Sir

Your News story about the Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences, “Croats protest that science minister is ‘meddling’ in MedILS” (Nature 432, 540; 2004 10.1038/432540a), alleges that some researchers believe I am trying to stack the advisory board with faculty members from the University of Split. In fact, I am securing the highest level of academic freedom for MedILS within Croatian law and European tradition.

Faithful to the contract that the former Croatian government signed with Miroslav Radman, the current government will do its best to hand him the renovated building in Split in May 2005. The total cost of renovation, some €4.6 million (US$6 million), has been appropriated from the Croatian budget. This is more than the capital investments in all 26 Croatian public scientific institutes for 2005. As a result, the government is compelled to take a similarly large World Bank loan for the restructuring of the 700-strong Rugjer Boskovic Institute (RBI). But, unlike the unburdened MedILS, the RBI is assuming numerous obligations to the World Bank.

Some dissenters say that public funds should not be allocated to a project that has no scientific plan, no business plan, no mechanism for supervising the spending of public funds, no pledge to share future proceeds from intellectual property with taxpayers and no commitment by Radman to move to Split from his current base in Paris in order to manage MedILS.

To mitigate pressure to put MedILS under the control of my ministry, I have loosely associated MedILS with the University of Split. In compliance with the law, we formed a board of trustees: two publicly appointed (by the university and the ministry) and three internal (MedILS-appointed). Affiliation with the university will assure the public with regard to the spending of public funds, guarantee the highest level of academic freedom and result in public trustees being academics rather than Zagreb bureaucrats. Trustees deal with administrative management and do not ‘meddle’ in scientific matters.

Croatian law requires appointment of a separate and independent scientific board to manage scientific affairs. This will consist of international scientists of Radman's choice. Further details are available on the ministry website, http://www.mzos.hr .