Eisen-Suppressed-Inventions-and-other-Discoveries-True-Stories-of ...

The Suppression of Unorthodox Science 235
of copies of twenty books and journals. Crate after crate of his life's work
was rounded up wherever it could be found, and hauled away into the furnaces.
Decades of scientific journals and publications on politics, psychiatry,
education, sociology, sexology, microbiology, meteorology and other
disciplines were reduced to ashes.
WHO FELT THREATENED
Some observers wonder if his free-energy invention played a part in the
squashing of his scientific writings and the obliteration of his reputation.
Reich claimed that he could power an electric motor with concentrated
atmospheric energy. Did economic interests want to crush that possibility
Or was he correct in seeing the opposition to be more psychological—
a gut-level reaction by what he called anti-life "armoured" people who are
in denial of his life-affirming discoveries Did mechanistic-minded people,
in positions of power, fear being shown that they and the earth itself
and the universe are filled with streamings of a vibrant, pulsating unpredictable
life force Reich's experiments indicated that this living force
could actually be measured in terms such as heat or movement, and that it
is present in varying degrees depending on sickness or health of the organism.
And that this life-giving substratum is bothered by high-voltage
power grids and is in effect irritated into a frenzy by unnatural levels of
nuclear radioactivity.
A third possibility is that the unprecedented opposition came from the
orthodox medical community. The orgone accumulator, central to Reich's
legal troubles, was a simple medical-treatment box which concentrated
the previously-unknown energy by a certain layering of absorbent organic
and reflective inorganic materials. Experiments showed an anomalous
rise in temperature inside the box, and even Albert Einstein had experienced
this phenomenon under Reich's tutoring. Although Reich himself
never claimed that the accumulator cured cancer, patients of a number of
physicians reported that they were helped with various conditions by sitting
in an accumulator or being treated with a smaller accumulator called
a shooter.
The FDA had worked for years on the case before sheriff's officers
finally led Reich in handcuffs to a small courthouse in Maine. At his trial
for contempt of court, he defended himself but was not allowed to bring
testimony about the medical effectiveness of the orgone accumulator nor
even to explain "orgone." Myron R. Sharif, Ph.D., later wrote about the
trial and said the moment when fundamental issues stood out searingly
was when FDA agent Joseph Maguire scornfully referred to Reich's discovery
of a primal energy: