Russia establishesadvisory council inbid to boost science

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NATURE | VOL 414 | 15 NOVEMBER 2001 | www.nature.com 241

Rex Dalton, BostonEarthScope, a major US initiative to studythe Earth’s crust that has struggled to wingovernment support, has received a strongendorsement from the US National Academyof Sciences.

“EarthScope will have a substantialimpact on earth science in America andworldwide,” says an academy report releasedon 8 November. The report was produced bya seven-member panel chaired by GeorgeHornberger, a hydrologist at the Universityof Virginia in Charlottesville.

Advocates of the $400-million projecthope the report will nudge the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA intoincorporating the project in their respectivebudgets for 2003, which are being preparedand will be released by President George W.Bush in February.

Last year, Congress prevented the Clintonadministration from starting EarthScope,and the Bush administration has so farshown little sign of supporting it — althoughmid-level agency officials are in favour of theplan. “We are doing our best to produce abudget including EarthScope,” says HermanZimmerman, director of the NSF’s earth-sciences division.

The NSF component of EarthScopewould comprise three main elements: amobile, national grid of seismometers,called USArray; the Plate Boundary Obser-vatory, which would monitor the movementof tectonic plates in the Pacific Northwest;and the San Andreas Fault Observatory at

Depth (SAFOD), which would drill into thefault south of San Francisco (see Nature 405,390–392; 2000). These would cost a total ofabout $200 million over five years. NASAwould contribute a further $200 million toEarthScope, in the form of an Interferomet-ric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) satel-lite, which would monitor land movement.

The American Association of State Geol-ogists, which met in Boston last week, hasalso endorsed the project, as has the NationalScience Board, the governing body of theNSF. But supporters of the project remainworried that it may not obtain sufficientpolitical backing. ■

➧ www.earthscope.org

Bryon MacWilliams, MoscowPresident Vladimir Putin has set up a new advisory council to help him reviveRussia’s beleaguered science and high-technology sectors.

Scientists hope the body will make science a higher political priority, althoughthey note that it includes many officialswho have overseen the free fall in fundingand prestige that has made scientists someof the poorest-paid workers in the country.

The Council on Science and HighTechnology, which comprises 24 politi-cians and high-ranking science officials, ischarged with helping to prioritize policieson science and innovation, as well as draft-ing legislation. It will meet at least twice ayear, and report on developments world-wide in science and technology, promotecooperation with foreign scientific orga-nizations, and recommend measures toensure the welfare of Russian scientists.

In part, the council represents a reac-tion to complaints that the Putin adminis-tration has failed to address the dire circumstances facing Russia’s scientists.“Many have criticized us for the insuffi-cient attention we have paid,” says AlekseiGromov, a government spokesman.

Members of the council, headed byKremlin official Sergei Abramov, willinclude Yuri Osipov, president of theRussian Academy of Sciences, VictorSadovnichii, rector of Moscow State Uni-versity, and Evgeny Velikhov, president ofthe Kurchatov Institute in Moscow. ■

Academy backing bolstersshaky support for crust study

Rock star: EarthScope would combinesatellite imaging with ground-based studies.

Alison Abbott, MunichThe European Patent Office (EPO) hasupheld the patent on the Harvardoncomouse, a mouse strain geneticallyengineered to be susceptible to cancer.

But the patent office has restricted thebreadth of the Harvard University patent —which currently covers all animals that aregenetically engineered using the oncomousetechnology — to cover only rodents.

More than 100 organizations andindividuals had registered their oppositionto the patent, which sparked intensecontroversy when it came into force in 1992.

“The appeal board felt that it wasimpossible to assume that the balancebetween benefit to society and suffering to the mouse could be automatically extended to all types of animals,” says

Christian Guggerell, the EPO’s spokesmanon biopatents.

Opponents of the patent consider this tobe a tacit admission of unacceptable animalsuffering. “The EPO’s position lacks logic,both ethically and legally,” says Greenpeacespokesman Christoph Then.

The decision is the first to be made by theEPO on an appeal against an animal patentsince it adopted the European Union’s 1998directive on biopatents. A moratorium onpatents on life had been in effect for twoyears before that, as the EPO awaited ethicalguidelines from the European Union.

The directive allows such patents to beawarded if the benefit to society is deemedgreater than the suffering to the animals.Since the directive was adopted, the EPO hasgranted 20 further patents on animals. ■

Harvard squeaks through oncomouse patent appeal

Mouse protest: activist groups opposed thepatent on grounds of animal suffering.

AP

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