Opinion in 1993

By imposing an economic ban on China in retaliation for the alleged sale of missile parts to Pakistan, the United States has done the right thing, but has gone only half-way towards the goal of limiting the spread of weapons.

President Bill Clinton must fight to win agreement to the free-trade pact with Canada and Mexico.

A pharmaceutical company's public relations policy is also good for public health

The inability of the British government to match the qualifications of would-be university students to vacancies in science subjects was inevitable given government policies.

A school board in the town of Vista, California, has ordered the teaching of creationism in public schools.

Bruce Babbitt, has had a greater effect on the environment in six months than his predecessors had in years.

Italy should avoid going to extremes in its attempts to reform the system of drug registration and pricing.

There is a danger that Britain will be frightened by the violence of some psychiatric patients into undoing an enlightened policy on care. More resources are a better answer.

Ireland needs a champion in the government who will look to the future of the science base.

Problems at an Italian pharmaceutical company leave Washington's Georgetown University in the lurch.

A Nobel laureate with a passion for basic research is just what the US biomedical community wants — and will get in Harold Varmus as head of the National Institutes of Health.

University reforms in Saxony may help to rehabilitate the concept of elite universities elsewhere in Germany.

An article on AIDS therapy published earlier this year turns out not to sustain its hopeful conclusion.

The money crisis has (or should have) given the managers of the European Communities a nasty fright. The best hope now is that they will embark on a more balanced development of European institutions.

The British government should give a better explanation of its decision to manage a public laboratory directly.

Hopes outside Japan that last month's general election will weaken Japan's technological competitiveness are misplaced; there is much that the new government can do to sustain the momentum.

The Tokyo summit may have put social science on the map, but its problems and their remedies still lie ahead.