More Internet News Group Nonsense: A Rebuttal
James DeMeo,
31:03:02
When I first heard
my experimental work investigating and verifying Reich was under discussion on
two of the largest physics email news groups (sci.physics and
sci.physics.relativity) I considered it an opportunity to engage serious
scholars on serious subjects. Then, to
my dismay, I found the tone of conversation on those e-groups was exceedingly
petty and nasty, with insults going back and forth in the manner of a
food-fight. While I did not subscribe
to them, I did post out the following "response":
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=3C9E97DA.D2C69C61%40mind.net
From: James DeMeo (demeo@mind.net)
Subject: Some Facts About Wilhelm Reich, and
James DeMeo
Newsgroups: sci.physics.relativity,
sci.physics
Date: 2002-03-24 19:29:42 PST
Caroline Thompson
has been kind enough to post to me a few of the responses which have developed
following her informing persons on these news groups about my investigations
into the work of the late Dayton Miller. For the record, my paper on this
subject is posted to:
http://www.orgonelab.org/miller.htm
A series of rather
insulting comments, personal attacks and other lies were posted after Ms.
Thompson's efforts, mostly from Mr. Dirk Van De Moortel. I thank her for posting out a prior reply of
mine, as I did not expect to log on for any lengthy reply. However, it seems the attacks and slanders
against my person are more extensive then previously known, and as I would not
expect Ms. Thompson to further defend my work, I will do so now, in person.
Firstly, I have
never met Ms. Thompson, and aside from our mutual interest in ether-theory, and
specifically the work of Dayton Miller, we have no connections. I regard her as a top-notch scholar, an
original thinker who has a lot of important things to say, and would respect
the input of any genuine scholar, critic or supporter, if such was presented in
a genuine manner. But she is no "follower" of either me or of Reich,
nor would I wish her or anyone else to be.
Regarding Miller
and Reich, as I have said before, there is no connection between them whatsosever,
aside from some theoretical linkages for which I take all the
responsibility. In my opinion, which is
based upon a considerable personal evaluation, the work of both Miller and
Reich can stand quite well on their own, without reference to the other. But I do believe also, there is a connection
between Miller's ether, and Reich's orgone.
Having said this, I
now wish to address some of the more outrageous statements which have been made
in various postings to these groups over the last several weeks. Unfortunately,
as most of the readers on this news group will know, it takes more space to
rebut some outrageous statement than is required to make the original
statement:
>>From Mr.
Moortel:
> >>
>When a man comes to you with a machine that cures all
> >>
>diseases in one blow and makes you live for at least 200 years,
> >>
>do you buy it? No.
FACT: Reich never
claimed the orgone accumulator would "cure all diseases in one blow",
or anything similar. This was claimed by his attackers who were not particularly
interested in facts, and who put the words into his mouth as a method for
smashing him down. It is a typical
straw-man argument, and is baseless. Of
course, nobody claimed the accumulator would "make you live for at least
200 years". This is exaggerated
rubbish from Mr. Moortel.
> >>
>And then when this same man writes an article that amounts to:
> >> >
"I sell Orogonic Devices. Physicists call me a fraud.
> >> >
But physics itself is a fraud. Look: they say there is no ether.
> >> > There
*must* be an ether. My Orogonic Devices need it.
> >> >
It's all over my books. I can *prove* that there is an ether.
> >> >
How? Well, there was a Mr. Miller who proved it. And no
> >> >
one believes him. QED"
For the record, I
do not, and never have sold orgone devices, and make my living as an author,
researcher (with my own private institute), lecturer and educator. I do have a book-selling and publishing
company which has been in operation since 1986, and have written a book on the
orgone accumulator which gives factual and precise information about it,
including construction plans. My published books can be reviewed and ordered
from:
http://www.orgonelab.org/xdemeo.htm
and my publications
listing, with some abstracts, are given at:
http://www.orgonelab.org/demeopub.htm
> >Poor
Miller couldn't believe this and desperately continued looking for his
> >ether. His
paper got thoroughly debunked, and no one ever talked about
> >Miller
again. Try google with "dayton miller", together with the words ether
> >or aether:
a handful of hits, mostly referring to the narcotic substance also
> >known as
ether or aether. Check it. I am not going to argue about his
>
>experiments. It has been done.
A serious scholar
will use internet materials with great caution, given the abundance of
unfactual and inaccurate material. For
controversial subjects, this becomes doubly so. One could not, for example, take any bit of rubbish from the
internet which claimed to refute Einstein and just throw it out there and
expect to be taken seriously. It has to
be based upon some kind of fact, and then you have to anticipate genuine rebuttals,
etc. The same is true with respect to
Reich's work. There's just too much
unfactual stuff on internet claiming to be based upon "Reich's work".
As demonstrated in
my paper, Miller was never "thoroughly debunked", and retained the
respect of his associates and even of Michelson up to the very end of that
historical period. To claim otherwise
is to misrepresent the facts. Shankland
was a political glad-hander who had no serious scientific career of his own,
whose very first experimental effort was a negative result on typical
light-diffraction experiments considered a cornerstone for modern physics.
R.S. Shankland, An Apparent Failure of the Photon
Theory of Scattering, Physical Review, Vol.49, Jan 1936, p.8-13.
One of the senior
physicists I met with at Case-Western declared that "Shanklands career got
off to a bad start" in reference to this experiment. It suggests he was early-on a critic of
mainstream theories -- maybe even a supporter of ether-theory and of Miller,
who was at that time the Chairman of the Case Physics Department. Later, after Miller died, Shankland became
the Chair at Case Physics Department, and after some years of idle time, with
no significant research or publications of his own, Shankland finally settled
into a series of interviews with Einstein, and then finally to lead the
incompetent and misrepresented de-bunking effort against Miller. If you read the sections of my paper, where
I review what the Shankland team attempted to do with respect to Miller's work,
it should be clear that they willfully avoided the most obvious methods for
reviewing Miller's data, and instead nit-picked here and there, to develop a
conclusion not supported by their own analysis.
After this was
done, Miller was buried deep, and Shankland's career went quite well. He got more interviews with Einstein which
were widely published in the "best" journals, and in them all the
misrepresentations of science history were repeated such that today, the
mythology of "no ether drift" is a catechism, and only emotional
alarm is created if you don't want to join in with the chant.
> >Apparently
Shankland did a good job, because only the Orgonics
> >muttered
about it. And they have to because they make a living out of it.
More insults and
insinuations. Unless you've inherited a
fortune, or science is only a hobby, we all "make a living" from our
work. But I do not sell orgone
accumulators. Got that straight?
> >Mr.
Willhelm Reich had discovered Orgonic Energy and invented the
> >Orgonic
Accumulator. And this device needed the ether to function. And
> >it needed
buyers.
> >Alas!
There seemed to be no Ether, and Miller's article was the only one
> >available.
So what do we do? Simple: We write an article about how badly
> >treated
poor Miller was.
> >Who can
write this article? Ha! Let's take James DeMeo who is a prominent
> >member of
the American College of Orgonomy (ACO), and is a Sociologist.
> >He can
write the paper to "defend" Miller. And his precious ether of
> >course.
For the record, Dr.
Reich did not appear to know about Miller, and never cited Miller's work in any
of his publications. He never asserted
that the orgone accumulator "needed the ether to function", and
believed his discovery of the orgone was genuine enough to explain the unusual physical
and biological phenomena observed inside it.
He did, as I also do, believe the orgone and ether shared many
properties, and wrote that physics had "prematurely discarded a useful
theory". You can read what Reich
actually wrote in "Ether, God and Devil / Cosmic Superimposition", a
companion book set published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NY c.1980s.
Also, for the
record: I never was a member of the American College of Orgonomy. But neither would I be embarrassed to be a
member. I was, years ago, a research
associate of the ACO, and studied with some of their senior members who knew a
lot about Reich, and who studied with Reich in the 50s. I published many articles in their Journal
of Orgonomy over the last 30 years. My
classical training was in the Earth and Environmental Sciences, Physical
Geography and such, with a BS in Environmental Science and a doctorate in
Geography, and not in Sociology. I
taught courses in Physical Geography, Earth Science, Natural Resources,
Renewable Energy, Climatology, and World Geography, etc., at four different
major US universities, until going my own way in 1988 with my own
institute. Got that straight, Mr.
Moortel?
What are your
credentials, training and experience, Mr. Moortel?
> >Wilhelm
Reich was a criminal: he got convicted in 1956 by a jury and got two
> >years. He
died in jail and hence became a martyr. Obviously he had some fans
> >and a
daughter Eva. And an Ellsworth Baker. And a James DeMeo. And some
> >more
psychiatrists. So they continued his work and created the ACO.
To define Reich as
a "criminal" is to fully accept as legitimate the actions of the Food
and Drug Administration, Courts and Prosecution of that case. Let's take a look at what Mr. Moortel is
supporting:
In the 1940s and
50s, Reich's detractors (many of whom had followed him from Germany to the USA,
and who hated his guts for his writings which described the Nazis and
Stalinists as comparably anti-freedom) wrote various smear articles in the
popular press, which were then repeated verbatim in various medical
journals. Reich's lawyer advised not to
sue, and so Reich simply wrote "letters of rebuttal", which were
never printed anywhere to my knowledge.
Today, we know that his lawyer, Arthur Hayes, was a good personal friend
with one of the primary authors of the smear-attacks, Mildred Brady. If Reich had known, he would have gone
ballistic, and fired his lawyer, and found another one to sue his detractors
for libel. So for starters, he got very
bad legal advice.
The smear articles,
in the various medical journals, stimulated the Food and Drug Administration to
launch an "investigation" into Reich's work. The articles carried many outrageous lies,
and the FDA apparently took them all at face value. Reich initially cooperated
with the FDA when they came around to ask questions -- then he learned the
Brady articles were in the background, and ceased cooperation. The FDA eventually filed for an injunction
against Reich, claiming that the "orgone energy does not exist", and
thereby declaring the orgone accumulators as "misbranded
merchandise", and all books carrying the word "orgone" as
"advertising literature" which they wanted destroyed and banned from
future interstate commerce. Reich was
outraged, and as a recent immigrant to the USA who took our Constitution very
seriously, he wrote a lengthy "Response" to the Judge, declaring he
would not allow himself to be dragged into court "to become a defendant in
matters of natural science", and allow his critics to destroy his decades
of careful research by legal tactics when they could not do so in the arena of
natural scientific criticism. One can
say Reich was naive, or that he should have used a different legal tactic, but
most scientific people will understand the principles which he argued were
important. Nevertheless, the judge
chose to interpret the written Response document as equal to "no
response", and gave the FDA virtually everything they asked for. The FDA was granted permission to destroy
all the orgone accumulators, and books carrying the word orgone, while Reich
was ordered to stop writing and speaking about orgone. In fact, the FDA raided Reich's laboratory
in rural Rangeley Maine, put his research orgone accumulators to the axe (Reich
is said to have carried out a microscope, and provocatively shouted at them
"Here, you forgot to destroy this as well!"), while tons of books
were carted off to incinerators. This
included his classic books "Character Analysis", "Mass
Psychology of Facism", "Sexual Revolution", "People in
Trouble", and "Function of the Orgasm" in which the forbidden
word "orgone" appeared only in the preface.
Some years later,
Reich wrote to the FDA saying he was going to resume speaking, writing and
publishing books, as he could not believe the courts would so egregiously
ignore the First Amendment. The FDA did
not react. However, a short time later,
when Reich was undertaking field research (with the cloudbuster) in Arizona, an
assistant moved a truckload of books and orgone accumulators from a storage
location in Rangeley Maine (where Reich lived, and where the Wilhelm Reich
Museum now stands), to a storage location in New York City. That triggered a Contempt of Court charge,
even though Reich knew nothing about it, and had not approved it. He and the assistant were so charged, and
appealed all the way to the US Supreme court. By that time, however, the courts
did not care about the original claims which brought the injunction, only the narrow
issue of whether the injunction had been violated or not. Many unethical breaches occurred, but the
bottom line was that all the US courts, from the district court in Maine to the
US Supreme Court, acknowledged that book-burning was OK, and that it was OK for
the FDA to basically ignore the First Amendment.
Reich went to
prison with a 2-year sentence. His assistant got 1 year. Reich died after 9 months in prison, two
weeks prior to his parole date -- his daughter Eva Reich believed he had been
poisoned, given his OK condition just prior to death. The assistant was released shortly thereafter, and committed
suicide. Reich's books continued to be
burned by the FDA, even after his death in 1963. Only years later, when Farrar,
Straus and Giroux publishers were offered his books, did the FDA back
down. Quite a scandalous scene, made
all the more Orwellian by the hordes of academic and journalistic cheerleaders
on the sidelines, celebrating the bonfire, claiming the First Amendment as
their own personal property – but did not apply to Reich -- while others stood
by in mute silence, afraid that they might be next. Books which previously had been burned by Hitler's and Stalin's
henchmen in the 1930s were thereby burned in the USA, with full approval of the
courts. My small "Orgone
Accumulator Handbook", written for the intelligent layperson, goes into
this matter in more detail, and provides various citations to the documentary
record. You can get it from Amazon.com,
or from:
http://www.orgonelab.org/xdemeo.htm
If anyone wants to
associate themselves with all of that, to defend that and claim that Reich was
the "criminal", while the FDA, academics, "skeptic" smear
authors and lawyers and courts have their hands clean, and were genuine scientific
people with clear and clean motivations, then I say: those people are closeted
fascists and liars who do not care a bit about anybody's freedom, and should be
watched very closely, and not be trusted for anything they do or say. Reich
fought against that deceptive Stalinistic behavior in the 30s, which is why the
Nazis and Stalinists both wanted to kill him, and so I fight against the same
group of philosophical thugs who today want all scientific heretics cleansed
from the halls of science. If you read
Reich's Mass Psychology, you get an amazing insight into the character
structure of the book-burners.
Which is why they
hate Reich's guts. Even if you strongly
disagree with everything Reich claimed, a genuine scientific person and lover
of freedom and democracy should be appalled at what occurred in the Reich legal
case, and what the FDA has in general been doing over the last 50 years or
more, in an overt war against all kinds of alternative medicine, where many
books have been banned and burned, and many pioneering physicians jailed or
defrocked, while the real quacks go on with their unscientific butchery in the
hospitals, with only a few notable dissenters in mainstream science and
medicine.
This is why I
claim, without hesitation, that the Reich legal case holds far more
significance for the sciences than the better-known Scopes monkey-trial. As a consequence of allowing the Reich
tragedy to stand, the US Supreme Court has recently ruled that scientific evidence
can be pre-screened as to its "scientific credibility" and
admissibility into court as evidence, by anonymous panels of orthodox
scientists, selected with the help of the National Academy. So today, even if Reich had tried to defend
his scientific discoveries in court, a panel of likely-prejudiced orthodox
scientists, who know all of the lies and misinformation, but few of the facts,
would have looked over the research evidence in private, and probably condemned
it, and then the judge would have said "defend yourself Dr. Reich, but
none of your research papers or those of your associates are admissible as
evidence". All who agree with this
way of doing "scientific research", quickly raise your right hand
into a 45-degree salute!
> >What he
does himself, is character suicide.
> >You cannot
make a decision against someone who sells Orgonic
>
>Accumulators?
> >Have you
actually *read* what this machine is supposed to do?
> >Actually
read, with your eyes?
> >You cannot
make a decision about someone who writes at the
> >bottom of
an article on his CloudBusters:
> >
> >
"Building Upon the Discoveries of the Internationally
> >Recognized
Natural Scientist, Wilhelm Reich, M.D."
> >
> >Wilhelm
reich was a convicted *criminal*. A crook.
> >Got two
years of prison for bringing peoples lives in danger.
> >Look it
up. You know how to.
> >This not a
personal attack. It is a fact.
I have no
hesitation to defend the facts in this matter, or the results of my own
experimental work. About that, I am most confident. And I am equally confident that every rational scientific person
who takes the time to examine the facts, even if they disagree with my
conclusions, will at least come to appreciate that this is no fabricated
quackery or hoax, and that the phenomena being observed are very real and
tangible. In fact, I give seminars each
year on these subjects:
http://www.orgonelab.org/events.htm
Mr. Moortel, since
you are specifically skeptical about the orgone accumulator, I offer the
following for consideration: In 1991 the Ministry of Science at
Niedersachsischen, Federal Republic of Germany, made a compendium of practical
and effective Natural Healing Methods, as a recommendation to the European
Union for legalization and harmonization of medical practices across
Europe. The fifth volume of this
compendium included a section on "energetic medicine", which
presented three recommended methods of effective treatment. They were: 1) Chinese acupuncture, 2)
homeopathic medicine, and 3) Orgone Accumulator therapy. Most people in the USA know about the first
two methods, and perhaps occasionally use them for some relief. The third, only a few know about, due to the
FDA book-burning and ongoing war of disinformation by the organized
"skeptics". After WW-II, a
lot of young German students wanted to know more about Wilhelm Reich, who was
widely known as one of the few persons in Freud's inner circle to openly fight
against the Nazis. His "Mass
Psychology of Fascism" was widely read there. Many younger medical students began exploring natural healing
methods, which today are a part of mainstream medical training in Germany, and
today, orgone accumulators are employed in German clinics and in other parts of
the EU. The orgone accumulator works,
exactly as stated by Dr. Reich (but not as a "cure all"), though
certainly the aggressive "skeptics" have tried to smash down all of
these natural healing methods. I would
additionally point to the following double-blind controlled studies (as well as
to the FRG report mentioned above):
Stefan Muschenich & Ranier Gebauer, "The
(Psycho-) Physiological Effects of the Reich Orgone Accumulator",
Dissertation, University of Marburg, West Germany, 1986. Published by Nexus
Verlag, Frankfurt. Also see: "Der
Gesundheitsbegriff im Werk des Arztes Wilhelm Reich (The Concept of Health in
the Works of Dr. Wilhelm Reich)", by Stefan Mschenich, Doktorarbeit am
Fachbereich Humanmedizin der Philipps-Universitt Marburg, Verlag Grich &
Weiershuser, Marburg 1995.
Guenter Hebenstreit: "Der Orgonakkumulator nach
Wilhelm Reich – Eine experimentelle Untersuchung zur
Spannungs-Ladungs-Formel" Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des Magistergrades
der Philosophie an der Grund- und Integrativwissenschaftlichen Fakultaet der
Universitaet Wien, Wien, Austria, 1995.
Heiko Lassek: "Vegeto-/Orgontherapie nach Dr.
Wilhelm Reich", in Dokumentation der besonderen Therapierichtungen und
naturlichen Heilweisen in Europa, Nr.5, Zentrum zur Dokumentation fur
Naturheilverfahren, Im Auftrag des Niedersachsischen Ministeriums fur
Wirtschaft, Technologie und Verkehr vom ZDN erstellt und vom FFB herausgegeben,
Forschungsinstitut Freie Berufe, 1991, S.1213-1237.
These, then, are
the kinds of evidence one should consult to make an opinion about the orgone
accumulator -- in addition to the original reports by Reich and his associates.
Double-blind and controlled studies, yielding positive effects exactly as
stated in Reich's original journals and publications. I honestly don't know
what more is necessary.
Again, Mr. Moortel,
you are circulating lies and half-truths.
I strongly suggest, you restrain your criticisms to things you are sure
about, and have knowledge about. As
further reference material, I recommend the following:
"Wilhelm Reich Versus the USA" by Jerome
Greenfield, W.W. Norton, NY, c.1974.
"Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm
Reich", by Myron Sharaf, St.Martin's/Marek.
Greenfield is a
former professor at SUNY-Buffalo, and did extensive Freedom-of-Information-Act
searches of FDA files, as part of his research. Sharaf was a lecturer at Harvard, and knew Reich, worked with
him, and presents an excellent and well-documented biography.
As indicated above,
one cannot make a decent judgement of this matter from purely internet
resources. Reading of the original
books and journal articles is a must, as with any serious question of
science. These are two major
controversies in the sciences, of Miller and Reich, and they are not going
away, and will not be driven down by attacks and ridicule, which can never
substitute for genuine scientific inquiry.
Thank you for your patience with this lengthy rebuttal.
Sincerely,
James DeMeo, Ph.D.
Director, Orgone
Biophysical Research Lab
PO Box 1148
Ashland, Oregon
97520
demeo@mind.net
Mr. Moortel's
incredible reply was posted to:
Return
to Caroline Thompson's front page