Consider the ideal summer evening. The temperature is in the 70s. The smell of new mown grass is in the air. The Bug Zapper is keeping the flies at bay as you sit down to enjoy a cool glass of lemonade.

Remember the medfly in California? This tiny fruit fly had the entire state in an uproar a decade or so ago. It had made its way into the state as a stowaway on some imported cargo. Elaborate measures were taken to eradicate it before it got a strong foothold and threatened agriculture as we know it.

Have you ever used a fly swatter? Decidedly low tech, they are, nonetheless, quite effective. We don't use them much anymore. Unless you get lucky, it is tough to take out more than one fly at a time.

Today we would prefer to get out the Raid or the Black Flag.

Don't talk to Ari Hoffman about flies. A high school student, he recently completed a 10 week study of the effects of radiation on fruit fly reproduction. He did a good job, winning first place in county competition.

He didn't win first place in regional competition, though. Warren Hagberg, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area Science Fair, disqualified his project. The charge was cruelty to animals. It's true; he was charged with cruelty to fruit flies.

Ari maintains that the "life they lived was actually a good life." They were well fed and kept at tropical temperatures. The project concluded that reproduction slowed as the radiation dose increased.

Some of them died. They were "euthanized" because they became infected with mites. Hagberg maintains that national rules ban experiments involving death or injury of animals.

The Fib Finder has been involved in science fairs for the last 25 years (admittedly not at the national level) and has never heard of a rule regarding death or injury of "animals." The rule has always considered vertebrates only, and the death of a vertebrate does not automatically disqualify a project on the grounds of cruelty.

We have waged full scale warfare against flies since a cave man made the first bowl of potato salad. Untold millions are killed, in a good cause, each year through our aggressive efforts. Enormous strides have been made in disease control simply by killing lots of flies. But Ari Hoffman has been judged a cruel person.

We can only hope that in the long term interests of the human race that Warren Hagberg receives a sufficient dose of radiation to prevent his genes from terrorizing another generation.

Detroit News, 3-21-97 p. 8A