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Most governments have taken fright at the growing cost of welfare and, perhaps inevitably during a recession, are canvassing mean devices for containing costs. But welfare is inescapable in a modern state.
The discovery of a Neolithic corpse in an alpine glacier in 1991 attracted widespread attention. What has happened in the eighteen months since then reflects badly on European science.
Hopes that research would quickly yield a prophylaxis for AIDS, or possibly a cure, appear to be evaporating, together with the belief that infectious disease is historical only.
