It is ironic that Mr Kirby should call for my resignation for
publishing this article in the week that we have attacked the government
for continuing the climate of fear within the NHS so that people are
scared to speak their minds.
I think it essential that a medical journal publishes a wide range of
opinions, and Virchow famously said "Everybody is free to make a fool of
himself in my journal." Readers will make up their own minds whether the
fool is Donald Light, Robert Kirby, both, or neither.
Nobody has ever put the case for free speech better than John Milton,
and his words seem particularly appropriate in this context. He wrote in
Aeropagitica in 1644: "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue
freely according to conscience, above all liberties...Truth was never put
to the worse in a free and open encounter.... It is not impossible that
she [truth] may have more shapes than one.... If it come to prohibiting,
there is not ought more likely to be prohibited than truth itself, whose
first appearance to our eyes bleared and dimmed with prejudice and custom
is more unsightly and implausible than many errors....Where there is much
desire to learn there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing,
many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making."
Rapid Response:
John Milton defends BMJ editor
It is ironic that Mr Kirby should call for my resignation for
publishing this article in the week that we have attacked the government
for continuing the climate of fear within the NHS so that people are
scared to speak their minds.
I think it essential that a medical journal publishes a wide range of
opinions, and Virchow famously said "Everybody is free to make a fool of
himself in my journal." Readers will make up their own minds whether the
fool is Donald Light, Robert Kirby, both, or neither.
Nobody has ever put the case for free speech better than John Milton,
and his words seem particularly appropriate in this context. He wrote in
Aeropagitica in 1644: "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue
freely according to conscience, above all liberties...Truth was never put
to the worse in a free and open encounter.... It is not impossible that
she [truth] may have more shapes than one.... If it come to prohibiting,
there is not ought more likely to be prohibited than truth itself, whose
first appearance to our eyes bleared and dimmed with prejudice and custom
is more unsightly and implausible than many errors....Where there is much
desire to learn there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing,
many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making."
Richard Smith
Editor, BMJ
Competing interests: No competing interests