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The book The Cancer Cure That Worked: 50 Years of Suppression (ISBN 978-0982513866), by Barry Lynes, claims that:

there are Rife instruments which, combined with dedicated practitioners and carefully developed protocols, are accomplishing stunning healing [of cancer].

(p. 168).

The book's summary page on Amazon.co.uk (81% 5-star reviews) claims that:

Unlike the chemotherapy treatments currently in use, Rife's therapy was 100 percent effective and engendered no adverse symptoms.

Yet, 53 years after the arrival of Rife's Frequency Instrument, hundreds of thousands of people still die each year of diseases that Royal Raymond Rife cured.

Do "Rife machines" (aka "Rife Instruments", "Rife Frequency Instruments") cure cancer?

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    [Rife himself said it didn't cure cancer.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rife) Since then, no one has been able to prove that it ever killed bacteria, either. Lots of fraud around selling the machines (pyramid schemes.) – JRE Sep 21 '19 at 15:22
  • 81% percent 5-star reviews sounds more impressive when you don't realize that there's 26 total reviews. That few reviews could just be friends and family. – Arcanist Lupus Sep 21 '19 at 16:25
  • The book's summary also mentions "the living cancer virus", which is interesting, because cancer doesn't come in viruses. It's cells from your own body. – Arcanist Lupus Sep 21 '19 at 16:26
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    @ArcanistLupus: There are various types of cancer that are triggered or caused by virus infections. [Like the human papillomavirus.](https://www.cdc.gov/hpv/parents/cancer.html) – JRE Sep 21 '19 at 16:37
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    The book "The Cancer Cure That Worked" is from 1987. It is unlikely that the author's family is hanging around making fake Amazon ratings. More likely its people selling Rife machines trying to drum up more business - or hypochondriacs who thought the machines helped them with their psychosomatic diseases. – JRE Sep 21 '19 at 16:42
  • @JRE And we have seen many reports of cancer clusters that would make a lot of sense if there was some infectious agent that caused them. If the agent did not otherwise cause symptoms it would be very hard to identify the culprit. – Loren Pechtel Sep 22 '19 at 05:33
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    @LorenPechtel: Yes, that's true. It is also true that truly random events sometimes cluster. It can be really tricky differentiating between clustering from a common cause and clustering from random events. – JRE Sep 22 '19 at 06:44
  • @JRE The author, Barry Lynes, has written a number of books on the same theme, the most recent in 2017. This book is merely his most well- known, he seems to have been active in promoting these devices relatively recently. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Barry_Lynes If the reviews are from unbiased members of the public then frankly that’s more concerning than if they’re not! This article refers to the death of a patient in 2004: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20071221&slug=indictment21m – A E Sep 22 '19 at 09:08
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    @AE: I don't expect the reviews are by the general public. Either by convinced followers, or by folks who sell the machines. I just have my doubts about his family being responsible for all te reviews. – JRE Sep 22 '19 at 09:53
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    "100 percent effective and engendered no adverse symptoms" should be an automatic red flag. No medical intervention that actually works is ever 100% effective, and no medical intervention that has effects doesn't have side-effects. – GordonM Sep 23 '19 at 13:34
  • Related: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/42086/do-rife-machines-kill-viruses-and-bacteria and https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/40168/can-resonant-frequencies-kill-cancer-cells – Paul Johnson Sep 23 '19 at 21:31
  • @LorenPechtel For what it’s worth these agents *do* cause other symptoms. In fact, in the case of HPV it’s *those symptoms* (i.e. lesions, which lead to constant inflammation) that lead to cancer, not the virus itself. – Konrad Rudolph Sep 25 '19 at 15:54

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