WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Just when you thought no one could exceed the fecklessness of House Republicans, along comes the good old Church of England with a new chart topper. Earlier this month the Rev. John Papworth, a part-time vicar at St. Mark's Church in London, argued that it is really okay to shoplift, so long as your thievery is directed at giant chain stores.

"Jesus said, `Love your neighbor,' he didn't say, `Love Marks and Spencer'," the Rt. Rev. Papworth said. Might the Rt. Rev. be pulling our leg? He first made these remarks to an audience of police officers! Could Papworth be auditioning to be a latter day Chesterton, leading us by indirection to higher moral rectitude, like Chesterton's enigmatic character in The Man Who Was Thursday?

Somehow I doubt it. But sometimes the only way to see more clearly is to look at things upside-down. If pondering whether a little thievery is good for the soul proves efficacious, might it be possible to wonder whether a little poison could be good for the body?

It is a useful question in the context of today's environmental debate. The environmental debate often coalesces around thresholds of risk, with the environmentalists trumping all uncertainty with the argument that practically any risk-or any amount of pollutant-is too much. Right now, for example, we are told that we must tighten up air quality standards because too many people, especially children, are at risk, even though the science behind this view is dubious.

It is considered too outlandish to ask the upside-down question of whether the zero-risk philosophy isn't a detriment to human health. Also from England last week comes news of medical studies showing that health and life expectancy might actually be increased through small amounts of exposure to toxins. We're always testing lab mice with huge amounts of harmless substances to demonstrate the potential threat to human health. Guess what happens when you give lab mice small amounts of known poisons: life expectancy increases by as much as 40%; toxins, like viruses, stimulate the body's defenses.

Writing in the Journal of Gerontology, a team of scientists from the U.S. and the U.K. conclude: "The concept that small amounts of a toxic agent can lead to beneficial effects, although heretical to environmental activists and smacking of homeopathy, has firm foundations in the pharmacological literature of many drugs."

It gets better. A study of cataracts in people living in smoggy Los Angeles found that cataracts decreased at certain smog levels, probably because the tear glands are stimulated at low levels of ozone.

It is probably hopeless to think that such a contrary view can carry any weight in the current environmental debate. But it is a healthy reminder, so to speak, of what Chesterton meant when he wrote that "There is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell."

-By Steven Hayward