Cool response from agribusiness to royal plea for nature

London

Prince Charles: “Use science to understand how nature works, not to change what nature is.” Credit: STEFAN ROUSSEAU/PA

Britain's future monarch, Prince Charles, last week made a public plea to “restore the balance between the heartfelt reason of instinctive wisdom and the rational insights of scientific analysis”. Delivering the last of this year's BBC Reith lectures, he argued that mankind's “duty of stewardship” for the Earth “has become smothered by almost impenetrable layers of scientific rationalism”.

Charles criticized the neglect of research into traditional, ‘organic’ systems of farming in favour of heavy use of chemicals and the development of genetically modified crops. “We should show greater respect for the genius of nature's designs, rigorously tested and refined over millions of years,” he said. “This means being careful to use science to understand how nature works, not to change what nature is, as we do when genetic manipulation seeks to transform a process of biological evolution into something completely different.”

The Royal Society responded: “If we are going to [live] sustainably in the coming decades, we must pay greater attention to the insights of science”. Cropgen, a group recently set up by the agribusiness industry, said: “Demonizing gene technology inevitably risks increasing the number and variety of chemicals used in farming today.”

Green agriculture minister drops biotech conference

Genoa

Italy's new minister for agriculture has withdrawn the ministry's sponsorship of TEBIO, one of Italy's largest biotechnology conferences and exhibitions. It was one of Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio's first acts in office.

Scanio, a member of the Green party, said it was a response to a statement made by new prime minister Giuliano Amato.

Amato had identified a series of priorities for his government — including restrictions on field trials of transgenic crops, human cloning and DNA patenting — while presenting his programme to the Italian parliament on 28 April.

Despite the move, TEBIO still took place in Genoa this week. Ironically, it was sponsored by the Italian Committee on Biotechnology and Biosafety, which is under the aegis of the prime minister's cabinet.

Nuclear leaders pledge to eliminate arsenals

Washington

The five main nuclear powers — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — last week signed an “unequivocal undertaking” to “accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals”.

The pledge, made at a meeting of parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in New York, goes further than previous promises by the powers to dispose of their nuclear weapons. It was welcomed by arms-control groups, although it contains no indication of a timetable for disarmament.

The White House sought to play down the significance of the statement, however, denying that it marked a shift in US policy.

The five powers (then including the Soviet Union) originally agreed to work towards nuclear disarmament when they first signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968.

German university building programme grinds to a halt

Munich

No new university building projects will start in Germany next year unless government funding improves, the country's science council warned last week.

The federal government must significantly increase its financing of university building and large equipment in the next four-year funding round, starting in 2001, said the Wissenschaftsrat.

It warned that the position of universities, whose funds for building have been steadily eroded for nearly a decade, was now “extremely insecure” and that research conditions are frequently poor.

The Wissenschaftsrat has a long waiting list of new projects that it considers urgent. These include renovating dilapidated 1970s buildings, extending research institutes in the former East Germany, and starting work on prestigious new projects such as the planned Centre for Biosciences at the University of Cologne.

Ethical divide on US genome project

Washington

The US Human Genome Project's Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) research programme is to be split into two. One programme will be overseen by the Department of Energy (DoE), which initiated the HGP in the United States. The other will be run by the US National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), which has had a higher profile in the project in recent years.

The split represents diverging ELSI interests by each group, says Elizabeth Thomson, ELSI research programme director at the NHGRI. The DoE's ELSI efforts have in recent years been focused on privacy and public education issues, whereas the NHGRI's have involved increasing emphasis on genetic testing and the role of genomics in clinical settings.

Thomson announced the split at a National Human Genome Advisory Council meeting this week.

Stone to retire after life of highs and lows in space lab

San Diego

The director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Edward Stone, announced last week that he will retire next year when he reaches the age of 65.

Based in Pasadena, California, the JPL is managed for the US space agency NASA by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). It has 5,000 employees and a budget of $1.3 billion.

The JPL has seen both stunning successes and failures in space exploration under Stone's leadership. A physicist and astronomer, Stone led the team that sent the Voyager mission to photograph Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in 1977. But last year two JPL-led missions to Mars failed when spacecraft were lost.

Caltech officials said that a search will begin immediately for a new director.

Anderson resigns as Wellcome governor

London

The Wellcome Trust announced last week that Roy Anderson, formerly director of the trust's Centre for Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Oxford, has resigned as a governor. Following a series of controversies, Anderson had already announced his resignation from the university, and is to take up a post at Imperial College, London (see Nature 403, 472; 2000 and Nature 404, 214; 2000).

In a short statement, the Wellcome Trust said it wished to acknowledge the significant contribution he had made as a governor, as well as “his very substantial scientific contributions more broadly”.