The Dr. Mengele Of Orgonomy
                                                                           by Joel Carlinsky
                                                                        joelcarlinsky@yahoo.com
 
 In the 1940s Reich used mice in his cancer research. The experiments showed the positive effect of the orgone accumulator on cancer tumors. This was an important part of the theory of the cancer biopathy which he eventually developed.
 
The biopathic concept of disease develped by Reich considers the tumor to be only a late-developing symptom of the long-term condition that ultimately leads to tumor development only after many years of chronic contraction of the entire system. Reich repeatedly stressed prevention rather than cure, disparaging any attemps at a cure, including his own methods of treatment, as impractical.
 
To Reich, cancer was not a matter of a tumor that "just happened" in an otherwise healthy body, but a systemic disease that after many years culminated in a tumor.
 
Since Reich ended his research on cancer in the 40s, though many doctors have reccomended the use of the accumulator to patients wih many different diseaes, including cancer, and some case histories have been published, only one individual, has done any published cancer research with the orgone accumulator using animal test subjects. That person is Dr. Richard Blasband, M.D.
 
Dr. Blasband, while a member of the American College of Orgonomy, over a period of many years, used mice in his cancer research. His procedures, however, differed so widely from those of Reich as to raise the question of if he ever really read what Reich wrote.
 
Reich used a specially-bred strain of mice obtained from a breeder. They were bred to develop cancer at an abnormally high rate. He then treated them with the orgone accumulator, a harmless and painless procedure that could have no other effect than improving ther health.
 
Blasband, by contrast, subjected healthy mice to injections of large doses of a carcinogen, enough to overwhelm the immune system of even a healthy mouse, and then treated the resultant tumors with the accumulator.
 
So Reich was taking a sick mouse and trying to heal it, while Blasband was taking a healthy mouse and inflicting cancer upon it.
 
Although the results showed a positive influence, there is nothing that this line of research could reveal about the underlying dynamics of the cancer biopathy, as elucidated by Reich. There is no possibility of a method of prevention being developed by such means. And there is no increase in our knowlege or understanding of how and why the cancer biopathy develops in a human patient.
 
All that could be learned is what was already known: that an accumulator can make  a tumor go away, While treatment with an accumulator is an option in treating a patient, there is no point in testing it out over and over again. The medical effects of the accumulator have been known since the 40s.
 
All this research can possibly tell us is what has already been known since the 40s: that the orgone accumulator makes cancer tumors shrink and vanish. Since this was already known and presented by Reich, there was nothing new being found by Dr. Blasband.
 
The most charitible interpetation that can be placed on the work done by Dr. Blasband is that he simply was a mechanistic-minded scientist who failed to understand what Reich was clearly explaining about the biopathic concept of the cancer disease, and did mechanistic research from the standpoint of conventional, mechanistic science, which regards the tumor as the only thing wrong in an otherwise healthy body and seeks to cure the whole problem by killing or removing the tumor.
 
In this conception of cancer, which is the currently prevailing one, elimination of the tumor constitutes a cure and no attempt is made to address any underlying cause of tumor formation. It is simply assumed the patient is healthy except for the existence of a tumor. It therefore makes no difference how or why the tumor developed in the first place. A genetic weakness or a massive dose of a carcinogen both cause tumors, so a treatment for one is thought to be equally effective for the other.
 
There is an excuse for mainstream scientists to think this way; they are ignorant of the findings of Reich, which, after all, are not very well known. But for Dr. Blasband, there is no such excuse. He is very familiar with what Reich had to say on the subject. Nor can he claim to disbelieve what Reich claims. He has devoted his entire professional career to following in the footsteps of Reich.
 
Which raises an ugly question: If he did experiments on a very large number of mice, over many years, with no possibility of learning anything of scientific or medical value according to the very theories he himself considers valid, could the pain and suffering inflicted on those mice have been his real motivation?
 
In this connection, it is possibly of some significance that Dr. Blasband is not only a labratory researcher. That, in fact, is only a sideline for him. His main career is as a psychotherapist. He practices Reihian therapy, a form of therapy which can sometimes be extremely disturbing and both mentally and physically painful for the patient.
 
Which brings to mind the question: would you want somebody who tortures mice to do such therapy on you?

And all of his research was published in the Journal Of Orgonomy, a journal of the American College Of Orgonomy, an organization of psychiatrists, none of whom apprently ever saw anything wrong with his line of research. What does that say about their own competence and personalities? 
 
Dr. Blasband no longer does research on mice. That might make his long history of such work seem moot. But his written reports remain widely available and are in the minds of  a newer generation of Reichians, who continue to refer to his reports as if they actually contributed some worthwhile knowlege to the science of orgonomy. It is incumbent upon those who know better to bring the scientific worthlessness and questionable motivations of his bogus research to their attention.