Tony Maden at Imperial College London examined the records of 25 people with schizophrenia who murdered while under National Health Service care. He used a violence checklist that is widely used in Canada, but not in the UK, to assess their mental states before the killings and found that three-quarters of them scored at the top end of the risk scale.

Only about half of these people had been identified as high-risk cases at the time. And even when the risk was correctly identified, doctors were often prevented from providing treatment.

"Under current laws, doctors can't compel even dangerous patients to take medication until they relapse," says Maden.

From issue 2571 of New Scientist magazine, 30 September 2006, page 7

After siding so strongly with science, you are now trying to reach across the science-religion divide. Why?

I offer the hand of friendship and I am presumptuous enough to do so on behalf of scientists - secular scientists. I feel that the time has come to put aside the culture wars, declare a truce and see if we can't meet on common ground where both sides can engage enthusiastically for our separate reasons.

What does the religious community offer?

First and foremost, numbers. Take, for example, the 30 million members of the US National Association of Evangelicals. If only 1 per cent of those decide that they really would like to add conservation to the way they act out their religious beliefs in the world, that's 300,000 new conservationists. That's overwhelming.

The other reason is passion. Moral passion is what most evangelicals bring to the table. They believe, they care, and they really will work according to their beliefs. I think that having the living environment on their agenda for serious consideration and protection, with scientists playing the role of fact-gatherers and expositors of the problem, could be an extraordinarily strong combination.

Are you really optimistic that the religious community will listen?

I'm optimistic and getting more so all the time. When I made this move to approach the religious community and especially the huge block of evangelicals in this country, I was not aware of the extent of the greening movement that has begun at the political as well as the religious level. The political climate is favourable: there appears to be a mood growing to change the direction of the US. That, combined with the gradual greening that's occurring, leads me to be optimistic. And I'm particularly optimistic if, on the critical problem of saving the Creation - meaning biological diversity, ecosystems and species - we can combine science and religion, the two most powerful social forces in the world.

So what would you like to see happen?

A re-greening of America. I think the country is beginning to show a faint pastel green and I think it's growing greener every month. The phenomenal success of Al Gore's recent book and film about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, is evidence that the American public is receptive to greening. And there is a mood already among many religious people that something has to be done about the environment. What's lacking is concern about the loss of the Creation. Why is that? Because people don't quite understand it yet. It's a more difficult concept to get your mind around.

Your book is written in the form of a letter or an appeal to a Southern Baptist pastor. Is that character someone familiar to you?

My "pastor" is abstracted from the Southern Baptist pastors I knew as a child. I grew up in the faith. As I like to say: "I answered the altar call and I went under the water." I can understand the culture very well, and in spite of the very stark, non-religious world view that I state upfront so as to put my cards on the table, I hope I come across as someone who is basically understanding, respectful and congenial in discussing subjects on common ground.

Having started out as a believer, how did you lose your faith and end up among the secularist scientists?

It happened to me in much the way that Darwin said it happened to him. He describes how he left England on the Beagle in 1831 as a devout Christian - I suppose now he would be called a fundamentalist - and then, in gradual degree, he pushed it away. He doesn't give specifics of what each of those little steps were, but you get the impression that most of it was unconscious, until finally he was a secularist. That's what happened to me in my teens. I didn't really have a knock-down drag-out fight with a fundamentalist parent or pastor. I just drifted away.

Is the spiritual approach to nature a conscious effort to speak the same language as the religious community?

I feel inside every word of that book. I do have a feeling that the spiritual side of the understanding of the Creation is powerfully ingrained - at least the potential is powerfully ingrained. Most of the scientists I know who actually work on biodiversity and conservation share that feeling. You can hear it in their voices. It's a powerful motivating force. Spirituality in this case does not mean religiosity. The great majority of scientists, I suspect, are secular. Yet they speak, when you get down to bedrock, in what you would call spiritual terms.

If the love of nature is innate, why is nature in such crisis and why is it so difficult to communicate the importance of conservation?

You've put your finger on it. There appears to be a hierarchy of drives in humans. The biggest concern is always survival and reproduction, and protection of clan and family. For most of human history, humans have had to struggle against nature to survive. Then with the Neolithic revolution we learned how to break nature by cultivating plants, clearing land and building surpluses of resources and developing technologies. But along the way, there has been this deep connection to having a natural environment, even if it's just to exploit it.

It took a few thousand years of adoring gardens, loving exploring, expanding into unspoilt environments and so on to bring us up short with the recognition that we've gone too far. We broke nature and now we're smashing it and getting rid of humanity's biggest heritage.

A sceptical religious leader might say that science and technology helped us destroy nature, so they should get us out of this mess.

Yes, they should. Science and technology combined with Palaeolithic obstinacy have brought us to this point. Now science and technology combined with a determination to save this world for future generations and a morality broadened to include saving the Creation has to get us out.

What about the evangelicals who argue that the world is coming to an end and therefore doesn't need saving?

The extremists among the evangelical community really do see the world as just a way station from which humanity is destined to ascend to heavenly bliss (the Rapture) or to remain and eventually go to hell. The movement that has taken that line is called the Dispensational movement, and I'm sorry to say it's quite strong in the US.
So who are they?

Dispensationalists believe that the Rapture will come in their lifetime or even any day now, in which those saved by redemption through Jesus will go bodily to heaven. All this is in the Book of Revelation, which is interpreted literally by the Dispensationalists to mean that the condition of the world is of little concern - that in fact, the sooner it deteriorates the sooner comes the Rapture.

The evangelicals that I've spoken with, including significant leaders in the evangelical movement, do not agree with that. I'm hopeful that while there are millions of Dispensationalists, nonetheless they will stay a relatively small fraction of the religious community.

How would you answer a religious leader who says scientists should give a little ground on teaching intelligent design so that young people better appreciate the Creation and lead the flock toward a greener future?

I would say that compromise and trading over world views and fundamental beliefs is not what I want to talk about, nor what I think would lead to any productive result. I'm interested in finding common ground that we can form an alliance on.

But suppose you had to answer.

OK. Let me say that it would be very much against the interests of organised religion to press the matter. Scientists agree almost unanimously that intelligent design is not science because it is based on a proposition which has negative evidence. Because scientists have not yet solved all complex systems, especially biological ones, believers in intelligent design say that you have to turn to another explanation which can only be supernatural.

The opposition to this is not a conspiracy of scientists who want to keep religion out - quite the contrary. The currency of science, its silver and its gold, is discovery. You are a scientist if you make original discoveries. You are a success if you make important discoveries. So they're not in any conspiracy, they just won't accept what they would consider worse than bad science - non-science.

What's your advice for adults who want to instil a love of nature in children?

Early exposure in pleasant circumstances is the best way to make a naturalist. Take a child into the field and encourage him or her to become an explorer, adventurer and treasure hunter in the environment. Little children are savages, they are Palaeolithic creatures with a strong desire to explore on their own or in small groups. It's well established that between the ages of 9 and 12 children have an innate desire to build tree houses or little retreats where they can be on their own - preferably in the woods if they have access to them.

They should also be turned loose in places where they can bring back a frog or a snake or spider in a jar. With that kind of experience you can make a lifelong naturalist and build a culture that doesn't turn away from modern technology and the accoutrements of western civilisation, but one that enriches it by adding a love of nature.

From issue 2571 of New Scientist magazine, 30 September 2006, page 54-56

The government seemed bent on ignoring the outcry from the bar and tobacco lobby, which is warning of dire financial consequences if the ban comes into effect, as well as the irritation of millions of smokers - accustomed to France's traditionally lax approach to cigarettes.

Speaking in parliament on Monday Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the French "would not understand it if we did not take a decision" following the committee's report. Health Minister Xavier Bertrand said action could follow later this month.

After five months of consultations with doctors, tobacconists and trade unions, the 30-member committee decided in favour of a blanket ban on public smoking from September 2007 at the latest - though it held open a possible delay till summer 2008 for some establishments.

Smokers could only indulge their habit in "hermetically-sealed areas, furnished with air extraction systems and subject to extremely rigorous health norms," according to a report which was to be formally adopted later Tuesday.

The report also advised the government to resort to a decree to enact the ban, rather than a law - which it warned could prove cumbersome in the months leading up to April's presidential election.

Moves to prohibit public smoking in France reflect the changing mood across Europe - where several countries led by Ireland have introduced similar measures - as well as the growing prospect of litigation by victims of passive smoking.

The failure of France's existing anti-tobacco legislation has also been a factor. Enacted in 1991 the so-called Evin law was ahead of its time in that it made obligatory to set up separate smoking areas in bars and other public places.

But while most offices and public transport are now smoke-free, the law has never been properly enforced in drinking and eating places - where the post-prandial light-up is widely seen as an inalienable right.

According to government figures, some 35 percent of the French population use tobacco - although consumption has fallen after big price rises in the last two years. Some 66,000 die of smoke-related illnesses every year and 5,000 of passive smoking.

Representatives of the bar trade reacted with fury, arguing that it will be financially impossible for most establishments to install special rooms for smokers.

Rene Le Pape, of the Tobacconists' Confederation, warned of street protests. "They keep hitting us about the head. We are the scape-goats," he said.

Smokers at the Louis D'Or bar in central Paris appeared resigned to the coming change.

"You have to respect the rights of others," said Valerie, 29, a smoker since the age of 20. "I will have to go to smoke outside, I suppose. In the winter it will be harder though. Then I will have to smoke at home."

But in the northern city of Lille a bar that blazed the trail by voluntarily banning smoking last November reversed its policy earlier this month after losing 40 percent of its customers.

"It looked like the trendy thing to do. Everyone was talking about banning smoking and I thought if we got in first we'd be in the avant-garde. It's great for the health - but commercially it doesn't work," said Dominique Lecrocq, owner of the Tudor Inn.