Opinion in 1994

The impending publication of Nature Medicine is a welcome development of long-standing policy.

If Europe cannot agree on its planned accelerator, it should internationalize the project quickly.

Preparations for Europe's next big battle in 1996 have begun with too much public speaking in France and Germany, and too little concern for the kind of agenda that will make a constructive intergovernmental conference.

Japan needs better arrangements for conducting clinical trials of new therapeutic drugs.

Athletics authorities are right to ban performance-related drugs, but should do so more intelligently.

An unreported accident in a virus laboratory at Yale is but one of many factors that challenge society's trust in scientists' promises to do hazardous research.

US president Bill Clinton's "policy" on the Cuban refugee crisis speaks volumes about his presidency.

Mr Clinton appears ready to compromise on health care reform despite previous denials.

Knowledge that something is dangerous is not necessarily a sufficient inducement to change behaviour.

One pity of Linus Pauling's death is that even vitamin C could not keep him living longer.

There is a chance that next week's UN conference on population and development at Cairo will give a necessary fillip to declining fertility around the world, but only if the red herrings on the agenda can be avoided.

The British Broadcasting Corporation deserves no credit for a meretricious series of television films.

A US Congressman's fight against earmarked funds needs and deserves more public support from the universities.

The British government needs to respond urgently to the charge that attempts to introduce an 'Internal market' into the operation of the health service are undermining the country's clinical research base.

Last week has sharpened the difficulty in the United States of striking a balance between the needs of basic research and of the wider community.

The French government's language bill is back in the melting pot and should remain there.

Japan is the site of the 10th International AIDS conference and the news seems more depressing than ever.

Those who test others' ideas by repeating their experiments are not required to do so slavishly.

Several UN interventions in the past two years betoken an urgent need for more effective ways of deciding when international action is needed. The United Nations should seek help from some judicial process.

The transfer to another ministry of Britain's first science minister for three decades is a loss.