A cure for "cancer" is overly broad and unduly optimistic. There are over 100 types of human cancers and they revert to unique genetic abnormalities, which no single agent today or in the 1930's could even pretend to cure. Even today we are slow to grasp this new way of looking at cancer. For example, there are forms of breast cancer more closely related to prostate cancer than to other forms of breast cancer because of the genetic mutations involved.
Increasingly the focus is on managing the various genetic diseases, whereby people can live long and productive lives despite having been diagnosed with cancer. Repair and restoration of genetic function is the key. That is why K is so intriguing. Much more pointed and specific than turning on a machine in the 1930s and blowing up viruses, bacteria and tumor cells with a form of radiation, which is what Rife was doing.
The supposed cures of the 1930s are based on what? Not based on MRI's, not based on PET scans and surely not DNA analysis since DNA had not even been described yet by Watson and Crick. In other words, just like so many tumors that are cut out or irradiated, there was likely relapse because the fundamental genetic abnormality had not been fixed. There were likely no cures - just lack of good information. Remember the 1930s for what they were - no blood banks, no antibiotics (well there was Sulfa but no Penicillin) - and a lot of really sketchy medicine by today's standards.
I do not criticize Rife's or others efforts, in fact by all accounts he was a genius. But he lived at a time with limited knowledge of the diseases involved. Today we can be certain he was not curing cancer - a claim even he refused to make. He may have bought some people time (maybe, after all it was a form of radiation therapy, albeit very crude) but his machine did not repair DNA abnormalities caused by genetics, viruses, environmental factors. Radiation therapy today does not either.
