 Following two critical articles about him in The New Republic and Harper 's in 1947 , the U.S. Food and Drug Administration obtained an injunction against the interstate shipment of orgone accumulators and associated literature , believing they were dealing with a " fraud of the first magnitude . " Charged with contempt in 1956 for having violated the injunction , Reich was sentenced to two years ' imprisonment , and that summer over six tons of his publications were burned by order of the court . He died in prison of heart failure just over a year later , days before he was due to apply for parole . 
