Opinion in 1997

Forest fires and urban pollution are wreaking havoc in South-East Asia. Technology and ecology can offer a little help, but more national and international awareness would also be useful.

Concerns in the US Jewish community about the potential misuse of genetic results need to be addressed.

Discussions about art and science can be frustrating but occasionally stimulating. The Editor explains why this issue includes the first of a series of artistic and art-historical contributions to Nature.

The Swiss have embarked on a national debate about the use of transgenic animals, threatening devastation of biological science and industry in their country. Are they a barometer of wider public antipathy?

Japan's scientifically weaker neighbours are outperforming it in the pursuit of quality.

Most disciplines know how to handle the naming of newly discovered objects. Not so the molecular biologists, whose profligate and undisciplined labelling is hampering communication.

Parties to the United Nations biodiversity convention have been given a rare opportunity.

Campaigns aimed at environmental protection need to maintain a careful balance between conviction and fresh thinking. Industry and activists should aim for more of the latter.

Plans to merge Japan's Science and Technology Agency with the Ministry of Education need more thought.

The pharmaceutical industry must get behind recent efforts by science funding agencies to coordinate an international attack on malaria.

Fifty years after independence, India and Pakistan are still struggling to develop strength in science.

Scientific robustness — not certainty — is the key to good environmental regulation. Only when this is recognized will debates about the soundness of scientific advice or access to data be properly resolved.

Italy must grasp a unique chance to reform its grant system before the window of opportunity closes.

The US Department of Energy will have to build something soon if it is to retain its role as provider of state-of-the-art scientific facilities. It should draw up a realistic medium-term plan for facility construction.

Unesco should think again before endorsing an outright condemnation of human cloning.

A landmark report on British higher education highlights an undercapitalized system ever more driven by a growing diversity of customers and the breakdown of trust between the academic community and the state.

The US Senate should be applauded for rejecting the administration's caution on plant genome sequencing.

Europe's proposed directive on biotechnology patenting has passed its most difficult hurdle. But patent policy still faces problems, such as the way some claims are implemented, and the lack of a ‘grace period’.

A major health crisis is being belatedly addressed by those who can make a difference. Real progress can be anticipated — provided participants act with regard for each others' constraints and experience.

Sending people to Mars is a bad idea.