Shawn Montgomery has produced a fascinating video documentary woven from restored audio tapes, records, photographs and current interviews. The production quality is high given the technical problems he undoubtedly overcame and the story that unfolds is intriguing. There are a few repetitions of information, but these are minor distractions. He raises the twisting, turning questions that surround all those associated with heresy, quackery or unrecognised genius, from Galileo and Semmelweiss to Issels and Milan Brich.

Royal Raymond Rife, ‘genius scientist’, trained for six years at the Carl Zeiss Optical Company in Germany and became the inventor of powerful microscopes, leading to the discovery of a revolutionary therapy for viral diseases.

Rife reasoned that if he was going to find a cure for diseases such as cancer it was important to be able to see the live virus that caused the disease. The first of several highly advanced microscopes was built in 1920. Noting that certain microorganisms absorbed different frequencies of light, he invented a system of rotating prisms to stain the specimen with light.

Extrapolating from this resonant effect of light, he experimented with electromagnetic radio waves and discovered that for each type of virus there was a particular frequency that would cause its disruption.

He subjected test animals in his laboratory to lethal doses of pathogenic germs and reported that he could invariably save their lives by subjecting their bodies for a few minutes to the electrical energy of the properly chosen frequency. These experiments and subsequent clinical therapies were heralded by his supporters to demonstrate the medical technology for the next century!

Montgomery presents a good mystery without a clear answer. At least not for me, since I’ve seen only the first video volume, Rife’s Rise. I presume the sequel, Rife’s Fall, may well cast a critical light on Rife’s discoveries within the context of modern biomedical understanding or orthodoxy. One gets the impression, however, that is not the way this story eventually plays out. In the absence of the video sequel, one can go to Google and search for Royal Raymond Rife. There you will find a rich assortment of conspiracy theorists and their various attempts to explain how Rife’s ingenious discoveries (including optical microscopic identification (magnification x 31 000) of living viruses and ‘silver bullet’, EMR-frequency therapy for polio, most tumours and viral infections, protozoan, bacterial and fungal diseases, stiff muscles, headaches, motion sickness and ‘prostrate’) have been suppressed by the medical/pharmaceutical establishment. What is missing is a logical and objective analysis of why.

Of course most of this is not scientifically assessed in the first volume. That is not intended to imply that the last chapter in the long-recognised relationship between viruses and malignancy has been written. Although we have an ability to define the linear and sequential relationships between oncogenes and abberant DNA, our contemporary view of the temporal and spatial controls determining functional gene behaviour in the natural history of malignancy is at best myopic. Nevertheless, in the absence of bona fide substantiation, the FDA currently forbids any medical claims regarding Rife’s therapies.

This is a good story and I hope I get to see the sequel if the counter-arguments are included.