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 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 marveled 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, gelatin 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.

      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.”

      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.

      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

Elsa Lindenberg

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.

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.”

Durng 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 maneuverings 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

      The body was taken to Organon for burial. A small band of loyal followers, including Ilse, Eva, and Peter, paid their last respects. Elsworth Baker, M.D., who had studied with Reich for eleven years, gave the eulogy. “Friends, we are here to say farewell, a last farewell to Wilhelm Reich. Once in a thousand years, nay once in two thousand years, such a man comes upon this earth to change the destiny of the human race. As with all great men, distortion, falsehood, and persecution followed him. He met them all until an organised conspiracy sent him to prison and there killed him.”

      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. 

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

 

 

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.