San Diegan’s Cancer Work
May Make Cure Possible

The San Diego Union
July 31, 1949

Mankind's long search for a cancer cure may be in sight as the end product of laboratory experiments conducted in San Diego 15 years ago. These experiments and the discoveries they yielded are credited to Dr. Royal R. Rife, 62, of 3676 Zola St., A laboratory technician, now retired.

This announcement was made here yesterday by James B. Couche, M.D., a San Diego medical practitioner for 18 years. He recently returned from Canada where he visited the University of Toronto and McGill University in Montréal. He went to Toronto to celebrate with the remaining eight members of his class of 1899, their Jubilee year.

TRIPS RECALLED

He also visited Dr. O. Cameron Gruner, former director of the Archibald Cancer Research Fund at McGill University, and discussed Gruner's recent work in cancer research. He recalled that Gruner made several visits to San Diego 14 years ago to study reported discoveries by Dr. Rife of a virus connected with cancerous tumors.

Gruner told Dr. Couche he was satisfied that Dr. Rife's large microscope [Universal Microscope] (for which Rife claimed 25,000 areas magnification) had revealed a virus.

DISCOVERY CREDITED

He said further that the work he then did with Rife at his Point Loma laboratory and follow-up researches at McGill University, had confirmed that tumorous growths positively could be produced by the virus discovered in San Diego. But opposition to a virus theory of cancerous growths developed in the medical profession and progress in this line of study of sarcomatus growths was interrupted.

However, a recent publication by two medical men in New York City, claiming the discovery of a virus associated with cancer, prompted Dr. Couche to ask Dr. Gruner about the status of the virus theory.

MAY BE SAME

Gruner disclosed that he had been working with Dr. J. E. Hett, of Windsor, another cancer specialists, who has been studying malignant growths for 50 years, and had found that Hett was having remarkable success with a serum he had developed from a virus.

In San Diego yesterday Dr. Rife admitted the possibility that the cancer virus reported in New York and the virus developed by Dr. Hett are the same virus he isolated in San Diego.

WORK EXPLAINED

"When Dr. Gruner came here to study my experiments he brought with him a fungoid organism," Dr. Rife said. "I was able to reproduce this same fungoid organism by virus, which I had classified as BX. I was also able to distill my virus back from the fungoid organism. I produce cancer in hundreds of animals. I completed the cycle from virus to cancer and back 104 times. I discovered that the virus organism gets in the blood of the victim at one stage of the growth."

Dr. Couche brought back to San Diego a detailed but technical review of recent progress in cancer study by doctors Hett and Gruner. He also brought a cautious note of optimism.

HOPE OFFERED

In his experience in assisting the surgical treatment of cancer, Dr. Couche said, the end results were sometimes disappointing. But he pointed out that if cancer is a blood disease it is carried to all parts of the body in the blood stream, and surgery would be of little use.

"But I feel strongly that a blood serum treatment based on a virus foundation as recommended by Dr. Hett and tentatively endorsed by Dr. Gruner offers a genuine hope," Dr. Couche said.

"It will surely be a great honor for that patient San Diego investigator, Dr. Rife, if his virus turns out to be the entity chiefly responsible for causing this dread disease."