The Case Against Wilhelm Reich

The FDA's best known intersection with the history of fringe science is its pursuit of the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, who from the late 1940s marketed orgone energy accumulators, wooden and metal lined cabinets he claimed concentrated a universal life energy with therapeutic and even cancer curing properties. The agency concluded Reich's claims for the devices were false and unsupported by scientific evidence, and on 10 February 1954 it filed a complaint seeking an injunction against interstate shipment of the accumulators and the literature that accompanied them. Reich refused to appear in court, arguing that to do so would concede the government's authority to judge scientific questions, and the court entered a default injunction ordering accumulators recalled and destroyed and Reich's books withdrawn from sale.

When Reich and his associate Michael Silvert continued distributing accumulators in violation of the order, the FDA brought criminal contempt charges, and in 1956 Reich was convicted and sentenced to two years in federal prison; he died of heart failure in the Lewisburg penitentiary in November 1957 after serving about eight months. The case remains one of the most cited instances of direct FDA action against a figure from the psychical and esoteric research tradition, and whether the prosecution was a proportionate response to false medical claims or a state using contempt of court to silence a scientifically marginal but non-fraudulent researcher is still debated, a question this Atlas treats as open rather than settled.

Sources Wilhelm Reich et al. v. United States (239 F.2d 134)United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit with American Inquisition: The FDA's Persecution of Wilhelm ReichJonathan Turley