ed, that Reich’s work stands or falls, and he always said as much. It was never, basically, a
question of a medical license, whether he carried a gun, or whether the Red Fascists were
after him. At issue essentially was whether the accumulator could help heal burns or wounds,
and whether or not sick blood disintegrated faster than healthy blood.
A further irony is that for the wrong reasons and usually in the wrong way the
investigators (Reich’s enemies) were doing what only a few of his friends did: they were mak-
ing clinical runs, they were measuring the temperature differences, and the like. Reich want-
ed people to make the tests, not admire or hate him. He might well, like Montessori, have
likened his disciples to dogs who look at their trainer rather than at what he is pointing to.
His friends were enchanted with him. His enemies hated him and the very idea of what he
was talking about. Hardly anyone looked seriously at his work.
Finally, the FDA came up with some very mixed and suggestive findings. At least
some of the FDA tests showed some suggestive positive result not cure-alls, but indices that
perhaps something important was at hand here.
David Blasband, a lawyer sympathetic to orgonomy, assessed the approaching legal
confrontation, although he was not aware at the time of the FDA test results:
IfReich had entered a defense ...I am convinced that the underlying issue
would have been the existence and function of orgone energy. The government
would have introduced the results of its tests to show the accumulator has no ther-
apeutic effect on mice. Undoubtedly, classical scientists would also have been called
by the government as expert witnesses. Reich could then have introduced his own
test results as well as evidence of therapeutic experiences. In view of the conflict-
ing testimony, the trier of facts would have been required to determine if a box-
shaped structure built only of simple organic and inorganic materials could do what
Reich said it could. ... I think it most unlikely that a judge or jury would have found
for Reich. The concept of orgone energy was too new and too simple^21.The blow fell on February 10, 1954, when at the FDA’s request the U.S. Attorney
for the state of Maine filed a complaint for injunction against Wilhelm Reich, Ilse
Ollendorff,and the Wilhelm Reich Foundation. On the same day, the federal Attorney
General’s Office also announced the complaint action for an injunction against interstate
shipment ofaccumulators. It mentioned extensive investigations that proved the nonexis-
tence of orgone energy, and concluded with the charge that the accumulators were “mis-
branded under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act because of false and misleading claims.”
The complaint was a twenty-seven-page document containing information about
the accumulator and insinuating that Reich was a profiteer on human misery^22. Orgone
energy was declared nonexistent; the accumulator was declared worthless. All Reich’s
American publications were regarded as promotional material for the accumulator. This was
maintained even for works originally published in German prior to the discovery of orgone
energy such as Character Analysis, The Sexual Revolution, and The Mass Psychology of
388 Myron SharafFury On Earth