Who ya gonna call? CLOUDBUSTERS!

[steve.b@TQS.COM (Steve Berlin)]

Hi,

I know I'm opening a can of worms that should probably be left shut and
locked away, but since The Needs of The Many outweigh The Needs of The
One (Any paranoid acid casulties out there might want to take note of that
philosophy, Jorn) I thought I should share this tidbit I found, since I figured
lots of folks here would be interested.

Recently, I picked up a copy of "Return of The Straight Dope", by Cecil
Adams (my hero).  If you want to make your life MUCH better, learn the
secrets of the cosmos, and increase your IQ tenfold, I suggest you pick
up seven or eight copies of this book.  Anyway, here's something that
stopped me in my tracks on page 73:

(A reader asks)
"I've always cast a jaundiced eye on the shenanigans of scientific fringe
groups.  But my eye is a little less yellow when I look at Wilhelm Reich.
Reich claimed to have discovered a life energy he called "orgone" back in
the 1930s.  He made a device that supposedly accumulated the energy, the
"orgone accumulator" (ORAC), and another that allegedly could manipulate
it in the atmosphere called a "cloudbuster."

"Some MD's who still subscribe to Reich's theories publish the 'Journal
of Orgonomy'.  I remember one article claiming tomato plants grown inside
an ORAC produce more and larger tomatoes.  There's a meteorologist named
Jame DeMeo who does research on the cloudbuster. Plus (and this is the
ultimate evidence) Kate Bush sang a song about the cloudbuster on her
'Hounds of Love' album.  Seeing as you're the last word on subjects like
this, what's the last word on orgone?  Yes, no, or maybe?"

- Steven Stocker, Baltimore

To which Cecil answers:

"No.  Reich was a nut-an unjustly perecuted nut, it should be said, but still
a nut.  He claimed that (1) he had done battle with alien spaceships, (2) he
could produce clouds and create rain with his cloudbuster, and (3) his orgone
boxes could cure (or at least ameliorate) everything from cancer to the
common cold.  He believed living cells arose spontaneously from inorganic
matter, that cancer cells are actually protozalike critters that have tails
and can swim like fish, and that orgone energy is what makes the sky blue
and causes heat shimmer.

"Even his terminology was like something from a bad science-fiction movie.
UFOs he called EAs, for Energy Alpha.  The alien spaceships gave off DOR,
for Deadly Orgone.  The aliens themselves he called CORE men, for Cosmic
Orgone Engineering.

"Still, you have to give Reich some credit.  He was an intelligent, charismatic
man who had his share of admirers.  He was a cherished associate of Freud's
in his early years and made some useful contributions to psychoanalytic theory.

"But he seems to have had only the most tenuous grasp of reality.  His ideas
became more and more eccentric over time and he was eventually expelled from
the International Psychoanalytic Association.  He wound up in the United States
and from then on devoted all his time to the mad pursuit of the orgone.

"Reich convinced a great many people, including a few scientists like the
aforementioned DeMeo, who claims he ended a drought with a cloudbuster.  To
this day there are several orgonomic societies.  But the mainstream view has
always been that Reich was a quack and that his ideas have no scientific
basis.

"Loony though Reich was, he did not deserve the shameful treatment he received
at the hands of the government.  From early 1950s onward he was hounded by
federal agents.  His laboratory in Maine was raided, his equipment destroyed,
and his books confiscated and burned.  Reich did make exaggerated claims for
the medical powers of his orgone boxes, but he was hardly a major threat to
the republic and there was no excuse for the ferocity of the campaign that
was raised against him.

"In 1956 Reich was convicted on shipping orgone boxes across state lines in
defiance of a court order obtained by the Food and Drug Administration.  He
was sent to prison, where he died of a heart attack in 1957.  But his ideas,
both good and bad, live on."

[Copyright (c) 1994 by Chicago Reader, Inc.  Used with permission.  Really!]

Share and Enjoy,

Stev0 the straight dope

"What a blessing that so much of humanity is able to be alive at the same
time as myself." - Cecil Adams