional relief to the extent he is functioning at what seems like a 95% level. In fact, he’s doing quite well. He’s a correspondent on CNN, writes columns, and published another book, unrelated to his chronic Lyme, “Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious”.
But this isn’t about Mr. Douthat. It’s about the unusual treatment he resorted to that apparently rescued him. Here he is being interviewed by the Harvard Gazette and talking about Lyme working with something you probably never heard of, a Rife Machine.
THE RIFE MACHINE: OUR MOST CONTROVERSIAL HEALTH CARE DEVICE
Little is really known about the personal details of scientist and inventor Royal Rife, who, working in the 1920’s and 1930’s, was mainly interested in ultra-high-power microscopes. He wanted to demonstrate that all living microorganisms, especially bacteria and cancer cells, had their own unique vibrational frequency that could be turned against them to cure illnesses they caused. You could destroy a “bad” cell (cancer, bacteria) with an ultra-high frequency sound wave matched to its frequency. If no cancer cells were present, or no disease-causing bacteria, the frequencies were harmless.
A reasonable comparison was drawn between an opera soprano hitting a high note and shattering a wine glass. If there’s no glass nearby, nothing happens.
Although about 16 individuals claimed their Rife Machine did cure their cancers, the publicity negative spread quickly. Rife had written books and articles about making your own machine and received more than enough adverse publicity of the ‘crackpot inventor’ type. With his reputation shredded by medical associations, he died alone and quite penniless in 1971. To this day, Wikipedia, whose negatively prejudiced alternative medicine pieces are mainly written by Stephen Barrett, M.D. of Quackbusters, is quite brutal.
HULDA CLARK’S PARASITE ZAPPER
During the AIDS epidemic, an unlicensed Canadian naturopath, Dr. Hulda Clark, over the course of two years, wrote three bestsellers: “The Cure for All Cancers,” “The Cure for HIV/AIDS,” “The Cure for All Diseases.” She attributed all illness to the presence of an internal parasite, Fasciolopiasis, an intestinal fluke, generally not found in the U.S., though every few weeks we get requests to be tested for them. In her own private lab, Dr. Clark’s patients managed all to test “positive,” and would be sold an assortment of supplements and a Parasite Zapper. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Clark’s Zapper looks pretty much like a smaller version of a Rife Machine.
If this is sounding a little confusing, a Rife Machine comes with a detailed manual in which you set your wavelength to your illness, e.g., Lyme. Dr. Clark’s Zapper is a ‘one size fits all.’ Dr. Clark herself faced multiple medical fraud charges, opened and closed several clinics in the U.S. and Canada, finally dying of multiple myeloma in California at 83.
I mention Dr. Clark in the same breath as Rife because Dr. Clarke had all the trappings of a pure medical con artist, while Rife sincerely was trying to figure out why his Machine worked for some patients and not for others.
What I would tell Dr. Rife today is that chronic Lyme, coinfections, and possibly even cancer cells, are all much smarter than we think. Bacteria develop multiple resistances to antibiotics and protective sticky biofilms to make it up to 10 to 10,000 more resistant to antibiotics and the host immune system. Rife was likely completely unaware of this. Cancer cells change subtly, and a chemotherapy treatment program that seemingly was curative for years now ‘fails’ with recurrence and our oncologist pieces together a new chemo program or strengthens your immune system.
Here are couple Rife Machine options on Ebay:
Also, spooky2.com has much information about the many uses of Rife for Lyme, cancer, Chronic Fatigue, Morgellons.
Be well,
David Edelberg, MD