With the departure of Dr Warnock to pre-registration pastures, the task of composing the Nucleus editorial fell to the next longest in tooth on the team. Our original format is retained for yet another issue - we plead that under the lawful adjustment of internal boundary stones (Dt 19:14) chaos has reigned in the CMF office all summer. Hopefully the net gain in holdings will permit two new staff to come into their inheritance; affording the overworked office a timely respite.

Hot on the heels of Alex Bunn's polemic against the United Nations Cairo conference on population and development last year (July Nucleus) Pamela Sims' article on page 8 of this issue unleashes another contraceptive commotion. Cairo saw a shift in emphasis - from population control coercives to reproductive rights; enabling couples to 'determine the number and spacing of their children'. However, 'Christians and Contraception' will make the ears of everyone who reads it tingle (1 Sa 3:11); challenging not only Developing World family planning policy, but home praxis. If, as implied, there is no guarantee that modern low-dose/progesterone-only contraceptives always work pre-fertilisation, can we ever justify prescribing the contraceptive pill in the sight of God?

Closer to the immediate circumstances of medical students in this country Dionysius tackles the student debt spiral. With the average shortfall on graduation now standing at £4273, the BMA's annual representative meeting recently called for extended clinical timetables to be reflected in extra government provision under the student loan scheme. Here, Dionysius lends a welcome biblical perspective.

At the same meeting, the BMA ethics committee was commissioned to produce an updated version of the Hippocratic Oath, so that students can publicly commit themselves on qualification. Currently only 3 out of 27 medical schools ask their graduates to affirm the Oath. The point was hastily made, however, that doctors should 'pledge themselves by their actions day by day, hour by hour, and patient by patient'. As Christian medical students striving to learn godly medical practice, we need to be certain of our ethics - as opposed to the dictates of such an oath - but yet, 'to love, not just with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth'. (1 Jn 3:18) We are all facing different trials and temptations; patient by patient, firm by firm and from country to country. Let us continue to seek God's perspective and his grace in all these situations. For,

'...here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise - the fruit of lips that confess His name.' (Heb 13:14-15)