Dear President Obama:
I am writing this letter to request that posthumous pardons be granted to the late Austrian-American psychologist Wilhelm Reich and American physician Michael Silvert, who were disgracefully incarcerated by the United States government in the 1950s simply because they advocated an unorthodox scientific theory. It was Dr. Reich who postulated that all electromagnetic and gravitational activity occurred via a massless intermediary which he called “orgone.” It was upon this foundational principle which he built many of his theories on biology and psychoanalytic therapy. While I, nor any “reputable” scientist or psychologist would agree that orgone even exists, the fate of Dr. Reich can only be described as cruel and outrageous.
Dr. Reich fled from the Nazis in August 1939 and came to America in search of a better life for himself and his family. He thought that in the U.S. he would be able to continue to study his orgone theory, and also explore the use of orgone therapeutic devices without being harassed or threatened. Unfortunately he was wrong. The Food and Drug Administration thought Reich a fraud and succeeded in convincing a judge to grant an injunction on the interstate shipment of Reich’s orgone-related literature and equipment. In May 1956 this injunction was violated when Dr. Silvert moved some theraputic equipment across state lines. Reich was arrested and brought to court in chains and represented himself. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment, and died in a federal penitentiary in November 1957. Before he went to jail, FDA officials took a play out of the stormtrooper’s playbook, and physically destroyed his therapeutic devices and burned many of his books. For his part, Silvert also went to jail and was released, but committed suicide shortly after Reich died, whose demise he felt greatly responsible for.
You don’t have to agree with Reich’s claims to know that what happened to him was one of the most ridiculous fates ever endured by a man who committed no actual crime. Dr. Reich was not a fascist; he was not a racist; he was not a pervert; his ideas were simply controversial. I encourage you to investigate further this sad case of a man who went to prison, and whose spirit was broken so that he died alone in a dark cell he had no business being in the first place—in any decent country anyway. I am asking you to rectify this horrible miscarriage of justice by granting presidential pardons to Dr. Wilhem Reich and Dr. Michael Silvert.
Dr. Reich once wrote,
I would like to plead for my right to investigate natural phenomena without having guns pointed at me. I also ask for the right to be wrong without being hanged for it.
It is time to bring Dr. Reich down from the gallows.
Sincerely,
Max [last name withheld for this posting]
