Less than three months ago, hundreds of scientists from Russia, Europe, Asia and North America gathered in Tbilisi, Georgia, for the 2008 Phage Biology, Ecology and Therapy Meeting at the George Eliava Institute of Bacteriophage, Microbiology and Virology. In the light of recent events, it seems unlikely that a similarly illustrious scientific meeting will happen again there any time soon. But the political reverberations that have inevitably followed the conflict in the Caucasus region should not be allowed to damage science. Indeed, the rougher the language between Moscow and the West, the more valuable it becomes to sustain good relations in research.
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