ACT

According to a Mr. William S. Burroughs in his expose, "Sects and Death":

ACT, the Anti-Cancer Temple, was founded by Tobias Antony Crump, a self-styled minister of the Radiant Church of Regenerate Christ. He leased an abandoned resort hotel in upstate New York where he offered for a reasonable fee to cure people of the smoking habit in seven days. The cure was effected by suggestions implanted in what he called "the other mind". The suggestions were administered through headphones which his parishioners were required to wear day and night throughout the seven days of the cure. At the end of this time all the reborn parishioners decided to stay on at the Temple and work for ACT. In return for the privilege of becoming ACTers they were required to turn over ten percent of their assets to ACT.

Crump prospered and expanded his facilities. More and more pressure was put on cured parishioners to stay on after completing the nosmoking course. They were told that the cure was not yet complete. If they returned to their old haunts they would inevitably relapse and die of cancer in a few years. Besides they had a sacred duty to help others. Cancer, he taught, was a Venusian plot to take over the planet. Aliens were landing in cancerous tissues as invisible parasites who were invading minds and bodies in all walks of life. Reverend Crump published a weekly tabloid in which he launched preposterous charges against all the enemies of ACT, a list that now included the tobacco companies, the drug companies, the FDA, the World Health Organization, the Cancer Research Society, the FBI, the CIA, the media, Interpol, the I.R.S., the Communist Party. A typical cartoon showed Uncle Sam hit in the face by a mass of cancerous putrescence like a custard pie: "From Russia With Love".

When a bomb partially destroyed an out-building of the Temple, Crump declared a state of absolute emergency. His followers must now turn over half their worldly goods and all their time to ACT. He declared all-out war on his Satanic adversaries. When an investigative reporter, sent to get the story on ACT, disappeared under mysterious circumstances, the founder proclaimed that the subsequent investigation "clearly and unequivocally proves a ten-year conspiracy on the part of Government agencies acting in concert with the media to suppress a Church."

Reverend Crump was involved in countless lawsuits bringing action against any critics of ACT. The resulting expenses were more than compensated by the constant influx of money with which he bought real estate. He now owned huge tracts of land in Florida, New Hampshire, East Texas and Montana where he set up Temples for his followers, who now numbered in the hundreds of thousands. He taught that they must all merge into one organism through what he called biologic fusion. Only in this way could they counter the Venusian virus which was taking over the rest of the world. To foster biologic fusion there were bizarre mass sex orgies and nudity fests to break down residual resistance and let in the radiant light of Christ. He instituted Black Broadcasts, in which his followers gathered at synchronized times to concentrate in silent malevolence on the enemies of the week, whose names, addresses and pictures appeared on a screen. His followers were now required to turn over all their possessions to ACT, and were told that they must be ready to offer their life-blood if necessary. Desertion was made a crime punishable by death. There was continual practice in the martial arts, and the bestial howls and grunts and snarls could be heard for miles around. Any neighbor who complained was put on the enemy list. Crump boasted that he had only to lift his hand to dispatch his followers as one man on kamikaze missions of assassination and sabotage. He was rumored to have in readiness nuclear devices and enough nerve gas to blanket the East Coast. "He could knock the government of this country down like a house of cards," a highly-placed official stated flatly.