Opinion in 1989

British academics are faced with a nasty choice between a poor pay award and a continuing labour dispute.

The European Commission has hung an intellectual millstone around its neck by banning the use of bovine growth hormone in growing cattle. The European Parliament has a duty to put it straight.

Budget problems in Britain, the Soviet Union and United States may have different origins — but one solution.

Politicians anxious about the environment seem no more ready than their predecessors to make prudent choices.

The US administration may have bungled its well-meant plan to lift the burden of indebtedness from the shoulders of the developing world.

The University of Tokyo is embarking on a daring reform — not before time.

Mrs Margaret Thatcher's crusade in favour of the ozone layer should not blind her to greenhouse gases.

This week's negotiations on conventional forces in Europe will be more complicated than a few years ago, paradoxi-cally because Mr Gorbachev has changed the agenda.

The Shiite threat to kill a British author and the violence of animal rights extremists have a lot in common.

President George Bush has promised to create better machinery for gathering technical advice, but time is passing. A search for a paragon should not let him hide from the urgency of his need.

The unfamiliar appearance of this issue of Nature implies no systematic change of content.

Nobody should be surprised that ten years of short commons have deprived Britain of researchers.

British grant-makers unwisely conspire with the British government to tell researchers what to do.

An acid test of the European Community's intentions in support of science after 1992 is its willingness to respond to an imaginative proposal from radioastronomers.

What is the obligation of the US federal government to university research?

The US Institute of Medicine recommends how malpractice in research should be controlled.

The new US president has signalled how he would have spent money if there were more of it, and has singled out public education. The academic community should see that the message is amplified.

The British government's plans to reorganize its public health service are not as fearsome as its critics say, but endanger medical research — and the civility that health care has brought to Britain.

British transplant physicians are in hot water for allegedly transplanting kidneys obtained by pur-chase. But buying kidneys may not always be wrong.