The active ingredient in Berotec is fenoterol, one of a class of drugs
called beta-2 agonists which relieve wheezy asthma attacks by expanding
airways in the lung. Berotec is made by the German company Boehringer Ingelheim.

In a study published in the journal Thorax this month, Richard Beasley
and his colleagues at the Wellington School of Medicine in New Zealand examined
the drugs taken by 112 asthma sufferers aged between 5 and 45 years who
died from asthma between 1981 and 1987. During this period there was an
epidemic of asthma deaths in New Zealand.

When Beasley compared this group of patients with two control groups,
he found the odds of dying were more than twice as great for patients taking
fenoterol than for those taking other beta-2 agonists. ‘This considerably
strengthens the case against fenoterol,’ says Beasley.

However, Boehringer says the link between fenoterol and asthma deaths
is spurious. Michael Humphries, Boehringer’s UK medical director, says that
doctors in New Zealand often prescribed fenoterol for patients with severe
asthma who have already tried and rejected other beta-2 agonists. These
patients were more likely to have a fatal attack of asthma. ‘The association
is not a causal one,’ he says.

Beasley says there is evidence that fenoterol may increase the risk
of death in two ways. Taking the drug may increase the severity of asthma.
Or, excessive use during an attack may be more damaging to the heart than
other drugs.

Until recently fenoterol was the most popular beta-2 agonist in New
Zealand. The government there and in Australia have now removed fenoterol
from the list of drugs which can be prescribed under their public health
insurance schemes, ending all but a tiny number of prescriptions.

However, no action has been taken in Germany or Britain. A spokesman
for the German health department said: ‘Not only Berotec but other beta-2
agonists are being critically studied as well.’

German science has overtaken British science for the first time, according
to a new survey of research papers published in leading journals. While
the impact of German papers increased in the 1980s, papers from Britain
became less important. By 1989, researchers cited German papers more often
than British ones.

In an attempt to measure the quality of papers, the Institute for Scientific
Information in Philadelphia calculated the average number of times each
paper was cited in other papers. Despite the language barrier – most leading
journals are in English and English-speakers rarely read German journals
– German papers outstripped their British counterparts.

‘Science papers from the UK have been slipping,’ says David Pendlebury,
editor of ISI’s newsletter, ScienceWatch. ‘We see signs of the downturn
especially in the period 1984-88.’

The survey will make grim reading for Kenneth Clarke, the Cabinet minister
responsible for science. The status of British science dominated the science
debate in the House of Commons last month. Clarke said then that: ‘There
is no evidence that the quality of scientific work done in this country
is inferior to that done in any of our rival and competitor nations.’

The survey also contradicts the idea that science in the US is in decline.
Last January, Leon Lederman, the new president of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, said science was showing signs of stress.
But the ISI survey shows that the quality of research has increased in the
US more than in any other country.

John Irvine, head of Science Policy Research Consultants and one of
the authors of the original research on citations which crystallised concern
for British science in the early 1980s, says British scientists may be suffering
from ‘the publish or perish syndrome’. With funding in short supply, researchers
feel they have to publish often to win grants. ‘It may be that they are
not producing the same quality of work,’ he says.

John Argyris, director of the computer applications department at the
University of Stuttgart in Germany, was one of the group British ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´s
Abroad who complained of a decline in British science to the Prime Minister,
John Major, last month. ‘Britain has gone downhill,’ he says. ‘When I was
at Imperial College we could afford to be scientists. Now people cannot.’

Swinnerton-Dyer is concerned by recent changes to the system of ‘dual
funding’ which has underpinned research in Britain for 40 years. Most academic
research is funded partly by the university or polytechnic where it is carried
out and partly by a research council. But the government’s attempts to increase
student numbers and squeeze value for money from research councils have
put pressure on both sources of funding. Mark Richmond, chairman of the
Science and Engineering Research Council, talks of the ‘collapse’ of the
dual support system.

Even the Jodrell Bank radio telescope is feeling the squeeze. Last year,
it received £1.7 million for salaries and upkeep from the University
of Manchester, where the telescope is based, and £740 000 for projects
from the SERC.

The university says it cannot afford to pay for the upkeep of a national
facility. Neither the UFC nor the SERC wants to take responsibility for
the telescope. The director, Rod Davies, is extremely worried about the
telescope’s future.

Jodrell Bank’s troubles stem from two changes to the system of dual
support. First, the government has decided to transfer £100 million
a year from the UFC to the research councils. Under the new system, universities
will pay only for salaries and laboratory space. Research councils will
pay the direct costs of projects, such as equipment, and a contribution
to indirect overheads such as library charges. In the past, the university
would have paid for many of these overheads out of its grant from the UFC.
Manchester University paid for Jodrell Bank this way. Swinnerton-Dyer’s
concern is that the research councils will not pay their new bills in full.

But while Swinnerton-Dyer worries that the universities will pay more
than their fair share of research costs, David Phillips, chairman of the
Advisory Board for the Research Councils, worries they are currently paying
too little. ‘It is not always clear universities provide the support research
councils expect,’ he says.

The second problem for Jodrell Bank is the strict new formula the UFC
uses to allocate funds to universities. Each receives a sum per student,
up to a limit. Money for research depends on the university’s position in
the UFC’s research league table. There is no provision for cases where a
university runs a national research facility.

The two sides have yet to agree on what the new arrangements will mean
in practice. For example, the UFC says Jodrell Bank, as a national centre,
must be the SERC’s responsibility. The SERC says the telescope’s problems
are the result of the UFC’s funding formula; it will not plug the gap.

The effect of the UFC’s new funding formula has been to make universities
try to avoid losses by persuading funding bodies to pay more of their overheads.
‘If they accept too many research grants at marginal cost they will go bankrupt,’
says Phillips.

Universities rarely itemise overheads, but according to the director
of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, John Griffin,
they often add 50 per cent to bills and sometimes as much as 200 per cent.
He believes science departments are subsidising other ‘uncommercial’ departments.
‘High overheads are driving research away,’ says Griffin. ‘There should
be no hidden subsidies to bail out lame duck departments.’

Swinnerton-Dyer said last week that the UFC could not pursue its plan
to set up a two-tier system of universities, with some doing research and
others teaching, for fear of ‘the storm of indignation that would be whipped
up by disgruntled universities’.

But even successful research universities, such as Oxford, are concerned.
Chris Llewellyn Smith, chair of physics, says: ‘You need different ways
of funding things so different mistakes and triumphs can happen.’ He worries
that the recent discovery of a fourth neutrino particle – funded wholly
by Oxford – might never have been made if the £100 million had already
been transferred to the research council.

Eric Beaugnon and his colleagues at the National Very Low Temperatures
Research Centre in Grenoble have been able to simulate conditions of microgravity,
otherwise found only in space. ‘If the field is strong enough we can have
an effect on almost any material,’ says Beaugnon.

Beaugnon’s team generated a magnetic field of up to 27 tesla (T) by
using a ‘double magnet’. This consisted of a vertical copper coil surrounded
by a superconducting coil. The superconducting coil was cooled to within
a few degrees of absolute zero by liquid helium.

The physicists placed objects up to 1 cubic centimetre in volume in
a tube running up the middle of the coil. They found that the magnetic field
threading the tube held up the objects. So far, Beaugnon and his colleagues
have succeeded in levitating water, graphite and bismuth. Water required
the strongest magnetic field (26.5 T), while graphite required the least
(5.25 T).

The coil levitates the materials by exploiting their ‘diamagnetic’ properties.
The coil’s magnetic field changes the orbits of the electrons in the atoms
of the material, creating a magnetic field in the opposite direction. It
is the collective reaction to the force on the electrons that moves the
object.

All materials respond to diamagnetism but the effect is very weak. So
superconducting magnets are needed to help them defy gravity.

The superconducting coil can hold up small objects only. The levitation
effect depends on the strength of the magnetic field inside the tube multiplied
by the gradient of the field – that is, the rate at which the strength of
the field changes with distance.

The gradient of the field is strong enough to levitate only around a
single balance point. ‘We could not levitate a human but perhaps we could
a small animal,’ says Beaugnon. ‘Maybe a mouse.’

Levitation such as that used for ‘maglev’ trains at Birmingham Airport
is based on traditional magnetic repulsion, and is unstable. The trains
are kept on their track with the aid of extra magnets at the side.

But Beaugnon’s diamagnetic levitation is uniquely stable, he says. Because
objects do not need to be held at the sides, they do not need to be held
in a container. This means they can be kept free of contamination. Beaugnon
hopes levitation will help to produce pure organic crystals which are used
in the study of viruses.

According to Beaugnon, levitating a person – if it is possible at all
– will require an entirely new generation of magnets.

Earlier experiments have found fewer solar neutrinos than predicted
by the standard model of particle physics, fuelling a heated debate over
the ‘missing’ neutrinos. Gallex, a collaboration between Italy, Germany,
France, the US and Israel, is designed to detect the neutrinos that others
failed to find – those with too little energy to leave any trace in earlier
experiments.

Neutrinos are difficult to detect because they rarely interact with
other types of matter. The Gran Sasso team expects about one solar neutrino
a day to hit a gallium nucleus in the detector with enough energy to make
the nucleus emit an electron and turn the gallium into germanium. The germanium
can then be extracted chemically, providing a way of counting the number
of incoming neutrinos.

To detect the tiny number of germanium atoms generated by neutrino collisions
the gallium chloride must be free of contamination with germanium. For this
reason the Gran Sasso laboratory is inside a mountain, which absorbs other
cosmic rays so that only netrinos could have produced the germanium. But
the gallium was stored above ground for a year while the laboratory was
being built.

‘The gallium was exposed to cosmic rays for a long time,’ says Enrico
Belotti, director of the laboratory. ‘That means millions of germanium atoms.’

Belotti believes some of the germanium atoms have formed unstable compounds
with other impurities in the solution. If so, the unpredictable decay of
the compounds will release erratic amounts of free germanium atoms into
the solution – swamping the small number of germanium atoms produced by
neutrinos.

The Gran Sasso team has heated the solution several times to speed up
the decay of compounds and allow the germanium to be extracted. ‘We do not
yet know the result of the extraction,’ says Belotti. ‘We have done many
extractions, not always with clear results. This time I think we are in
a very good position.’

The National Asthma Campaign advises people with asthma to consider
switching to other types of inhaler. ‘There are perfectly satisfactory alternatives
available. Patients should discuss these with their doctor.’

Berotec inhalers are used to relieve potentially fatal attacks of asthma.
The inhaler contains fenoterol, one of a group of drugs called beta-2 agonists
which dilate the airways, making breathing easier. All beta-2 agonists are
known to be toxic to the heart, but a clinical study at the City Hospital,
Nottingham, shows that fenoterol has a greater effect on the heart than
related drugs. The results of the study are soon to be published in The
Lancet.

In a summary of the study published by the British Thoracic Society,
the team from Nottingham concludes that ‘fenoterol has more unwanted cardiac
effects than sulbutamol or terbutaline (other beta-2 agonists)’. One of
the team, John Britton, told New ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´: ‘I do not use fenoterol and
I would not.’

In the Nottingham study, 10 patients with mild asthma inhaled measured
doses of fenoterol, salbutamine and terbutaline. Fenoterol produced the
greatest increase in heart rate and excitation. It also caused the biggest
drop in the concentration of potassium in the blood. All three effects are
associated with dangerous changes in heart rhythm which lead to heart attacks.

Increasing the dose, from two to six and then 18 puffs, amplified the
differences between fenoterol and the other drugs.

Doubts about the safety of Berotec were first raised in April last year.
An analysis of an epidemic of asthma-related deaths in New Zealand in the
1970s concluded that: ‘Use of fenoterol by MDI (an inhaler) increases the
risk of death in severe asthma.’

Although the number of asthma-related deaths is increasing throughout
the world, New Zealand was the only country to suffer an epidemic in the
1970s. The start of the epidemic coincided with the introduction of Berotec.
The dosage was set at 200 micrograms per puff, twice as much as salbutamol
inhalers.

Fenoterol and Berotec are made by the German company Boehringer Ingelheim.
Boehringer says Berotec accounts for less than one per cent of British sales
of inhalers, but sales in Germany and other parts of Europe are substantial.
Michael Humphries, medical director of the company’s British division, said
last week that none of the evidence that he had seen, including the Nottingham
results, was cause for concern ‘at this stage’.

Humphries accepted that the Nottingham study showed that at high doses
fenoterol has more harmful effects on the heart. But he said that at two
puffs the data were inconclusive. Boehringer instructs patients not to use
more than two puffs. But, in practice ‘most asthmatics use them as required’,
says Britton.

Last month, the British Thoracic Society, the Royal College of Physicians
and the National Asthma Campaign issued guidelines to doctors recommending
that they give between 20 and 50 puffs of a beta-2 agonist to patients suffering
a life-threatening attack of asthma. On Friday, the BTS met to reconsider
its advice. It decided to follow the lead of the NAC and advise people with
asthma to consider changing their inhaler.

Terence Kealey, the bete noir of groups such as Save British Science
which have charted a decline in British science in the 1980s, will give
a seminar this week on ‘How Mrs Thatcher saved British science’. Not content
with taking on the science establishment at long-range, Kealey has decided
to give the seminar at the Science Policy Research Unit of Sussex University.
SPRU’s reports have been the chief ammunition for the past decade’s criticism
of government science policy.

Kealey, a follower of the 18th-century economist Adam Smith, was disappointed
by the Prime Minister’s desertion of monetarism in 1985. Nevertheless, he
will tell SPRU that scientific research does not generate economic growth.
Rather, the opposite applies. ‘Academic science is a by-product of growth,’
he says. And Thatcher, by rescuing Britain’s economy has rescued its science.

In the audience will be Ben Martin, one of the authors of the SPRU papers
which argued that goverment science spending was falling relative to that
of Britain’s competitors and that Britain’s research was similarly falling
behind. ‘I do not think one can argue that this (government policy) has
been good for British science,’ he said last week. ‘Things are still pretty
grim for basic science.’

Both men insist on being polite. ‘They are men of decency,’ say Kealey,
of the team at SPRU. ‘We will try to hold the seminar in a constructive
manner rather than an abusive way,’ echoed Martin. But sharp differences
remain.

Kealey is critical of Martin’s assessment of Britain’s science output,
based on analysis of the number of articles published in scientific journals.
In a forthcoming article in Scientometrics he says that Martin’s own information
‘points to a considerably expansion in British science’. He argues that
Britain published 30 per cent to 40 per cent more papers in 1982 than in
1973, a sign of ‘health growth’.

Kealey argues that while government funding for science may have fallen,
funding from private sources has risen. Citing an increase in the number
of researchers, he argues that science grew as fast as ever in the 1980s.
Martin overlooked the expansion because it was funded privately.

Kealey looks at absolute measures of scientific performance, Martin
at relative measures. But Kealey does concede one of Martin’s points, that
in relative terms Britain has lost ground to its nearest competitors, France
and Germany. ‘At the time of Martin’s analysis British science was declining
more rapidly, because our economic growth was slower,’ he said.

Ten recipients of honours had their scientific work cited in last week’s
list. Sir George Porter, president of the Royal Society, is to enter the
House of Lords while there are knighthoods for Bill Mitchell, chairman of
the Science and Engineering Research Council, Robert Honeycombe, professor
of metallurgy at Cambridge University and Edward Williams, president of
the Royal College of Pathologists. Porter and Mitchell have both been outspoken
in criticising elements of government policy towards science.

Lord Porter, as he will be known, will sit on the cross-benches when
he joins the handful of scientists in the Lords. A long-standing critic
of underfunding of science research, Porter has set his sights on broadening
the sixth-form curriculum to include five A-levels. ‘I’m very unhappy with
the education system. It is so highly specialised that the majority of people
in power know no science,’ said Porter this week. ‘It is the thing I would
like to see changed most of all.’

How does the honour compare with Porter’s 1967 Nobel Prize for Chemistry?
‘Well, I’m not really terribly keen on making speeches. This is more of
a working job.’ He retires as president of the Royal Society in November
but intends to continue to uphold the right of scientists to experiment
on animals and fetuses when necessary in the Lords.

Kenward’s OBE follows his work as a member of the Committee on the Public
Understanding of Science and innumerable notes sent to fellow editors badgering
them to take science seriously. ‘I’ve tried to get the media interested
in science. Someone has to campaign for science to be treated as part of
life,’ he explained.

With fewer than a dozen honours awarded for scientific work out of the
hundreds announced last week, Kenward may still have some way to go.