My friend Sheldon Richman, editor of the Freeman published by the Foundation for Economic Education, has a wonderful article in the June issue titled “Seperate State and Science.” Unfortunately this article is not on line, as far as I can tell, but if you get the Freeman you should go out of your way to read this piece. And if you don’t get the Freeman you most certainly should. Click here to subscribe. In the article Sheldon lifts an excellent quote from a speech given by Michael Crichton on the subject of DDT and government science.

“I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn’t carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn’t give a damn.”

To clean up the quote by Abby Hoffman or Ringo Starr or some famous 60s guy–“everything governmnet touches turns to doo doo.” Science is no exception.