Within 10 days of the crash in woods near Strasbourg, a team of French
forensic scientists, dental surgeons and biologists had identified 68 of
the 87 corpses by conventional methods such as matching dental records and
blood tests.

‘We then decided to use genetic fingerprinting, both to identify the
remaining 19 and also on those already identified, which allowed us to assemble
all the remains of each individual,’ said Patrice Mangin, director of the
Institute of Forensic Medicine at the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg.

Sixteen of the remaining corpses were identified by comparing their
DNA profiles with those of nearest relatives; the other three could not
be identified. The technique relies on detecting familial traits within
DNA.

Whenever possible, both parents of the suspected victim had a blood
sample taken to give the best chance of a match. Where there was only one
parent, siblings and offspring provided further comparisons. Mangin also
used what he calls ‘reverse filiation’, in which a suspected victim’s children
supply DNA to identify the parent.

‘I don’t think DNA fingerprinting will take over from conventional methods
for the time being, said Mangin. The cost of fingerprinting after the Strasbourg
crash was 1.5 million francs ( £150 000).

‘Paradoxically,’ said Mangin, ‘it was very difficult to get information
for conventional identification on the crew. With a DNA bank it would be
fast and simple and would only cost £50 to take and stock a person’s
DNA for life.’ Identification of pilots after a fatal accident can be crucial.
Toxicology tests can reveal whether a pilot had taken alcohol or a medication
before the flight.

French airlines have shown no sign of wanting to use DNA banks. Air
Inter is creating identity files of all staff. These include dental X-rays
but not DNA profiles.

The dummies recently began a tour of French hospitals and medical congresses
so that doctors and medical students can learn to diagnose transient ischema
attack. TIA often passes unnoticed by both patient and doctor because it
is extremely brief and is accompanied only by only minor loss of feeling
in part of the body.

The French pharmaceuticals company Sanofi Winthrop produced the dummies.
‘TIA may seem benign, but it can cause major consequences and often precedes
a stroke,’ says Jean-Marc Ansellem of Sanofi.

The dummies resemble a 60-year-old male patient, complete with greying
hair and Gallic moustache. They can simulate four different patients, presenting
different symptoms, under the personae of Bernard, Daniel, Charles or Emile.

After the trainee has picked a name, a brief film of the attack appears
on the computer screen, performed by actors. The doctor can then question
the patient through the keyboard about his case history, lifestyle and family
medical history.

The dummy’s carotid arteries, which feed blood to the brain, can be
examined by hand and using a special stethoscope. The doctor can request
various scans and clinical or biological tests, and simulated results appear
instantly on screen. A simulated endoscope probe inserted into the arteries,
shows the extent to which the walls of the arteries have thickened.

The WHO’s Tropical Disease Research programme backed this first large-scale
trial of the bacterium Bacillus sphaericus, whose spores contain a toxin
lethal to mosquito larvae.

The mobile anti-mosquito squad, led by French researchers, sprayed all
sources of stagnant water at the end of the dry season. They chose Maroua
because it is an ‘island’, separated from the nearest large town by more
than 200 kilometres of open country. Culex is essentially urban and cannot
survive in the savanna, so there is no pool of mosquitoes around the town.

‘By July, when people can be bitten over 300 times a night, we will
be able to assess the effectiveness of the pesticide,’ says the team’s leader,
Jean-Marc Hougard of ORSTOM, the French institute for scientific research
in development and cooperation. Already there are signs that the blitz may
be working. At one test site, where a typical sample yields around 90 mosquitoes,
the latest catch was a single elderly female.

Hougard does not expect to eradicate the mosquito completely. But if
the pesticide proves efficient, it will provide a cheap method of control.

Although Culex is not much more than a nuisance in Maroua, on the other
side of the continent in East Africa it transmits the worms that cause filariasis,
a debilitating parasitic disease. ‘If it works, we can repeat the experiment
where there is filariasis, in Dar es Salaam or other East African cities,’
says Hougard.

Unfortunately, the bacterium cannot be used against the Anopheles mosquitoes
that carry malaria, because they lay their eggs in transient pools and puddles
rather than permanent wet spots such as sewers.

One bill that should not raise controversy eases restrictions on medical
research data banks containing personal information. More contentious are
draft laws on thelegal status of the human body, accessto genetic tests,
including DNA finger-printing, and artificial insemination.

For the first time, there will be penalties for trafficking in human
organs, acting as an intermediary for surrogate motherhood, which is to
be banned, and carrying out gene tests not authorised by a court of law.

Artificial insemination will be restricted to couples who are sterile
or risk passing on ‘a particularly grave illness’ to a child. The bill specifies
that sperm donors must remain anonymous.

This particular point has been criticised by a group of legal, biomedical
and psychology specialists, who say children conceived from donated eggs
or sperm must be allowed to trace the identity of the donor. One of the
critics is Jacques Testart, a pioneer of French artificial insemination.
He argues that restricting access to artificial insemination is nonsense.
‘As long as there is no legal definition of sterility, a doctor will be
able to declare any couple with trouble conceiving sterile,’ he says.

The critics want the bill to ban the ‘pre-selection’ of embryos before
implantation and to ban the selection of sperm donors on any grounds other
than the risk of passing on serious illnesses.

The day the government announced that the bills would go ahead, the
French general secretary of the Council of Europe, Catherine Lalumiere,
unveiled plans for a European convention on bioethics that France wants
adopted by 1993.

The meeting of the OECD in Paris agreed to set up a new ‘forum’ to help
countries to make ‘intelligent choices’ on big science projects, such as
particle accelerators and research into the human genome. The ministers
asked the OECD to carry out a full inventory of all ‘big science’ facilities
in Eastern and Central Europe.

They pinpointed four ‘vital areas’ for cooperation with Eastern Europe:
training, strengthening the science infrastructure, technology transfer
and the conversion of military industry to civilian needs.

Russian science minister Boris Saltykov, who attended the meeting as
an observer, said that there had been ‘broad agreement’ on the idea of a
special fund or agency to support basic research in Eastern Europe. But
the form of the fund remains unclear.

The French research minister, Hubert Curien, hinted that France will
soon take the initiative on the idea of an international agency to fund
science in the East. ‘The governments of interested countries must get together
now and it is not impossible that France may play a major role in coordinating
this business,’ he said.

Britain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands backed the French idea.
But the US was less keen. Allan Bromley, science adviser to President Bush,
argued for joint initiatives and said that the US was looking for ways to
ensure that money ‘goes to science, not bureaucracy’ and only to ‘outstanding
²õ³¦¾±±ð²Ô³Ù¾±²õ³Ù²õ’.

Curien, who chaired the OECD meeting, warned that the new forum would
not be an excuse to wheel out ‘all the ideas which have been put on ice,
probably for good reasons’.

Bromley stressed that ‘science now needs such expensive instruments
that no country can go it alone’. This, together with the ending of the
Cold War, meant that ‘for the first time, we are dealing with the true internationalisation
of science’.

Most marine biologists think the tropical weed, Caulerpa tar,jolia,
‘escaped’ from the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, where the species has
been displayed for 15 years. Caulerpa first appeared under the windows of
the seafront museum in 1984. The museum’s director, Francois Doumenge, denies
the accusation. The museum is not the only place to have the weed, which
is popular with aquarium enthusiasts.

Caulerpa is now threatening to overwhelm the native seagrass Posidonia
oceanica. The seagrass beds are important breeding grounds for many Mediterranean
fish. ‘At the start I would never have imagined it could survive several
winters,’ said Meinesz, of the Littoral Marine Laboratory in Nice, who
first raised the alarm. But since 1984 the bright green weed has spread
rapidly. Its success is partly due to the fact it can reproduce both sexually
and asexually. The offspring of sexual reproduction account for the weed’s
appearance in far-flung arts of the Riviera, while asexual, or vegetative,
reproduction produces increasingly dense patches.

Caulerpa establishes itself by putting down ‘roots’ in the seabed, and
takes to almost any kind of substrate.

Once settled, it grows profusely, with as many as 8000 fronds to the
square metre. At this density it blocks out the light and prevents Posidonia
from photosynthesising. Like other members of its family, the weed contains
a powerful toxin called caelerphenyn. ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵs do not yet know if the
toxin poses any hazard to human health. Sea urchins and fish, with possibly
the exception of bream, avoid feeding on the weed.

Over the next 18 months, the French will map the distribution of the
weed and try out various ways to kill it. The researchers will assess the
damage to the seagrass beds and investigate the problem of the toxin more
closely. Spain, worried by the imminent invasion of the weed along its coast,
is contributing both cash and scientists to the French programme. In Italy,
researchers are looking into the problem of the toxin.

As yet, the marine scientists cannot agree on the best way to get rid
of the weed. Some think it is now impossible to eradicate. A trial of one
technique has already begun: this involves simply weeding the seabed
by pulling up the plants. But Marc Verlaque, an algologist with the CNRS,
the French national research organisation, thinks this is a waste of time
and money. ‘Uprooting is madness,’ he says.

Verlaque wants to use a method that is both cheaper and less time-consuming
and does not scatter cut fronds into the water, where they are carried off
on the current and establish themselves in a new place. Two other techniques
are also being tried: the first is to cover patches of weed with tarpaulins,
cutting out light and preventing photosynthesis. The second is to try
to ‘shock’ the weed, by dousing it with hot water.

The French research minister Hubert Curien said last week that by the
end of 1993 all animals should come from approved breeding centres. He also
announced plans for a new body to make spot checks in research centres and
to introduce alternatives to laboratory animals.

According to an official at the research ministry, Charles River could
be offered a site near Marseille which belongs to the national research
organisation CNRS. In exchange, French research institutes would be guaranteed
a regular supply of monkeys from the centre. The CNRS is reported to be
less enthusiastic about giving up the site.

Researchers in government-run institutes are worried that the difficulties
in obtaining primates may hold up essential research. ‘If France does not
breed monkeys, an activity dominated by the US and Japan, it will soon be
in a difficult situation,’ warns Pierre Buser, author of a report on animal
experiments for the Academy of Science.

French researchers used just over 2000 monkeys in experiments in 1990.
Monkeys imported from licensed breeding centres cost around £1600.
‘It is true the decrease in the use of primates has a great deal to do with,
their cost,’ acknowledged one specialist.

France has only one breeding centre for primates, run by the Louis Pasteur
University in Strasbourg. But even if the centre is extended it cannot hope
to meet the needs of national research laboratories. To make up the shortfall,
France contacted breeding centres in the former Soviet Union just over a
year ago, but has not pursued those contacts since the recent political
turmoil.

The offer of a free site and a market for its animals, however, may
not be enough to win France the proposed breeding centre. A senior executive
at Charles River says the company would not consider the venture without
European aid. French officials say the company wants ‘substantial’ aid from
the European Community both in setting up and in operating the centre.

But, science officials at the European Commission would prefer to buy
animals from Russia and Poland rather than set up a new centre in the Community.
This would not necessarily rule out a European centre. Officials more concerned
with regional development could still push to have the centre in Europe-but
probably in Spain or Italy.

Marseille has another drawback as a site for Charles River. Animal rights
groups are growing increasingly active in France and security must be a
factor in choosing the location of the breeding centre. According
to Tambourin, the isolated nature of the CNRS site ‘accentuates security
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Etienne Lichtenberger, general secretary of the French Civil Aviation
Pilots Union and an A320 pilot with Air France, stressed that lessons were
not being drawn from day-to-day incidents on the A320. This information
could be even more crvcial for air safety than the lessons drawn from an
accident, he says.

‘Why is there no European agency? There is no centralisation of incident
reports, no system like in the US where pilots fill in a form anonymously
each time they have a problem or make an operating error,’ he says.

France’s flight control organisation oversees operating standards of
airlines and pilot competence but does not collect and analyse information
on cockpit incidents. The Civil Aviation Pilots Union claims that there
is neither an appropriate structure nor a real will on the part of airlines
and the aviation industry to fully exploit information on flight incidents.

Last September, the European Commission proposed setting up a database
of incidents and a confidential system for reporting them. The proposal
is now being considered by member states but it falls short of setting up
an air safety board.

After the Strasbourg accident, the third involving an A320 in three
years, French pilots’ unions were unanimous that pilots are having serious
problems coping with the high technology in cockpits such as those in the
A320. ‘These problems have not been debated,’ says Lichtenberger.

Pilots have complained of problems such as a lack of appropriate training
and unsatisfactory instrument design, such as the reduction in the number
of controls on the A320. This was intended to simplify the displays, but
has increased the number of functions attached to each control. The pilots’
unions say they have asked Airbus Industrie to separate the controls for
selection of altitude and change of altitude but Airbus refused.

Pilots have also asked Airbus to change the position and type of control
sticks in the A320, which has single-handed joysticks at the pilot’s side,
rather than the usual two-handed stick.

There is also a general concern among pilots about the volume of information
on the display screens, multiplying the chances of human error. ‘This plane
gives out far too much information which the pilots have to sift before
they can use it . . . only what we call primary information is really essential,’
says Christian Marx, a pilot with Air France.

Pilots originally opposed the A320 having a crew of two rather than
three, and this has left a legacy of hostililty. According to Lichtenberger,
relations between test pilots at Airbus Industrie and airline pilots are
so poor that many are not on speaking terms. ‘This means the discussion
of flight incidents is not fully exploited,’ he says. ‘Meanwhile, engineers
look at the purely technical aspects when the human factor should also be
considered.

The French companies Dassault and Aerospatiale hold 51.6 per cent
of stock in the new corporation. Deutsche Aerospace holds 33.4 per cent
and Italy’s Alenia 15 per cent. In a move which looks like an attempt to
draw Hermes’s harshest critic, Germany, fully into the venture, the president
of Euro-Hermespace’s supervisory board has been named as Johann Schaffler,
deputy head of Deutsche Aerospace.

The future of the spaceplane was to have been decided by ministers meeting
in Munich last November, but because of escalating costs and a lack of money
they postponed the go-ahead for another year. A decision is now expected
at the end of this year.

Director-general of the new corporation, Philippe Couillard of the
French firm Aerospatiale, warned that the Hermes programme could not proceed
without some long-term investment before the final decision. ‘Investment
implies future commitments. We can no longer say we are getting on with
the programme if we do not invest, but our investment choices will be prudent
ones,’ he said.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has launched a campaign for a ‘European
Tropical Park’, to be run by the European Commission, for nature reserves
and for strict controls on forestry, hunting and road building in the territory.

‘French Guiana is unique in that it is the most densely wooded country
in the world, the country with the smallest population and the only country
of its kind with absolutely no protected zones,’ says Jean-Marc Thiollay,
an ornithologist at the French national research organisation CNRS. He
agrees with the WWF that conservation measures are urgently needed, even
though 90 per cent of the country is covered by rainforest and most of its
10 0000 inhabitants live in three settlements.

‘In percentage terms, there is as much destruction of primary forest
as in the Amazon,’ says Thiollay, who acts as a government adviser on the
environment. ‘The French government leaves all responsibility to the local
politicians, who have no environmental awareness and see the forest as
a sign of underdevelopment.’

The Forestry Office of the French Ministry of Agriculture is in charge
of timber concessions in Guiana. It argues that only 10 0000 cubic metres
of prime timber are felled each year, all of it in the coastal zone. Yet
forestry officials share the environmentalists’ concern about the unchecked
hunting taking place along roads and tracks opened up by loggers.

‘You can kill and destroy whatever you like. It is the Wild West,’ says
Jean-Francois Terrasses of the WWF. Thiollay agrees: ‘The number of hunters
is small but their impact on species which reproduce slowly is enormous,’
he says. ‘Spider monkey, ibis, curassows and macaws have disappeared from
areas reached by people.’

Forestry officials agree that roads and tracks opened up for logging
should be closed to the public. ‘There ought to be protection. France
is in a delicate position when it does not give any good example itself
of the advice it hands down to others,’ said one senior official.

At the World Forestry Congress in Paris last September, the vice-president
of the WWF, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, called on France to set
up a biosphere reserve in Guiana and ‘practise what it preached’. The group
France Nature Environment lobbied the con gress with the same demand.

Conservationists also criticise hydroelectric projects in Guiana.
Electricite de France is due to flood 310 square kilometres of unbroken
rainforest at Petit Saut next year. EDF says it is not ‘economically viable’
to fell the trees before flooding. The rotting forest will give off polluting
gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and hydrogen sulphide for several
years after it is flooded.

The reservoir was needed to supply the growing needs of the national
centre for space studies and the satellite launch site at Kourou, 50 kilometres
from the capital Cayenne. Petit Saut will eventually provide 114 megawatts,
which will satisfy all Guiana’s needs for the foreseeable future.

Yet EDF has three other dam projects in the pipeline, one near the border
with Brazil and two ‘mini-dams’ which EDF says will generate ‘just a few
megawatts’. The electricity from these will be sold to neighbouring
countries. ‘There have again been no environmental impact studies. This
is only for export, it is totally unacceptable,’ says Thiollay.

The total absence of an environmental policy for French Guiana contrasts
with the widespread and long-standing scientific research carried out
there. All of France’s main national research institutes have projects
and stations in Guiana.

Yet there has been little or no pressure by scientists for a conservation
policy. ‘French scientists are very unaware of conservation issues in comparison
with British or American researchers,’ says Thiollay. ‘People used to say:
It is a huge reserve, just leave it. That attitude has been overtaken
by developments and official decisions are needed now to address
the problems that will emerge in 20 years,’ said a senior official from
the Forestry Office.