Thursday, December 10, 2009

Zinnen op Wikipedia (27)

Uit het lemma 'Joseph Rotblat'

'He believed that scientists have an individual moral responsibility, and just as the Hippocratic Oath provides a code of conduct for physicians, he thought that scientists should have their own code of moral conduct, a Hippocratic Oath for Scientists. During his tenure as president of the Pugwash conferences, Rotblat nominated Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu for the Nobel Peace Prize every year from 1988 to 2004. Vanunu had disclosed the extent of Israel's nuclear weapons programme, and consequently spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 years in solitary confinement.

Rotblat campaigned ceaselessly against nuclear weapons. In an interview shortly before the 2004 U.S. presidential election, he expressed his belief that the Russell-Einstein Manifesto still had "great relevance today, after 50 years, particularly in connection with the election of a president in the United States", and above all, with respect to the potential pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons. Central to his view of the world were the words of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto with which he concluded his acceptance lecture for the Nobel prize in 1995: "Above all, remember your humanity".'

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