Wilhelm Reich and the FDA

Wilhelm Reich had serious credentials before he became the man the FDA put in federal prison. He trained under Freud in Vienna, became one of the most prominent psychoanalysts of his generation, and made genuine contributions to the understanding of character structure and the relationship between psychological health and physical expression. His early work is still cited in psychotherapy literature. His later work got him imprisoned and his books burned by the United States government.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Reich developed a theory of a biological energy he called orgone. He described it as a primordial life energy present in all living matter and in the atmosphere, distinct from electromagnetic energy and measurable with instruments he designed. He built devices called orgone accumulators, boxes constructed of alternating layers of organic and metallic materials that he claimed concentrated this energy for therapeutic use. He moved from Europe to the United States in 1939 and continued his research in Maine, where he established a facility he called Orgonon.

The Food and Drug Administration began investigating Reich in the late 1940s following complaints about the medical claims being made for orgone accumulators. The FDA's position was that orgone energy did not exist, that orgone accumulators were therefore useless devices, and that selling them with medical claims constituted fraud. In 1954, the FDA obtained a federal injunction requiring Reich to stop shipping orgone accumulators across state lines and prohibiting the interstate distribution of publications that described or promoted orgone energy.

The injunction's scope was unusual. It did not merely restrict the sale of the devices. It explicitly prohibited the distribution of Reich's published works insofar as those works described or promoted orgone theory. An injunction prohibiting the distribution of books on the basis that the ideas in them were incorrect was a significant departure from normal FDA enforcement practice and from standard First Amendment applications in that era.

Reich did not comply with the injunction. He took the position that the court did not have jurisdiction over scientific questions and that whether orgone energy existed was a matter for science to determine, not for judges. He declined to appear at a contempt hearing. The court found him in contempt. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison.

In August 1956, FDA inspectors traveled to Orgonon in Rangeley, Maine and supervised the destruction of orgone accumulators and related equipment. They also supervised the burning of Reich's publications at the facility. Later that year, additional copies of Reich's books held at a warehouse in New York City were collected and burned. The burning of Reich's books was conducted under the authority of the federal court injunction.

The publications destroyed included works that had nothing to do with orgone accumulators or medical claims. They included Reich's earlier psychoanalytic and political writings, some of which had been published in Europe before he came to the United States and none of which made any medical claims about devices. The FDA's destruction of those publications on the basis of an injunction targeting medical fraud was an extension of the court order that went significantly beyond what the fraud allegation would seem to require.

A second burning of Reich's publications occurred in 1960, three years after his death, using additional copies of his books that had been seized. The American Civil Liberties Union protested the book burnings at the time, noting that the United States government burning books was an event that warranted attention regardless of one's views on orgone energy. The protest did not prevent the burnings.

Reich was transferred to Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania in March 1957. He was 60 years old and in poor health. He had a history of heart disease. In November 1957, eight months into his two-year sentence, he was found dead in his cell. The official cause of death was heart failure. He died the night before he was scheduled to appear before the parole board for a hearing that might have resulted in his early release.

The timing of his death has been noted by those who have written about the case. A 60-year-old man with heart disease dying in federal prison the night before a parole hearing is not inherently suspicious. It is also not a fact that invites uncomplicated acceptance. No investigation into the circumstances of his death was conducted beyond the prison's internal determination of cause of death.

Reich's papers and research materials were sealed by his estate with instructions that they not be opened until 50 years after his death. The Wilhelm Reich Trust opened the restricted materials in 2007. The materials have been available to researchers since then. The Orgonon facility in Maine is now the Wilhelm Reich Museum and is open to the public.

The FDA's position that orgone energy does not exist was not based on experimental refutation of Reich's claims. It was based on the absence of evidence for orgone energy in mainstream scientific literature and on the finding that the specific medical claims made for orgone accumulators were not supported by controlled studies. Whether the absence of mainstream evidence is sufficient to justify the destruction of a scientist's work and his imprisonment is a question the FDA's institutional response did not address.

Reich's specific claims about orgone energy have not been systematically tested by mainstream research institutions. His experimental reports describe phenomena he attributed to orgone that have not been independently replicated or explained by other mechanisms. The specific claim that orgone accumulators concentrate a measurable form of energy distinct from known electromagnetic fields has not been the subject of rigorous independent investigation. It was simply assumed to be false and acted upon accordingly.

Whether Reich was a brilliant scientist whose discoveries were suppressed, a delusional thinker whose mental health deteriorated in his later years, or something more complicated than either characterization allows is a question the available evidence does not definitively answer. What the evidence does answer is that the United States government burned his books, imprisoned him, and that he died in that prison. Those facts are confirmed. Their implications are not.

Wilhelm Reich was a trained psychiatrist and student of Freud who claimed to have discovered a primordial biological energy. The Food and Drug Administration obtained a federal injunction against him in 1954, supervised the burning of approximately six tons of his publications in 1956 and 1960, and sent him to federal prison for contempt. He died there in 1957, the night before a parole hearing, at the age of 60. The ACLU protested the book burnings at the time. The burnings occurred. Whether orgone energy exists remains an open scientific question that no major research institution has formally investigated. Whether burning books and imprisoning scientists is an appropriate response to contested scientific claims is a question the US government answered without asking it.