According to Doyle, Rettmann told patients that the government did not want to cure cancer and did not understand what she was doing. She also allegedly provided her customers books and videotapes which claimed that there was a conspiracy to keep the Rife generator from being approved by the FDA and that the government was wrong at Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing. She had been selling the Rife device for about $3,500 and the radionics machine for $1,700.

In September 1998, Minnesota Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III announced that his office had obtained a judgment against Rettmann . The Scott County District Court found that Rettmann had violated state laws prohibiting deceptive trade practices and consumer fraud by selling medical devices without FDA approval and telling consumers she could cure cancer with a "Rife generator" machine, a "radionics" device, "foot-zoning" treatments, and various vitamins and supplements. During a hearing, the FDA provided support and expert testimony confirming that the devices Rettmann sold were illegal.

Radionics is a pseudoscience based on the notion that diseases can be diagnosed and treated by tuning in on radio-like frequencies allegedly emitted by disease-causing agents and diseased organs. The theory behind it originated with Albert Abrams, M.D. (1864-1924), who developed thirteen devices claimed to detect such frequencies and/or cure people by matching their frequencies. Abrams made millions leasing his devices and was considered by the American Medical Association to be the "dean of gadget quacks." He claimed:

The bottom line is that radionics devices have no value for diagnosing or treating anything.

For Additional Information on Radionics Devices

Perhaps in no other area has the seduction of ideomotor action created as much mischief as it has in medical settings. Over the past two centuries, many Europeans have used the term radiesthesia to refer to the alleged force that underlies dowsing and the exploring pendulum. The term is especially prevalent in connection with medical and healing applications. Medical radiesthesia is used to diagnose a variety of ailments -- often from a distance. During this century, medical radiesthesia has often been merged with what is called "radionics."

Radionic devices are "black boxes" or similar contrivances that proponents claim have the ability to harness energy to diagnose and to heal illness. Today's practitioners of medical radiesthesia and radionics trace their beginnings to contraptions created by the San Francisco doctor Albert Abrams at the beginning of this century .

radionics (psionics): Ill-defined offshoot of radiesthesia founded and named by San Francisco-born neurologist Albert Abrams, M.D., M.A. (1863-1924), author of Spondylotherapy (1910) and New Concepts of Diagnosis and Treatment (1916). Radionics, which encompasses radionic diagnosis and radionic therapy, is a combination of clairvoyant diagnosis, distant diagnosis (remote diagnosis), and psychic healing. Abrams associated different diseases with different radio waves supposedly emitted by various parts of the body and by tissue samples. He invented a pseudodiagnostic electrical system whose components included: a "Dynamizer" -- a receptacle for blood or tissue samples; three rheostats (devices that regulate electric current); and an elec trode, which the practitioner would affix to the patient's forehead. Abrams claimed that one could even ascertain a patient's religion with his system, and further, that the patient's autograph could substitute for blood in the "Dynamizer." For "treatment," he recommended his "Oscilloclast": a de vice allegedly designed to emit curative vibrations.

At the trial, family members of former patients testified that Keller had said his "digitron" device could detect what part of the body had cancer and could cure the cancer when a photograph of the patient was placed into part of the device. Witnesses also testified that Keller used the device to conclude that the cancer was cured . Stanford University professor William Tiller testified that Keller's device—a "radionics" device—could transmit "subtle energies" from a person with a hair strand, a drop of blood, or even a photograph, and would send and receive "healing energies to that particular object." Joel Wallach also testified on Keller's behalf. Keller received a two-year prison sentence plus three years of probation. In 1998, he was arrested and returned to prison gain for treating cancer patients in violation of his probation. He was released from prison in November 1999, at which time he was 70 years old.

The word "psionics" also refers to radionics and to applied psi (applied parapsychology), a field whose focus is the application of "psychic abilities" to ordinary living.

Drown radio therapy: Form of radionics developed in the 1930s by Hollywood chiropractor Ruth Drown (b. 1891), author of The Science and Philosophy of the Drown Radio Therapy and inventor of the "Homo-Vibra-Ray." In 1951, Drown was prosecuted, convicted of medical fraud, and imprisoned.