In the early 1930s, Dr Royal Raymond Rife, an American optics engineer, claimed to be achieving theoretically impossible optical magnifications of over 30,000 times - 10 times more powerful than today's best microscopes.

Soon after, Rife announced that he could destroy bacteria by blasting them with electromagnetic waves oscillating at frequencies specific to each target organism. According to his supporters, Rife cured significant numbers of people infected with a number of common but dangerous infections, including typhoid, salmonella and influenza. But his most controversial claim was that his device could kill the virus-like organisms, which he dubbed "BX", responsible for cancer. Rife and his team claimed to have cured 15 "hopeless" cancer patients after 60 days' treatment.

Rife's ray tube system was installed in several clinics and his results were corroborated by numerous scientists and doctors. In 1939 he was invited to address the Royal Society of Medicine, which had also approved his findings, and he subsequently formed the Rife Ray Beam Tube Corporation, to build models for hospitals and clinics.

But with the death of one of his key supporters, Rife found himself under sudden and prolonged assault from the American Medical Association, who banned use of his beam ray to treat patients. Within a year the dream was over, Rife a broken man. To this day it remains unclear why the AMA turned on Rife, a pharmaceutical conspiracy being an obvious, if paranoid conclusion.

Rife died in 1971 but remains one of the heroes of the fringe science underground, and blueprints for his microscopes and beam rays are highly prized. Last year, an English group claimed to have found a 1939 beam ray walled up in a doctor's surgery and, while making no medical claims for the device, they intend to replicate Rife's experiments.

Meanwhile, mainstream scientists are re-examining the links between certain viruses and cancers. The papilloma virus, for example, is known to cause cervical cancer, while breast cancer has been linked to an HIV-like virus. If the UK team can get the Rife device operational, we may yet see a beam ray in every home and Royal Rife will get the place in history he thought he deserved.