“The sabotage of science is now a routine part of American politics. The same corporate strategy of bombarding the courts and regulatory agencies with a barrage of dubious scientific information has been tried on innumerable occasions — and it has nearly always worked, at least for a time. Tobacco. Asbestos. Lead. Vinyl chloride. Chromium. Formaldehyde. Arsenic. Atrazine. Benzene. Beryllium. Mercury. Vioxx. And on and on. … Tobacco companies perfected the ruse, which was later copycatted by other polluting or health-endangering industries. One tobacco executive was even dumb enough to write it down in 1969. ‘Doubt is our product,’ reads the infamous memo, ’since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.’ In his important new book, Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health, David Michaels calls the strategy ‘manufacturing uncertainty.’” [editor’s note: This analysis veers into the usual “progressive” (aka “universal health insurance”) realms, but most of the time it sticks to the facts - SAT] (03/28/08)