Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) is holding a special meeting in Japan next week. Two major tasks for the meeting will be to set catch limits for sperm whale stocks in the North Pacific and to review the status and catch limits of sperm whales in the Southern Hemisphere. John Beddington, lecturer in population biology at the University of York, explains why he thinks no more sperm whales should be caught in these areas.
PROFESSOR Lev Tumerman, who played a leading role in the fight against Lysenkoism, emigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel in 1972. Since then, he has been prominent in the press discussion of the Kyshtym nuclear "disaster" of the 1950s. Vera Rich talked to him recently at the Weizmann Institute, where he now teaches.
