ABSTRACT
The case for limits is argued today principally from the hazards that attend certain kinds of scientific work. There is the danger from experiments in molecular genetics, for example, that by accident or by malevolence an irremediable virus might be set loose among the people. The proposal that limits somehow be set upon scientific enquiry must be understood, therefore, as calling for limits upon the public freedom of citizenship. Attempts to place science under external controls provide, in fact, recent historic instances of the kind of tyranny against which the scientific enterprise stands. The public funding of science in the name of national defense and then of national prestige and cancer cannot have helped but narrow the deployment of the country's scientific talent within what might otherwise have been the range of freely elected research ventures. The promotion of the scientific enterprise and the realization of its benefits to society invite the responsible participation of all citizens.
