notice how he threw in the minority comment as well?

DOUCHE.

Weiner.  Remember that Savage, crap, is just that, crap his real name is Michael Weiner.  And, he is a Weiner that is a whiner.

Actually... before Michael Alan Weiner went off the deep end (and several people, myself included, really do think part of it is just an act) and became the total psycho 'Michael Savage', he was a big alternative medicine guy with degrees in botany, anthropology, and a PhD in Ethnomedicine from Berkley.  Seriously.  He spent like twenty years studying traditional medicines in the South Pacific and South America.  Not that that necessarily means much in terms of his knowledge of Autism, but just thought I'd throw that out there.

I think you're in the wrong diary or something.

I kind of have to.

I only hope that if they do not receive punishment for their cruelty in this life, they do in the next.

yeah, make my Savage Dan.

No disrespect intended, but I gotta tell you I will never agree to burn any book. Ever. I will never try to stop someone from speaking or writing about their beliefs. Ever.

I find your example a bit odd, as Reich seems to be a fairly harmless fellow, who may have been mentally ill, but certainly not worth the bizarre treatment of him.

The bottom line is that I cannot find any reason to burn or ban ideas. In fact I prefer them to be out in the open. After all wind and sunshine are the very best disinfectants.

I prefer to send him into oblivion by exposing what a freak he is. He is an anachronism.

Say Jeter, do you know anything about Reich? I looked him up after I saw your post and was kind of intrigued by this guy. He sounds a bit nuts, but he believed that he tapped into an unlimited energy source he called orgonomy. It is an odd theory, but there are some who think that he was on to something. What I have been able to discern is that he felt there is a form of energy that is all around us that is generated by emotional and sexual energy. It would seem that he was a victim of FDA concerns about alternative medicine and sexual morals of the time. Many of his contemporaries felt that he had "gone astray or as having succumbed to mental illness".

<Reich was a respected analyst for much of his life, focusing on character structure, rather than on individual neurotic symptoms.[1] He promoted adolescent sexuality, the availability of contraceptives and abortion, and women's economic independence.[24] Synthesizing material from psychoanalysis, cultural anthropology, economics, sociology, and ethics, his work influenced writers such as Alexander Lowen, Fritz Perls, Paul Goodman, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, A. S. Neill, and William Burroughs.[25]</p>

He was also a controversial figure, who came to be viewed by the psychoanalytic establishment as having gone astray or as having succumbed to mental illness.[24][26] His work on the link between human sexuality and neuroses emphasized "orgastic potency" as the foremost criterion for psycho-physical health. He said he had discovered a form of energy, which he called "orgone," that permeated the atmosphere and all living matter, and he built "orgone accumulators," which his patients sat inside to harness the energy for its reputed health benefits. It was this work, in particular, that cemented the rift between Reich and the psychoanalytic establishment.[17][24][5]

In 1947, following a series of critical articles about Reich's "psychofascism"[27] in The New Republic and his "dubious professional standing"[28] in Harper's, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began an investigation into his claims, and won an injunction against the interstate sale of orgone accumulators. Charged with contempt of court for violating the injunction, Reich conducted his own defense, which involved sending the judge all his books to read, and arguing that a court was no place to decide matters of science. He was sentenced to two years in prison, and in August 1956, several tons of his publications were burned by the FDA.[5][17] He died of heart failure in jail just over a year later, days before he was due to apply for parole.[6]>

(...)

<In 1940, Reich built boxes called orgone accumulators to concentrate atmospheric orgone energy; some were for lab animals, and some were large enough for a human being to sit inside. Reich said orgone was the "primordial cosmic energy", blue in color, which he claimed was omnipresent and responsible for such things as weather, the color of the sky, gravity, the formation of galaxies, and the biological expressions of emotion and sexuality.>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Rei ch

Reich was focussing on this energy as a cure for mental and physical illnesses. Current followers of his theories think humanity will find other uses for this energy .

<Reich's later microscopical experiments with ameba would produce other breakthroughs in the biological sciences, in the discovery of the specific process of bionous decay of tissues, which lay at the basis of cancer cell formation. Reich's findings on cancer are directly observable, and not just some speculative theory -- his observations on pre-cancerous cellular processes significantly predated those of George Papanicolaou (of "Pap-test" fame), and Reich believed his scientific priority had in fact been stolen. Unlike conventional medicine, Reich's discovery also revealed the role of emotional-sexual energy in the psychosomatic process. What at first appeared to be only "bioelectricity" was later clarified by Reich as a much more powerful bioenergetic force -- a form of life-energy at work within living organisms, expressing itself as emotion and sexuality, but also directly observable in the microscope as a bluish-glowing field around living blood cells and other substances. This bluish-glowing energy, which he eventually called orgone energy (to preserve its relationship with living processes), was later observed as a blue-glowing aura-like phenomenon around organisms, trees and even mountain ranges. The blue orgone also exists in a free form within the atmosphere -- Reich wrote about an "envelope" of blue-glowing energy surrounding the Earth long before the first satellite photos confirmed it.</p>

Orgone energy in the atmosphere was a physical phenomenon similar to the older ideas of "vital force" and "aether" combined. It behaves lawfully, fills all space, expands and contracts in pulsatory rhythm, and interacts differently with different material substances: every kind of matter appears to attract the orgone, but at different rates of speed. Water strongly attracts the orgone, or life-energy, giving rise to the phenomenon of living water (described classically as "activated" or "structured" water) which is fundamental to life processes, and to the Earth's weather as well. Orgone was also demonstrated in high vacuum (as with "zero-point" vacuum fluctuation, etc.) proving it filled all space much as a cosmic aether. Reich's experiments in these directions led to even more controversy: new methods for ending drought and greening deserts, and new approaches to the problem of nuclear waste detoxification. His experiments suggested a new source of pollution-free energy, which some day might propel humankind to the stars. Fantastic? Sure, but solidly founded upon new experimental tests and observations in the best tradition of the natural sciences. >
http://www.orgonelab.org/wrhistory.htm

I will need to study this more closely, but it would seem that the FDA halted his work and burned all of his publications and paper they could find. There were tons of material. He went to prison, because he basically refused to defend himself, and died just before he was elegible for parole. He studied under Freud and wrote a book called The Mass Psychology of Facism. The weird part is that I have that book. I must have picked it up years ago because the title intrigued me. I am sure I tried to read the it, but must not have gotten far, because I don't remember anything about the book.

For the most part he seems to be written off as a kook by most sources I could find. I don't know if I can follow the science well enough to ascertain this on my own.