It is always a comfort when two individuals who have viewed each other sceptically, perhaps even disdainfully, from a distance find that, on closer acquaintance, they have more in common than they realized. Such was the experience in Paris last week at a meeting organized jointly by Nature and the British Council on the handling of bioethics issues in Britain and France. Those who were expecting a fiery clash between two opposing world-views will have come away disappointed. For beneath surface differences there was a surprising degree of harmony, particularly on the way in which the bioethics debate in both countries has opened up the question of public access to decision-making (see page 775).

Differences certainly remain. One focus of discussion, for example, was the status given to the concept of ‘society’ as an entity affected, for good or ill, by modern biomedical advances. France has, at least since the revolution of the eighteenth century, awarded greater significance to this idea in its legislation than Britain, which continues to think of communities primarily as collections of individuals. Some speakers suggested that this difference was responsible, for example, for contrasting attitudes about the extent to which threats such as eugenics can be adequately addressed by legislation.

But it also became clear that cross-Channel similarities are more important than differences. This in itself is not surprising. As has been graphically illustrated by the instant global reaction to the possibility of human cloning, the issues raised by modern science know no national or political boundaries. At the same time, the growing displacement in all societies of traditional forms of personal contact by modern techniques of communication has added new weight to demands for transparency at all levels of decision-making.

For Britain, at least, the reluctance of government officials to make available the full details of technical reports relating to recent food scares, such as the outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy and Escherichia coli poisoning, has already strengthened the hands of those demanding that the Labour government fulfil its pre-election commitment to introducing a fully fledged Freedom of Information Act. In France, the needs are less obvious. But last week's meeting revealed a sense that more can still be done to engage the public directly in regulating the impacts of modern science — including giving the media greater access to this process.

Scientists, too, have a responsibility to open up. Three days after the meeting in Paris, it was announced through a British television company that researchers at the University of Bristol had produced a ‘headless’ frog embryo, opening the possibility of growing similar human bodies primarily as a source of ‘spare parts’. To their credit, the scientists involved have not ducked from publicly discussing, even at this early stage, both the potential benefits and dangers of their work, including their own moral qualms. Their confidence that an informed public is a responsible public — more familiar as a political tradition in the United States — is welcome.