Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Andrew Bernstein
“Let’s start with a thought experiment. In late-19th-century France, the brilliant chemist, Louis Pasteur, originated the germ theory of disease. The idea that diseases powerful enough to kill large mammals were often caused by organisms too tiny to see was extremely controversial. Imagine that France was a dictatorship, rather than a generally free society, that the scientists who opposed Pasteur were favorites of the dictator, and that the regime then threatened Pasteur with incarceration or execution if he publicized his theory. Imagine they burned his notes, seized and destroyed his lab records, and intimidated his supporters into silence. … If the State or Church had suppressed Pasteur’s freedom of speech, for how many years or decades might the growth of medical knowledge have been held back?” (05/01/25)