...A short while ago, my friend Sigurd Hoel drew my attention to the enormous danger that looms from the various trusts set up to manufacture and sell radium for the treatment of cancer. I do not know to what extent you are aware of the practices and the brutal determination of the representatives of these trusts and of the people who profit from them. After vigorous and detailed discussions of this matter with our friends here, we realize that if my method of cancer prognosis and possibly also my method of cancer treatment were to succeed, it would completely pull the rug out from under the cancer radium industry.
Everyone who lives off that industry, and there are tens of thousands of people all around the world who do, would turn against me. Not because they are bad people but simply because they would fight quite unconsciously for their existence and against the need to undergo difficult retraining. The most dangerous reaction of all would come from those people whose vast earnings would be jeopardized. (That was not my idea, it came from a very smart and foresighted person.)
In addition, I learned yesterday that some years ago a journal article critical of the Belgian Radium Trust appeared. The article claimed that prices for radium were kept extremely high by the trusts and that profits of up to 1,000 percent were being earned. I cannot check these matters, but to the extent that I know "business," they are probably correct. Unfortunately, I did not have an opportunity to discuss this side of our work while you were here -- namely, how much scientific research is hampered by the profits derived from its incompleteness. Think, for example, merely of Davos (Reich refers to the tuberculosis sanitarium in Davos, Switzerland), which exists only because tuberculosis cannot be cured. It would make me happy if you fully understood what I am trying to say. It is not an ideological anticapitalist or ex-communist speaking in me but a physician who, under all circumstances, clings to his function and does not wish to be destroyed in the process. Because I am unusually very naive and these facts had to be pointed out to me, it would be wrong to claim that my behaviour is paranoid. To put it briefly, I ask that you observe the utmost caution in whatever reports you make to anybody about my ongoing cancer work. You got to know Sigurd Hoel here and I am sure you were persuaded of his absolute intellectual honesty. He believes that the simultaneous existence in Belgium of a league against cancaer and of a radium trust cannot be a mere coincidence. Only recently have I understood the reaction of local radium therapists to the initial rumors about my cancer work, although they were unaware of their own motives. My friends here and I still do not see how we will cope with this problem. I would appreciate it very much indeed if you could write and let me know your opinion, without making me wait too long for a reply.
In the deep conviction that you will not misunderstadn this letter and that you will assist me with your advice, I remain, Yours most sincerely.
excerpt from Beyond Psychology, page 130
Everyone who lives off that industry, and there are tens of thousands of people all around the world who do, would turn against me. Not because they are bad people but simply because they would fight quite unconsciously for their existence and against the need to undergo difficult retraining. The most dangerous reaction of all would come from those people whose vast earnings would be jeopardized. (That was not my idea, it came from a very smart and foresighted person.)
In addition, I learned yesterday that some years ago a journal article critical of the Belgian Radium Trust appeared. The article claimed that prices for radium were kept extremely high by the trusts and that profits of up to 1,000 percent were being earned. I cannot check these matters, but to the extent that I know "business," they are probably correct. Unfortunately, I did not have an opportunity to discuss this side of our work while you were here -- namely, how much scientific research is hampered by the profits derived from its incompleteness. Think, for example, merely of Davos (Reich refers to the tuberculosis sanitarium in Davos, Switzerland), which exists only because tuberculosis cannot be cured. It would make me happy if you fully understood what I am trying to say. It is not an ideological anticapitalist or ex-communist speaking in me but a physician who, under all circumstances, clings to his function and does not wish to be destroyed in the process. Because I am unusually very naive and these facts had to be pointed out to me, it would be wrong to claim that my behaviour is paranoid. To put it briefly, I ask that you observe the utmost caution in whatever reports you make to anybody about my ongoing cancer work. You got to know Sigurd Hoel here and I am sure you were persuaded of his absolute intellectual honesty. He believes that the simultaneous existence in Belgium of a league against cancaer and of a radium trust cannot be a mere coincidence. Only recently have I understood the reaction of local radium therapists to the initial rumors about my cancer work, although they were unaware of their own motives. My friends here and I still do not see how we will cope with this problem. I would appreciate it very much indeed if you could write and let me know your opinion, without making me wait too long for a reply.
In the deep conviction that you will not misunderstadn this letter and that you will assist me with your advice, I remain, Yours most sincerely.
excerpt from Beyond Psychology, page 130