Censorship

I was brought up nearly 60 years ago to have no truck with racist views. I couldn’t really, as I’m part-Jewish and part-Huguenot.

What worries me about censoring people with such views is that it gives them credibility. It also means that where race is linked to disease, as in diabetes and sickle cell anaemia, that the research often gets downgrading and has difficulty in being taken seriously.

So if we have statistics that we don’t like, then we should attempt to verify or disprove them and then act responsibly to sort out the problem.

I also remember a Panorama program some years ago, about the messenger of the body. It concerned a vet at Glasgow University, who challenged the established view. So much so, that he was not allowed to give papers at conferences. In the end he was right.

So to impose censorship is actually counter-productive in many cases as well.

Remember what George Bernard Show said - “All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships."