Dr.  Wilhelm Reich: Scientific Genius or Medical Madman? 

By ALAN CANTWELL, Jr.,  M.D.
In my  medical research into the infectious cause and   origin of cancer, I never imagined I would become enmeshed in the  strange world  of Wilhelm Reich. For two decades I had studied the work  of scientists linking  bacteria to cancer, but never once did I come  across Reich’s important  experiments with the deadly “T-bacilli” that  he discovered in cancer.
        I first learned about Reich in 1982 from Lorraine Rosenthal who heads  the Cancer  Control Society in Los Angeles. Her mother worked in his  laboratory in the  1950s, and Lorraine was sure his cancer work was  related to my cancer microbe  research. She recommended I read Reich’s  two most revolutionary books: The Bion  Experiments on the Origin of  Life (1938) and The Cancer Biopathy (1948). These  two volumes provide  valuable and fascinating insights into the origin of the  cancer cell  and his discovery of cancer “T” bacteria.
        During his life, Reich was portrayed as a mad psychiatrist and  scientist who  advocated free love, abortion, communism, and a multitude  of other so-called  perversions. The medical establishment regarded him  as quack who tried to dupe  the public into believing he had a cure for  cancer. Eventually the US government  took legal action to suppress  Reich’s research, and the closing years of his  life were filled with  tragedy. Persecuted and hounded by the government, he was  finally  sacrificed on the altar of science.
        Who was Wilhelm Reich? And why was he condemned for his beliefs? Was  he merely a  crack-pot psychiatrist? Or was he one of the greatest and  most misunderstood  scientific geniuses of the twentieth century?
Reich’s Sex Experiments and Orgone Energy
Reich  was born on March 24, 1897, on  a  small farm on the eastern outreaches of the Austro-Hungarian empire  in what is  now known as the Ukraine. At age twelve his childhood was  shattered by his  mother’s suicide. Provoked by marital unhappiness and  infidelity, and beatings  by her husband, she swallowed a kitchen  poison. Reich watched her die a slow and  agonising death. His father  died of tuberculosis in 1914, and twelve years later  his only brother  also died of TB. Orphaned at age 17, Reich entered the Austrian  army  and experienced the brutality of World War One and the ensuing breakup  of  the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
         After the war he resumed his studies in Vienna and entered medical  school. He  was a brilliant student who developed a strong liking for  the new speciality of  psychiatry. At age twenty-three he became one of  Sigmund Freud’s prized  associates and began private practice as an  analytic psychiatrist.
          As a pioneer in the study of human sexuality, he used novel  experimental  methods to examine, analyse and measure various aspects of  physical lovemaking.  He concluded that the ability to love was  dependent on one’s physical ability to  make love with “orgastic  potency.” Reich coined this term to denote a kind of  super-lovemaking  in which the mental, physical and emotional aspects of  sexuality were  all functioning at a high level. Experimenting with electrical   stimulation of erogenous zones, he showed that sexual feelings of touch,   pleasure, and pain could all be measured in the laboratory.
        The physiologic process of erection of the male penis provided the  beginning  formula for Reich’s great scientific discoveries. Before male  orgasm, he noted  four distinct and separate processes that had to take  place physiologically.  First is the necessary psychosexual build-up or  “tension.” Second, the “charge”  that accompanies tumescence of the  penis, which Reich measured electrically.  Third, the electrical  “discharge” at the moment of orgasm. And fourth, the final  “relaxation”  of the penis.
        Reich observed these four essential stages (tension, build-up,  discharge and  relaxation) in all aspects of life forms he examined. In  the orgasm process of  sex, he discovered a unique energetic life force  that pervaded all nature. Reich  named this force “orgone energy.”
        With Freud’s professional support, Reich quickly rose to the highest  ranks of  academia. His classic book, Character Analysis (1933),  recounts his original  contributions to psychiatry and introduces  Reich’s novel concept of “body  armoring.” Reich discovered that  unreleased psychosexual energy could produce  actual physical “blocks”  within the muscles and organs of the body. These blocks  act as an  unfortunate “armor” preventing the release of blocked sexual energy.   The orgasm, along with the convulsive body spasms which accompany  orgasm, is the  mechanism through which “orgone energy” is released by  the body.
        Reich believed a healthy and loving sex life is everyone’s right. In  fact, he  considered a good sex life absolutely necessary for the proper  functioning of  the body. He stressed that the social and political  ills of the world stemmed  largely from society’s repression of  sexuality. This repression leads to  unhappiness, depression, and the  inability to express joyous sexual love. For  countless people the  sexual energy is blocked because of personal body armoring.  As a result  of this armoring, such people often fall victim to various aspects  of  the “emotional plague.”
        In his practice of analytic psychiatry Reich broke with tradition.  Instead of  sitting passively, notebook in hand while his patients  talked, Reich took an  active role in the therapy. He frequently touched  his patients, felt their  chests for breathing, and repositioned their  bodies. Sometimes he badgered and  goaded them to physical action. In  order to observe their body response during  analysis, he sometimes  insisted that all or part of the clothing be removed. Men  were often  reduced to shorts; women to bra and panties. Reich’s colleagues   publicly protested against these unorthodox and radical psychiatric  practices,  and his most vociferous opponents accused him of immorality.
Reich,  Communism and the Nazis
As a  young man in post-war Vienna during   the 1920s and 30s, Reich was active politically. Disliking the  anti-sexual  right-wing conservatives and repelled by the fanaticism of  the fascists, he  migrated to Marxism and the sexual freedom proclaimed  by the communists.  Although Reich was a sex expert, his expertise did  not carry over to the state  of matrimony. In 1922 he married Annie  Pink, a psychiatrist. Their first child  Eva was born in 1924, and a  second daughter in 1928. No matter how hard he  tried, it was impossible  for Reich to conform to marital convention and the  marriage was  chaotic.
        In his writings the outspoken Reich went so far as to propose that a  series of  romantic relationships (“serial monogamy”) was a better  alternative to marriage.  In The Function of the Orgasm (1927) he  declared: “Marriage is only one of the  many issues where social  scientists go astray, especially since they fail to see  marriage for  what it really is – a sexual union, based primarily on genital  love.  They prefer to ignore that fact and merely view it as an economic union  or  means to perpetuate the human race. Actually very few people marry  for money or  to have children; marriages of today really limit peoples’  freedom and may lead  to economic deprivation.”
        For professional, political, and social reasons, Reich moved his  practice to  Berlin in 1930. He joined the German Communist party,  convinced the sexual  freedoms of Marxism would liberate the common man  and foster his mental health.  As a spokesman for the Party, Reich  advocated free contraceptives, birth  control, abortion on demand, and  sex education in schools.
        By 1933, Reich’s marriage was on the rocks and he was already in  another  passionate love relationship. The German communists were  increasingly  disenchanted with the controversial Reich due to some of  his outrageous ideas on  sexual-political matters. The Party finally  expelled him. He was also in a  career crisis. His psychiatric writings  and left-wing political activities  became progressively more out of  tune with Freud’s ideas and their relationship  cooled considerably. In a  supreme blow to Reich’s career, the Psychiatric  Association revoked  his membership.
        All this personal turbulence was compounded by the rise of Hitler and  Nazism.  The Nazi press damned Reich as a radical psychiatrist, an  anti-Nazi communist, a  womaniser, and a Jew. Berlin was no longer safe.  Disguised as a tourist on a ski  trip to Austria, he luckily got out of  the city by the skin of his  teeth.
        Returning to Vienna, he soon realised he was no longer professionally  welcome  there either. He emigrated to Denmark but soon became embroiled  in disputes with  Danish communists. From there, he relocated to  Sweden, but was again harassed by  the authorities. Finally, through the  help of Norwegian colleagues, he secured  residence in Oslo, where he  had a new laboratory and enough money to continue  his research.
        By 1934 Reich’s divorce was finalised. Escaping the Nazis, Annie and  his  children resettled in Austria. Reich was madly in love with Elsa  Lindenberg who  had dutifully followed him in his exodus to Austria,  Denmark, Sweden, and  finally to Norway. In Norway he was determined to  continue his research into the  orgone life force that he had discovered  in his orgasm experiments.
The  Bion Experiments and the Origin of Life
His  experiments began simply by close microscopic  examinations of the smallest form of cell life  known to man: the  so-called “protozoa.” Reich marvelled at the squirming amoebae  that  developed from his grass and water “infusions.” Swimming in his  microscopic  preparations, the one-celled organisms were seemingly  structureless blobs, yet  they were also exceedingly complex forms that  ate, digested, contracted,  expelled, and multiplied. He playfully  applied a small electric current and  watched the protozoa contract and  elongate.
        During the years 1934-1937 Reich was totally absorbed in his  experiments on the  origin of life. His preparations consisted of  infusions of various substances,  such as grass, beach sand, earth,  coal, iron fillings and animal tissue. He  tested various combinations  and added potassium, gelatine and other biochemicals  to the mixtures.  Boiling the preparations resulted in a marked increase in the  number of  “vesicles” that could be cultured.
        After much experimentation, Reich concluded the cultured vesicles were   intermediate “transitional” forms which were “midway between life and  non-life.”  “Dead” inorganic substances (such as sand, earth, and coal)  gave birth to  vesicles which pulsed with life. Reich named these  energetic vesicles “bions.”  He suspected bions were a heretofore  unrecognised elementary stage of  life.
        After cooling the boiled bion cultures, he poured some of the boiled  material  onto laboratory nutrient culture media designed to grow  ordinary bacteria. An  unbelievable phenomenon resulted: the boiled bion  cultures gave birth to  peculiar-looking bacteria, and amoeboe!
        To eliminate the possibility of contamination, Reich heated the  cultures to the  intense, flaming, glowing temperatures of incandescence  (150 degrees  Centigrade), and repeatedly sterilised his lab culture  media by autoclaving it  at a high temperature (180 degrees Centigrade)  and pressure. At the time it was  thought no known bacteria or any other  life forms could possible survive such a  high temperature and  pressure.
        Reich believed he had discovered an indestructible life force that  defied death.  He concluded: Bions are preliminary stages of life; they  are transitional forms  from the inorganic and non-motile – to the  organic, motile, and culturable  state.
        When Reich’s The Bion Experiments On the Origin of Life was published  in Oslo in  1938, the book created a furore. His critics latched onto  one paragraph in the  book that intimated Reich might have inadvertently  found a cancer cure. Reich  wrote that preliminary studies showed  bion-like structures could be cultured  from human blood and “bion  research proved particularly fruitful for an  understanding of cancer.”  He was attacked by the scientific and lay press as a  “Jew pornographer”  who was tinkering with life and promoting a quack cancer  cure.
        Instead of discouraging him, the attacks lured him deeper and deeper  into orgone  research. Reich was determined to prove, beyond doubt, the  reality of the new  life energy forms he had discovered.
The  T-Bacilli, Cancer and Reich’s Bions
The  unfair accusations surrounding the publication of  The  Bion Experiments goaded Reich into trying to solve the mystery of  cancer. Weeks  earlier he had placed some sterile cancer tissue  (provided by the surgeons at a  local hospital) into flasks containing  liquid nutrient broth. Now in his anger,  he scurried around to retrieve  the bottles. To his astonishment, “all these  cultures showed a  green-blue coloration. Taking material from the margin,  [Reich]  inoculated a new agar plate and saw, for the first time, the T-bacilli,   the discovery of which would help break down the mystery surrounding  the cancer  problem.”
              The finding of bacteria in cancer filled Reich with a curious  mixture of  fear and awe. With fear because he knew that solving the  secrets of cancer would  be a Herculean task, further antagonising the  medical establishment against him.  With awe, because he intuitively  knew these bacilli were involved in the  agonising cancer deaths that  affected countless millions. After much study,  Reich named his  newly-discovered cancer microbes “T” bacilli, after the German  word  “Tod”, meaning death.
               The years 1934-1937 in Norway were Reich’s happiest. The bion  work was  exceedingly productive, and he was deeply in love with Elsa  Lindenberg. In  August 1938, Hitler annexed Austria. Miraculously, Annie  and his children had  emigrated to America the month before. Reich’s  lingering presence in Norway  increasingly angered the authorities, and  the newspaper attacks against him were  unrelenting.
        Aggravated by depression and bouts of jealously and pettiness, his  relationship  with Elsa cooled. An American colleague strongly urged  Reich to emigrate to the  United States. In August 1939, on the last  boat to leave Norway before the war,  Reich left for America.  Half-heartedly he had asked Elsa to come, but their  tempestuous love  affair was over and beyond repair. By this time Reich was also   completely disillusioned with the communists and their false promises  and their  perversion of Marx’s humanitarian ideals. Never again would  their philosophy  interest him, and he became an ardent anti-communist.
        When he embarked for America, Wilhelm Reich was no longer young. He  was 42 years  old and he would again be a stranger in a strange land. He  rented a house in  Forest Hills, Long Island, and soon began a new love  affair with Ilse Ollendorf,  who was extremely helpful in assisting him  with his research. They were married  in 1946 and Ilse bore him a son,  Peter.
        The cancer work continued with the T-bacilli proving to be the key to  the origin  of cancer. Reich’s experiments showed that all life contains  orgone energy and  when this energy diminishes in the cells, either  through injury or aging, the  cells undergo a death process that Reich  termed “bionous degeneration.” As a  consequence of this degeneration,  the deadly T-bacilli begin to form in the  cells.
        Reich could demonstrate these bacteria microscopically in living (and  unstained)  cancer cells. Cultures of T-bacilli injected into mice  caused inflammation and  eventual death from cancer. The T-bacilli that  formed in the cells provoked a  reaction in the tissues resulting in the  formation of vesicular swellings.  Microscopically, these vesicles gave  off a bluish glow, and Reich called them  “blue PA bions” because they  resembled the clumped “PAcket” bions that were  experimentally produced  when he heated substances (such as grass and coal) to  high  temperatures.
        In degenerating cancerous tissue, the blue PA bions seriously affected  the  orgone energy of the cells. In other mouse experiments, Reich  injected blue  bions into the tissue and observed the resulting  cancerous cell changes and the  development of actual protozoa. These  cancerous changes were similar to what had  occurred in Reich’s earliest  experiments during the death process of cut blades  of grass immersed  in his water infusions. First the tissue cells swelled and  formed  vesicles; and eventually transformed into protozoa.
        Reich found that cancer cells have less orgone energy than normal,  healthy  cells. As the energy-depleted cancer cells break down and  degenerate into  T-bacilli, putrefaction of the body occurs. It is the  overwhelming infection  with T-bacilli and the massive breakdown of  cancer tissue that causes most  deaths from cancer. Cancer is literally  death in the living body.
        Reich discovered T-bacilli not only in the cancer tumours, but also in  the  blood, the body fluids, and the excreta of cancer patients. He  originally  thought the T-bacillus was the specific infectious agent of  cancer. But these  cancer microbes were eventually found by Reich in  persons with other diseases –  and Reich also observed the T-bacilli in  the blood and excreta of normal healthy  people!
        The blood of cancer patients produced T-bacilli easily and quickly. In  contrast,  normal blood produced the bacilli slowly. Reich concluded  “the disposition to  cancer is therefore determined by the biological  resistance of the blood and the  tissues to putrefaction. This  biological resistance, in turn, is itself  determined by the orgone  energy content of the blood and tissues, which is to  say, by the  organotic potency of the organism.”

Reich  in America, the Oranur Experiment, and Orgone Energy

Reich’s early years in America were comparatively  quiet compared to his turbulent years in Europe,  but his biomedical  activities did not go unnoticed by the authorities. In  December 1941,  under the guise of subversive activity, the FBI arrested Reich  and  detained him at Ellis Island for three weeks. The exact reasons for the   arrest were never made clear, but the harrowing experience further  embittered  him against his real and imagined enemies.
        Along with his cancer discoveries, Reich had first noticed biological  energy  radiating from a beach sand bion culture in his Oslo lab back in  January 1939.  Now, in America, Reich would follow his hunches that  would lead him to discover  a new energy pervading the entire planet.
        Reich and his lab co-workers frequently experienced headaches,  irritability, and  other unpleasant psychological and physical effects  when working with certain  radioactive bion cultures. It was theorised  the beach sand had absorbed  considerable quantities of radiation from  the sun. When the sand was  experimentally heated to incandescence  (1,500 degrees Centigrade), Reich  believed the solar radiation energy  contained within the sand was released.  Whatever the reason, there was  no doubt orgone radiation was real and bion  cultures had to be handled  with extreme care because of their  radioactivity.
             In July 1940 Reich discovered orgone energy in the atmosphere! In  order to  study the effects of this radiation, he designed a  specially-constructed box to  house and concentrate this energy. Boxes  were constructed to house lab animals.  Eventually larger boxes were  constructed in which a person could sit  comfortably. Reich was  interested in determining the effect of atmospheric  orgone energy on  humans, particularly persons with far-advanced and incurable  forms of  cancer.
   It was this “orgone accumulator box” and its use in human cancer   experimentation that caused the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)  to begin  an intensive investigation of Reich’s scientific activities in  the late 1940s.  There were all sorts of rumours that the accumulator  was a “sex box” which  induced uncontrollable erections and stirred up  intense and immoral sexual  passions. As a result, Reich was harassed  and intimidated by the authorities.  Condemnatory articles in the  professional and lay press added fuel to the fire  by alluding to  Reich’s mental problems and his sex-tinged research.
        In the early 1940s Reich bought a summer house and acreage in Maine.  He dearly  loved the clean air, the clarity of the atmosphere, and the  peacefulness of the  place. A research lab was eventually built on the  site, and in 1950 he moved  permanently to the site he named Organon. He  was fifty-three years old and tired  of the stress of his  psychoanalytic practice. Over the years his continuing  practice had  helped tremendously to support Reich’s studies and family, but now  he  wished to devote the remaining years of his life exclusively to orgone   research.
        At Organon a dangerous experiment began. Reich was deeply concerned  with the  planetary dangers unleashed by atomic warfare at Hiroshima and  Nagasaki, and in  the early 1950s it was feared the Korean War might  provoke another nuclear  holocaust. Reich believed orgone energy could  be harnessed as a possible  antidote for nuclear radiation. He began  testing the effects of orgone energy  (OR) on nuclear energy (NR), and  named the experiment “Oranur.”
        During the Oranur experiment, radioactive radium was brought to  Reich’s lab and  housed in a special room containing orgone energy. The  slow mixing of the two  energies produced a nuclear chain reaction with  devastating consequences. As a  result of this nuclear accident, Reich  learned that nuclear energy drastically  changes orgone energy –  converting it into “deadly orgone energy” (DOR). The  laboratory  accident seriously affected the physical, mental, and emotional  health  of Reich and his co-workers and necessitated a complete shut down of the   lab until the dangerous radiation levels cleared.
        Reich’s daughter, Eva, almost died in the mishap. Eva had been  estranged from  her father for years, but after finishing medical  school, she joined him at  Organon to help with the Oranur experiment.  The stressful changes wrought by  Oranur, and the increasing harassment  by the FDA, put Reich under great  pressure. He was never quite the same  again.
        The experiment undoubtedly contributed to Reich’s worsening  relationship with  Ilse. The marriage become more and more stormy as he  tormented Ilse with  accusations of infidelity and was physically  abusive. Few people understood the  clinical nature of feelings and  emotions better than Reich; and yet he could be  cruel, unyielding, and  insanely jealous in his love relationships. He preached  sexual freedom  for all but he practised a sexual double standard in marriage  that  allowed him to be unfaithful, but never his mate.
        While Reich was immersed in the problems of Oranur, Ilse developed  uterine  cancer. She was convinced her cancer was connected with the  radiation  experiments at Organon. While she convalesced from surgery,  Reich cruelly filed  for divorce. After it was finalised in September  1951, he began another  relationship. The following month he suffered a  major heart attack.
        According to David Boadella’s biography of Reich, “The Oranur  experiment had  exposed Reich and all those who worked with him to  severe strains. The remainder  of his life was to be devoted to working  on the many problems that the  atmospheric chain reaction provoked by  Oranur opened up, and it was particularly  unfortunate for Reich that  just at the time when he was struggling to cope with  the dislocation to  the normal activities of the Institute, he should become  victim of a  sustained campaign to belittle, discredit and attack his work on  many  fronts.”

Reich’s Trial, Book Burning and Imprisonment
Despite constant attacks by the FDA, Reich   pursued his experiments undaunted. He built a “cloud buster” in order  to affect  the orgone energy in the atmosphere. In the Arizona desert he  induced rain by  forcing clouds to form and disperse. Like a god, he  began to control the forces  of nature, as no one before him had ever  done.
        He was convinced the scientific world would recognise the value of his  work and  would appreciate the great benefit orgone energy could bring  mankind. Long  before such subjects were popular, Reich was concerned  about toxic waste,  nuclear energy, and planetary pollution; he knew  their detrimental and damaging  effects on the atmospheric orgone  energy. He was sure the FDA would never  destroy his research which held  so much promise for the planet and its healing.  Reich also had  implicit faith in the fairness of the American legal system. He  fully  believed that American justice would never allow his important work to  be  discontinued.
        Whether from ignorance or arrogance, or both, Reich severely  underestimated the  power of the FDA and the campaign against him. In  February 1954 the FDA issued  an injunction forbidding the interstate  shipment of orgone accumulators. The  injunction also denied the  existence of orgone energy, and proclaimed all  Reich’s books and  publications were promotional materials for the worthless  accumulator.
        As demanded by the terms of the injunction, Reich foolishly refused to  appear in  court. He was adamant his scientific work could never be  properly argued or  evaluated in court. His legal counsel pleaded with  him to reconsider, but he  stood firm in his position. His unyielding  decision had disastrous consequences.  The FDA won the injunction by  default.
          The legal manoeuvrings culminated in a trial that took place in  Portland,  Maine, in May 1956. Reich was arrested in Washington, DC, on  contempt of court  charges, and was forcibly brought to Portland in  chains. His refusal to  cooperate with the court did not bode well with  the judge.
          Time was running out for Reich. Years earlier he had been abandoned  by the  psychoanalytic establishment. The communists drummed him out of  the Party, and  the Nazis wanted him dead. He had offended the  Austrians, the Danes, the Swedes  and the Norwegians. Now the Americans  would have the opportunity to destroy the  mad psychiatrist and his new  god of orgone.
        Reich was finally done in. He had played into the hands of his  enemies, and now  they had him where they wanted him. Reich was  sentenced to two years in federal  prison.
        Before imprisonment, the FDA had its final vengeance. On June 5, 1956,  FDA  officials came to Organon. Reich and his young son Peter watched  in silence as  the federal officials axed the accumulators. On June 26,  Reich’s many books and  journals at Organon were burned by government  authorities. On August 23 in New  York City the final destruction of  Reich’s literature took place. Six tons of  books, journals and papers  were burned in a scientific holocaust. And not a  single major newspaper  in the Land of the Free protested this unprecedented  action, so  reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
        In early March 1957 Reich was imprisoned at Danbury Federal Prison.  The  psychiatrist who examined Reich recorded the diagnosis: “Paranoia  manifested by  delusions of grandiosity and persecution and ideas of  reference.” A few weeks  later, Reich was transferred to the federal  penitentiary in Lewisburg,  Pennsylvania.
        The United States government won. Officially, orgone energy did not  exist. Reich  was certified as a mentally ill, quack psychiatrist who  tried to foist a sex box  and a cancer cure on the American public. The  Reich affair was  terminated.
        In his prison cell towards the end of October he began to feel poorly,  but he  was afraid to bring the matter to the attention of the prison  officials. He told  friends that his jailers would try to kill him in  prison, and believed he would  never get out alive. On November 3, 1957,  Reich was found dead in his cell, an  apparent victim of a heart  attack.

Reich’s Scientific Legacy
Years later, Dr. Baker also wrote: “Reich’s attitude, in fact his entire life, was unconventional and as difficult for the world to understand as were his discoveries. Many legends, probably even religions, will develop about him. Already, some people look upon him as a superman who could not err, or as a spaceman come to earth; others have rationalised and written articles attempting to prove him insane, a charlatan, or a fraud, He was very human, natural, and open, and foremost, a great and genuine scientist. He could be as soft and warm as a summer breeze or as violent and angry as a thunderstorm.”
Was he a genius or a madman? For those who consider Reich an enemy of the people, his official sins are duly recorded in the dusty archives of office buildings in Vienna, Berlin, Copenhagen, Oslo and Washington. For those willing to take the time to investigate Reich’s writings, a different sort of man emerges.
It is my feeling that Reich desperately wanted to show the world God existed in the realm of the orgone. Through the study of orgonomy, Reich believed man and science could prove, beyond doubt, that God is real. Like God, the orgone is indestructible. And like God, orgone energy exists everywhere in the universe. Man’s spirit constantly reflects the orgone, eternally imbued with new life rising from the ashes of death.
Almost a half-century after his death, his scientific legacy persists. Reichian (Orgone) therapy is practised by some psychiatrists and psychologists. The American College of Orgonomy publishes the Journal of Orgonomy devoted to his work, and maintains a web site (www.orgonomy.org). Reich’s laboratory and burial place at Organon is now a Museum with a bookstore open to the public. Cloud-busting followers like Jim DeMeo have established an Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon. The lab conducts yearly seminars reproducing Reich’s bion experiments and demonstrating Reich’s blood test procedures.
Reich’s T-bacilli are obviously connected to still controversial and current bacteriologic findings of so-called nanobacteria, pleomorphic bacteria, cell-wall-deficient bacteria, and mycoplasma. In addition, newly discovered bacteria have been found in the blood of all human beings. All of these microbial life forms have been implicated as possible cancer-causing and disease-causing agents.
In some ways Reich was childlike and surprisingly naïve. His downfall was overestimating the goodness of science; and underestimating the dark forces of science. In human terms, he paid for this error with his life.
Science, as we know it, is becoming increasingly “dark.” As this new century begins, scientists continue to discover all sorts of new ways to kill mass numbers of people and other living things with chemical, biological, and nuclear warfare. Perhaps it is time to take another look at Reich’s discoveries and his dream to harness orgone energy for planetary healing. Rather than automatically placing Dr. Wilhelm Reich in the trash bin of medical science, he might eventually prove to be the most inventive and far-sighted physician-scientist of the twentieth century.
References:
Baker EF: "My eleven years with Reich". Journal of Orgonomy 18:155-171, 1984.
Boadella D: Wilhelm Reich: The Evolution of His Work. Vision Press, Chicago, 1973.
Cantwell AR, Blasband RA: "Bionous tissue disintegration in AIDS". Journal of Orgonomy 22:220-228, 1988.
Cantwell AR: The Cancer Microbe. Aries Rising Press, Los Angeles, 1990.
Cantwell AR: "Bionous breakdown in degenerative disease". Journal of Orgonomy 25:191-202, 1991.
Cantwell AR: "Bacteria, cancer and the origin of life". New Dawn, November 2003, pp 71-76.
Reich W: The Bion Experiments on the Origin of Life. Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1979.
Reich W: The Cancer Biopathy. Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, NY, 1973.
Reich W: Passion of Youth; An Autobiography, 1897-1922. Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1988.
Sharaf MR: Fury On Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich. St. Martin’s Press/Marek, New York, 1983.
Alan Cantwell MD is a retired physician and cancer researcher who believes cancer is caused by bacteria and AIDS is man-made. There is probably no other physician on the planet whose publications are as controversial. Many of his published writings can be found on google.com; and thirty of his published papers can be accessed at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/ (type in Cantwell AR).
In 1984 (the year HIV was discovered), his book AIDS: The Mystery and the Solution was published, showing the presence of cancer-associated bacteria in this syndrome. And in 1990, The Cancer Microbe: The Hidden Killer in Cancer, AIDS, and Other Immune Diseases was published, which documented a century of suppressed cancer microbe research. His other books are AIDS & The Doctors of Death and Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot.
Dr. Cantwell is now happily retired from the clinical practice of dermatology for 10 years. He lives in Hollywood, California, with his partner of 30 years, and their five cats. To contact him, write: Aries Rising Press, PO Box 29532, Los Angeles, CA 90029, USA. Email: alancantwell@sbcglobal.net
From New  Dawn Magazine
via http://www.whale.to/a/cantwell.html
Reich’s  Sex Experiments and Orgone Energy
Reich, Communism and the Nazis
The Bion Experiments and the Origin of Life
The T-Bacilli, Cancer and Reich’s Bions
Reich in America, the Oranur Experiment, and Orgone Energy
Reich’s Trial, Book Burning and Imprisonment
Reich’s Scientific Legacy
Reich, Communism and the Nazis
The Bion Experiments and the Origin of Life
The T-Bacilli, Cancer and Reich’s Bions
Reich in America, the Oranur Experiment, and Orgone Energy
Reich’s Trial, Book Burning and Imprisonment
Reich’s Scientific Legacy
images  -http://filmplus.org/03/passion.jpg
http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/reich.gif
http://heyokamagazine.com/HEYOKA.3.WILHELM%20REICH.htm





