Features in 1980

Health care in Brazil is not simply a matter of science and sound management. It is a matter of politics. Maurice Bazin reports on a case history — the ‘Sabin episode’

The recent growth of conservative religion in the US has injected new vigour into attacks on the teaching of evolution. David Dickson reports from Atlanta, Georgia

The politics of cancer are becoming increasingly polarised with environmentalists taking one extreme view and industrialists the other. Richard Peto argues that a more dispassionate and disinterested approach is required for a realistic assessment both of the risks from environmental carcinogens and of the preventative regulations needed

The UN General Assembly recently approved the World Health Organisation's goal of health for all by the year 2000. Here, the architect of WHO's new policy, Director General Halfdan Mahler explains his thinking to Anil Agarwal

On 23 March the people of Sweden will be voting in a referendum on nuclear power policy. Wendy Barnaby writes from Stockholm that the exercise is intended to meet party political rather than major policy objectives

The research and introduction of new drugs has been slowing down in the UK and the US. At the same time, government regulations on the safety of new drugs have increased. But Fred Steward and George Wibberley argue that there is not a simple relationship between these two trends

The International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation has given a boost to the fast breeder reactor. But while the US is rejecting the breeder, others are embracing it, writes Robert Walgate

THE International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation ended on 29 February with a plenary session that adopted the reports of all the study groups. Hermann Bondi (right) Chief Scientist at the UK Department of Energy and leader of the British delegation to INFCE, assesses its work

THE International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE) was set up to release growing tension between states over control of the nuclear fuel cycle and the possible spread of nuclear weapons, but, argues Ian Smart, without political agreement between governments INFCE alone could not do this

Eric Ashby (right) looks at a recent report on public participation in technology decision-making in OECD countries and argues that better public information could reduce disenchantment with representative democracy

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one of the world's least “developed” countries. A third of its three million people have only emerged from the neolithic age over the past 40 years. The people are divided by mountain ranges reaching 4,700m, torrential rivers, forests, ravines, seas, malarial swamps and language — more than 700 are spoken. But in the five years since independence from Australia, the government has launched an ambitious Improvement Plan, under which western science and technology are being introduced enthusiastically. All projects are funded by the National Public Expenditure Plan, which absorbs 21% of all spending. The main national aims are equal distribution of development among a population that is 85% rural and largely dependent on subsistence farming and a reduction in the number of western expatriates on whom development still largely depends. Both aims are meeting with mixed results, as Tony Ades reports

Jim Hitter records some observations on what was “effectively the first public debate on science and technology in France for more than a decade”. It was staged last month, by Les Amis de la Terre.

In Sweden, as in most European countries, young scientists are facing problems finding work. Wendy Barnaby reports on the falling market in research positions for newly-qualified PhDs

In the last of three articles on science and technology in China, Tong B Tang, research fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, UK, reports on scientific education and popularisation

Robert Walgate speaks to a former film-maker who subjected himself to the ‘discipline’ of science, and succeeded

In the second of three articles on the development of science and technology in China, Tong B Tang, research fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, UK, who visited China at the end of last year, examines scientific services