Abstract
THE importance of full freedom.of communication of information has been emphasized, notably by Sir Henry Dale in addresses in Great Britain and also in his Pilgrim Trust lecture delivered in the United States last October; and he returned to that theme in his presidential address at Dundee to the British Association. His pleas, which have been reflected in the recent reviews of the work of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and of the Rockefeller Foundation by the respective presidents of those Institutions, Dr. Vannevar Bush and Dr. Raymond Fosdick, form part of a wider movement towards the restoration of a fundamental human freedom restricted during the War and seriously infringed in several countries during the two decades preceding the outbreak of war. In the definition of human rights and fundamental freedoms which forms Part II of the draft put forward by the United Kingdom representative on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, as a basis of discussion for an International Bill of Human Rights, Article 14 deals specifically with this question. Every person, it is submitted, “shall be free to express and publish his ideas orally, in writing, in the form of art or otherwise, and shall be free to receive and disseminate information of all kinds, including both facts, critical comments and ideas by books, newspapers, or oral instruction, and by the medium of all lawfully operated devices. These freedoms of speech and information may be subject only to necessary restrictions, penalties or liabilities arising out of considerations of national safety, the inciting to alter by violence the system of government or to promote disorder, crime, or obscenity, or injurious to human rights and fundamental freedoms, justice or the reputations of other persons.”
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Scientific Freedom Versus Secrecy. Nature 160, 311–312 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/160311a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/160311a0