Stem Cells - The Hope and the Hype 365
zer0skill writes to mention a CNN summary of a Time cover story. The Truth about Stem Cells deals with an increasingly politicized area of scientific inquiry, and likens the fight to those over global warming and evolution. From the article: "Five years after Bush announced that federal money could go to researchers only working on embryonic stem cell lines that scientists had already developed, Democrats hope to leverage the issue as evidence that they represent the reality-based community, running against the theocrats. States from Connecticut to California have tried to step in with enough funding to keep the labs going and slow the exodus of U.S. talent to countries like Singapore, Britain and Taiwan."
Re:Fine (Score:1, Insightful)
Evolution, Global Warming, and Stem Cell Research? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:i dont care for bush however... (Score:1, Insightful)
This is a silly argument to make; none of them had the opportunity to, as the field wasn't there to be funded yet. And I will guarantee you that if Clinton (or probably Bush I) were president at that time instead, there would be plenty of NIH grants given to stem cell research.
this is NOT a ban on private funding of embrionic research
Private funding only goes so far, and is problematic in two major ways. One, although it's getting better, there is still much less funding for basic research from private sources, and much more for disease/treatment-focused research. Which is fine, but when you have a field like stem cells, where we still understand very little about how the cells differentiate into developed cells, how they maintain their "stem-ness", divide and reproduce, etc etc, private funding isn't the best way to do it.
And secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, if you have companies doing all the basic research, a lot of the knowledge winds up not being published/released, which helps no-one.
and from what i understand, we have made more progress with adult stem cells than we ever did with embrionic research
This is not true in the way you mean it. Has progress been made with both? Yes.. is there a great potential for adult stem cells in treatment? Yes.. but the only sense in which more progress has been made (besides the obvious lack of federal funding, which is like saying more progress has been made in AIDS research than smallpox, when there's a 50:1 money disparity) is that the cells are already more differentiated, so they're easier to theoretically use for treatment.
The problem, of course, is that in many cases you cannot realistically use them for treatment. As an example: each person has a number of adult neural stem cells in the brain, that can differentiate into new neurons throughout their lifetime. Theoretically, if you could treat a person by providing more of these cells, or by stimulating them to divide more and create more new neurons, you could speed up (dramatically) the recovery from brain injuries. However, these cells are located in a very small region deep within the brain, so you can't exactly cut open a person's brain to reach the cells and treat them. The same thing is true for bone marrow - the idea behind bone marrow transplants is to replace the stem cells that are not functional/killed by chemotherapy. If you could take embryonic stem cells (to avoid antigen problems), and differentiate them into the bone marrow precursors, it's an obvious treatment that gets around many of the problems with transplants. If the person has no functioning adult stem cells, you obviously can't use them as a treatment, and cells from another person have the same antigen problems as a transplant would.
Michael J Fox has Parkinson's.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently so many people thought the video was kind of moving, since Fox couldn't sit still in his chair and was thrashing about through the entire interview because his Parkinson's was so bad, that it made the front page of Digg.com. You can check out the video on YouTube here [youtube.com].
For the record, my grandfather died after a long struggle with Parkinson's earlier this year and I'm in favor of federal funding of embryonic stem cell research-- like more than 70 percent of Americans. The cells in question (some 400,000 of them) are being discarded en masse from in vitro fertilization labs anyways, so it's a choice between either letting them get thrown away-- or using them for research that could save lives.
The President says he thinks that ECS research constitutes the taking of a human life ("murder"). If that's true then why doesn't he work to outlaw all ECS research ("murder"), instead of letting it happen with private funding? He's caught between his own rhetoric and a hard place.
Re:Fine (Score:3, Insightful)
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Re:i dont care for bush however... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fine (Score:5, Insightful)
The Preamble isn't law; it's an introduction. It gives some reasons for what's set out later in the document.
By your logic, the rest of the Constitution after that is redundant, because anything can be part of "general welfare". Obviously this isn't the case.
Re:Let me kick this off (Score:5, Insightful)
I was watching C-SPAN 2, an American basic cable station that shows U.S. Senate debates live whenever the Senate is in session, and sure enough, Senator Tom Harkin likened Bush's actions to when the Pope banned scientific research on cadavers in the 1200s, calling it "unnatural," perhaps delaying human anatomical standing for hundreds of years until someone saw fit to violate the Pope's ruling, dig up a human body, slice it open, look through the muscle tissue, and write about it in a book...
Re:Evolution, Global Warming, and Stem Cell Resear (Score:3, Insightful)
Evolution is a theory. I think it's a theory that accuratly describes what occured, but it still remains just a theory. It will never be a fact. As a theory, it will be refined over time, and will more closely approach the truth. This is all that science does. Ever. There are no facts.
Climate Change is another theory. There is much evidence that it is occuring, and the overwhelming scientific consensus is that the majority cause is anthropogenic. My fiance just attended a geological/geophysical conference (where many of the talks were from the petroleum industry), and that was the consensus there too. The loud voices you hear criticising the scientific consensus are generally (I think) paid mouthpieces, or people who have a personal interest in discrediting climate change theory.
Stem cells are different. There are few current applications, but it is thought that research into using stem cells could yield excellent new treatments for many diseases. There isn't really a 'theory of stem cells'. Personally, I favour stem cell research, provided safe-guards are in place. Historically, governments/societies that repress science are well on the way to repressing their citizenry.
The thing that I think ties these issues together, is that the powers that be are using them (along with gay rights, etc) as a wedge issue, to confuse and distract the populace, while they slowly increase their power and that of their cronies at the expense of the vast majority of us. Also, there is an attempt to politicise science and restrict education - always a dangerous thing for any society to do. Our government in Australia is doing the same thing. I think if we continue down this road, we'll see a schism in Western civilisation between Europe on one hand, and Aust/US on the other. The latter will go do sh!t quickly... I reckon a generation or two will do it.
Re:Fine (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps if people were not taxed to ridiculous extremes by the federal government, the states would be able to take on larger projects.
And perhaps, just maybe, people acting in their own interests, unhindered by these ridiculous taxes, will improve society on their own.
Re:Fine (Score:3, Insightful)
What good thinking. In the same process, let all coast people not pay taxes for building roads and railways to inland. The point is, long term research is best supported by tax money because companies mostly seek short-term profits. But anyway, this article is not about science budgets.
Religion vs Science (Score:5, Insightful)
This is clearly another battle between religion and science. For anyone who doesn't have all the facts on Bush's recent veto, they are quite simple:
intelligent, reasonable, people outlined a bill that would see leftover embryos from fertility clinics, that were going to be destroyed anyways because of a limited shelf-life, given to researchers. Furthermore, the bill outlined measures to ensure that the number of embryos being created would not be increased for scientific purposes.
Bush decided that it was a bad idea for "moral reasons," whatever the fuck that means. The embryos that this douche "saved" are all going to be destroyed anyways, we just won't see any scientific research come out of it, and so he has set back the clock on medical advancements that will one day save countless numbers of lives (though in the mean time, countless will die because of bush).
Bush either did what he did because he really felt the bill was wrong for his own personal religious reasons (which would have been hard had he actually read the bill, seeing as though the embryos are destroyed either way,) or he was pandering to his base. In either case, the prime motivator for his decision was religion -religion beat science this time, unfortunately.
I would also like to use this post to point out a number of ways in which the conservative media attempts to unethically further their agenda -including using biased language, misleading stories, and outright lies.
If this sort of crap is what passes for intelligent discourse, on a channel where people get their "news" and "information", is it any wonder that stupid decisions are being made, and shithead leaders get elected into power?
What I'm showing you above are not rare snippets from unpopular shows -admittedly, they are some of the more severe abuses of media power, but they are selected from among a great many such occurences, from some of the most popular American "news" people. The American population is constantly pelted with a barrage of bullshit and rhetoric. It's kind of hard to have faith in democracy under such conditions. Sure, the votes may be cast freely -but what about the months and years beforehand, when the voters should have been getting informed about current events? If that process is sufficiently disrupted, its no longer a democracy. How can you expect people to understand the issue properly, when they are constantly being fed the kind of bullshit demonstrated in the links above?
Re:If we can just show... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, on the other side of things, I have not heard conclusive evidence that embryonic stem cells are the miracle cure that some people laud them as, nor have I see evidence that future cures involving embryonic stem cells will not be feasible with other types of stem cells. However, I don't think that you can have a fair debate on the necessity of embryonic stem cells until the other side of the discussion is more honest. There are moral questions about the research, to be sure, and perhaps we should not engage in immoral science, but we cannot answer those moral questions until we can agree upon what they are.
Re:i dont care for bush however... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is simply just such an ignorant and factually incorrect statement that I don't even know where to begin..... As I responded to the other individual in this thread, stem cell research *and* embryonic stem cell research has been performed and funded directly by the federal government going back to 1963, possibly before. But the first published report in PubMed is in 1963. The Bush administration also made it impossible for any federally funded institution (read any university that receives *any* funding from the federal government) to keep any of those federal funds if they accept or perform any embryonic stem cell research with lines not explicitly approved by the administration. In other words, the types of institutions that would do the research are typically those that have the most to lose by performing the research under the Bush administration.
Given the recent discoveries regarding Woo Suk Hwang's research and what is known of adult stem cells, there is plenty of reason not to throw federal money at more research.
No doubt he was corrupt and a liar...... but we have those types in politics and all sorts of fields too. To judge an entire scientific community on the basis of one person's behavior is inappropriate. It would be like saying that because one person drove drunk or did illegal drugs, all US presidents are bad.
If embryonic stem cells were truly so promising, I would imagine that more companies would be pursuing them.
And they *are*. The problem is that they are doing it in other countries and there has been a significant brain drain from the US to those countries of scientists and their staff. These are high paying US jobs (and the resulting tax base) that have left the country.
From a scientist's point of view... (Score:5, Insightful)
THE MAIN REASON we are not seeing enormous amounts of private money being thrown towards stell cell researchers is simple: we are still working on the BASIC SCIENCE. Science doesn't progress from initial discovery to therapeutics overnight. It takes decades of basic research to build a foundation upon which medical applications can be developed. You must understand how things "tick" before you can improve upon them. This is the reason why WE NEED FEDERAL FUNDING; Big Pharma doesn't want to invest in something that isn't going to pay off until decades down the road. These organizations wait for the government to front for the basic science, then they jump on a few years down the road saving millions of dollars in R&D. And do you blame them? Why spend more when you can spend less and have the same results? And, yes, I do realize that Big Pharma isn't the only source of private money.
Just my take on the situation. I am probably a bit biased, but I hate narrow-minded individuals that fail to see things from both sides of the fence.
Why has nobody explained... (Score:2, Insightful)
What I've seen so far, every cool new stem cell discovery has been done with adult stem cells.
Re:i dont care for bush however... (Score:2, Insightful)
In lots of government-funded research, the real payoff isn't always in the direct benefit but in everything learned along the way.
This is one of the few but very substantial good things to come out of our bloated military spending (besides Halliburton profits, I mean). And it's not just the military -- obligatory Tang jokes aside, there's a huge ripple effect from NASA. Ditto for Los Alamos, NOAA, the Forest Service and so on.
Privately funded research can yield a lot more than sharks with frickin' laser beams, too, but it's often less open-ended. Although that may be changing.
Even if stem cells never cure a thing, surely an incredible amount can be learned from the research.
USA shouldn't settle for third place... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoever wins the race for patents and intellectual property, gets all the gold.
The only thing USA politicians can do is hurt American business. By banning science research, the jobs, the money, the workers, and all those profits go overseas.
The science will be developed, but what country will be on top?
Second place in Bioscience, Robotics, and Renewable Energy is not an option,
and yet every day the USA delays it's advancements, is another day closer to becoming a Left Behind third world country...
Re:Fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fine (Score:1, Insightful)
Except, if that were the case we wouldn't have most of the technology we have today. Where do you think the internet came from? The role of federal tax money is to fund research that industry cannot afford to do simply because it has such a long time line. As the research matures, industry picks up the tab and through taxes, pays back many times over the original cost to the tax payer. It has been said that the Appolo program was the best investment the US ever made as it underwrote the nacent chip industry (The minuteman program helped to) which we now all benefit from, including the tax payer.
For me, I will gladly contribute to basic research, for the rest of you, you can return to your caves.
Re:i dont care for bush however... (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite my disdain for it, wp seems roughly on target (albeit in typically biased fashion): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment [wikipedia.org] and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell_controvers
My only interest in this debate is that I don't like to see government funding for things like the NIH, NSF, or NEA for that matter. But since the money is going to by spent anyway, I would like it spent on something more promising than a pipe dream like embryonic stem cell-based cures. Frankly, there seem to be many more promising avenues of medical research, such as adult stem cell research (which is what I believe you are referring to with respect to Parkinson's and spinal cord repair).
There is an enormous amount of privately funded medical research in this country. I have to give your peers and their employers the benefit of the doubt and assume they are researching the most viable cures for diseases with the money they have. Just because countries like S. Korea want to dump government funding into embryonic stem cell research does not make that inclined to think we should by mimicking them. This is about lack of empirical evidence, not evil Christians or Republicans.
[By the way, government propping up industry is socialist, not capitalist. You can hardly apply capitalist economic principals to such things.]
No offense zer0skill... (Score:2, Insightful)
Wrong. In fact, double wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Do your homework and quit assuming. This is a battle between people who belief personhood begins at conception vs people who believe it begins at first brain wave, birth, the cutting of the umbilical cord, etc. None of these positions is necessarily any more "religious" than the other, and more importantly, none is any more "scientific" as well. "Personhood" is a moral concept and outside of the scope of science. Science can tell us that a blastocyst is alive and a human (according to the accepted definitions), but it cannot tell us if this is sufficient for the granting of rights.
This debate has nothing to do with science OR religion, let alone a conflict between them.
Re:Religion vs Science (Score:2, Insightful)
Not against all reason, against YOUR reason. Just because you feel a certain way about a subject, especially a subjective one, doesn't instantly make the other person wrong. Even if the majority of people felt they were right doesn't mean they necessarily are (or else we'd still be hanging black people, child molesters, etc without a trial).
Would it be ethical for scientists to create extra embryos that they have absolutely no intention of using for fertility, so they may conduct research on them when someone comes in to try to produce a child? Is it ethical to create more than one or two at a time which they plan to attempt to impregnant a woman with since there is a very high likelihood that the rest will go to waste or is it a matter of convenience to do more than they need at once even though the rest will be discarded? Is it ethical to even create embryos outside of the normal process simply because a couple wants to have a child but hasn't been able to? Is it ethical to sift through the many embryos that were created to pick the one you want with the right gene sequences? Would it be ok to harvest organs from prisoners condemned to death since they're going to die anyway? Or use them as guinea pigs to speed up clinical trials for the FDA?
None of those questions involve religion even if religion does try to offer guidance to them. There is nothing wrong with asking those questions and debating the morality of them. There is nothing wrong with questioning ourselves as we push our knowledge and abilities farther and farther. With great power comes great responsibility.
Re:Wrong. In fact, double wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. It is overwhelmingly christians who support the "life begins at conception" idea, specifically because they believe that at conception a soul, a special divine spark of life, enters at precisely this moment. This claim is totally and utterly baseless, and should be thrown out immediately without consideration. While I am not a big fan of Christopher Hitchens, he hit the nail on the head when he said "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismisssed without evidence." Until we have some reason to believe that life (in a morally meaningful sense of the word) begins at conception, we should ignore people who say so. Some have argued that human life should be thought to start at conception through non-religious means, I think quite unsuccessfully, but you are free to peruse those arguments at your leisure. In any case, this is not even relevant, since the embryos in question were going to be destroyed regardless of bush's decision to veto the bill -they were slated for the trashbin.
I think you would do well to research other cultures opinions on when life begins. Depending on the religious scripts available, life begins either: just prior to conception, immediately after conception, a couple months after conception, or a couple months after the baby is born. The key factor involved is religion. It is not a coincidence that it is predominately christians holding this view.
None of these positions is necessarily any more "religious" than the other, and more importantly, none is any more "scientific" as well. "Personhood" is a moral concept and outside of the scope of science. Science can tell us that a blastocyst is alive and a human (according to the accepted definitions), but it cannot tell us if this is sufficient for the granting of rights.
I am among those people who believe that morality can be defined using the tools of rationality and science (yes, science.) I believe it fairly obvious that morality is intimately linked with the notions of consciousness and sentience. To the extent that this is true, it is obvious that science is critical in evaluating moral statements, since consciousness and sentience are within the domain of science. Questions such as "when does a life begin?", are subject to answers from science, since science is capable of telling us when something gains the status of a living being, according to the moral definition of "life", as provided by rational discourse.
This debate has nothing to do with science OR religion, let alone a conflict between them.
It has everything to do with science and religion. First of all, and downright trivially, science has been struck a blow, because scientists will be lacking valuable research materials. Secondly, scientists are arguing in favour of the stem cell research. Thirdly, it is religious types arguing against it. It can't get any more plain than that.
Indeed, the Bible says essentially nothing on the matter.
The bible isn't the arbiter of what christians believe -the church is. There is also VERY LITTLE in the bible about homosexuality, and yet you would think its the worst of all sins, judging by the churches reaction to it. If the church says something is the case, then that is what the christian faith teaches, by definition. You can bet your ass that if the christian church had been saying "the divine spark enters the body at 8 months after conception", then we would not be having this debate.
Re:Wrong. In fact, double wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
>point you want to put it). Indeed, the Bible says essentially nothing on the matter.
Just because the bible says nothing in particular on the matter (whether it says something in general via implication is up for debate), the Catechism of the Catholic Church *does* make statements on the matter, so it clearly is a "religious issue" for some people. Bush has made statements to indicate that it is part of his religious beliefs as well, not just his abstract morality independent of his religion. Religion != The Bible and Religion != Christianity.
Re:Religion vs Science (Score:5, Insightful)
You didn't read the bill either, I see. If memory serves me, the bill had provisions to explicitly stop donors from receiving any profit whatsoever. Thus what happened in the UK would not happen here, because the bill over here was more carefully written, in an attempt to alleviate concerns such as this (though that hardly helps if those voting against it haven't read the bill, which seems evident by the comments many of them made).
Personally, I think Bush probably screwed up, but not for the reasons you mention. There was overwhelming support for this bill in congress and the public. There were protections to ensure ethical research, etc. He could have emphasized that along with the notion the embryos were going to be destroyed. Instead, he has caused problems for his party and strengthened the opposition.
Bush's move was a smart one politically, because it is more likely to polarize and strengthen his religious base -they will see it as a great victory- whereas others, such as yourself, will see this as merely a minor loss for science. Furthermore, much of the public is still probably split on the issue. On the other hand, you may be right. I say this only because, those 33% that still support him, are clearly going to continue to support him no matter what he does. Knocking down this bill could hardly help him with those folks (though there are other christians out there who might be pleased.)
Will his veto have any negative impact? Not immediately, nothing was removed, nothing was taken away. Private research still continues (as the Time article points out, several private biotech firms are getting ready to pettition the FDA for human trials). The only thing that has happened is that researchers, like myself, who work at universities wanting to do this research have the same restrictions we did before the veto. Research still continues.
Of course it continues -he didn't ban science (yet.) And research will not go any slower than it already is. What exactly is your point, if I may ask? The research could have been going faster. Bush prevented it from going faster, which is perfectly equivalent to slowing it down. However you choose to look at it, there were gains in scientific research to be made, and because of bush's veto, they wont be made in the time they could have been.
Re:Fine (Score:4, Insightful)
The Manhattan Project? The Moon Landing? Satellite technology? NORAD?
I don't know. I'm not sure which state would have stepped up to fund many of those.
NIH funding (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:From a scientist's point of view... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the reason we aren't seeing enormous amounts of private money being thrown towards stem cell research is because companies don't want to be assed-out when private stem-cell research is banned in America. It is a little risky spending billions on a technology, when the technology could be declared illegal with the stroke of a pen. When G. W. Bush vetos public stem cell funding he is sending a message about where our country is going... today we get rid of government stem cell research, tommorow we get rid of all stem cell research.
Big Pharma doesn't want to invest in something that isn't going to pay off until decades down the road.
Are you kidding? You got to be joking, right? Big Pharma doesn't want to invest in something that won't make any money... but it will absolutly, without a doubt invest in something that won't pay off till decades down the road if the payoff is big! Buisness is more far sighted than governments, who think only as far ahead as the next election. Don't believe this central-planning propoganda that buisnesses are somehow more shortsighted than government. Government has a terrible, horrible, disasterous track record when it comes to being "forward thinking".
These organizations wait for the government to front for the basic science, then they jump on a few years down the road saving millions of dollars in R&D.
Here is where you are actually 100% correct. Big Pharma actually supports government funding of research and lobbies for government funding of research - I mean, why shouldn't they: the government spends the money, and they get the profit. Who wouldn't like to get free capital from the government? I mean, if McDonalds could figure out a way to get the government to subsidize beef patties, they would do that! If Ford could figure out a way to get the government to subsidize hub caps, they would do that. That is basic self-interest at work.
But why not make Big Pharma fund the research themselves? They reap the profits, they should accept the costs. That sounds much more fair to me than having me subsidize basic research so some CEO can see his stock prices go up.
To give them a subsidy distorts their economic relationships... because the true cost of drugs are hidden through taxation, consumers cannot make a reasonable cost/benfit analysis about the drugs they consume. You end up with weird distortions in the market, with drugs that give you a hard-on costing more than drugs that save your life... even though drugs that save people's lives are much more valuable and companies should be rewarded with larger profits for making those kinds of drugs over non life saving drugs.
A little test (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's find out what you really believe.
You find yourself in a room containing a 3-month-old infant, and a cryogenically stabilized container holding 20,000 blastocysts. The room is on fire. You have time to save either the infant or the 20,000 blastocysts. Which do you save?
Re:Wrong. In fact, double wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, it all boils down to what do you define as "personhood".
Amongst those that define "personhood" as the ability to think, you'll be hard pressed to find people that believe that "personhood" begins at the moment of conception (or in fact at any moment before a basic nervous system has developed).
On the other hand, many of those that define "personhood" as having a soul believe that personhood begins at the moment of conception.
Your argument about "personhood" is very much a smoke screen - in the end the discussion pretty much boils down to believing that people have a soul or not - very much a religious discussion.
I do agree, however, that the debate about allowing or not stem cell research has nothing to do with science.
Re:Michael J Fox has Parkinson's...So what?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Apparently so many people thought the video was kind of moving, since Fox couldn't sit still in his chair and was thrashing about through the entire interview because his Parkinson's was so bad, that it made the front page of Digg.com
Sorry to hear it, but people die of all kinds of things. My father died of a number of things three years ago. One of them was Parkinson's disease. We are going to die of something, stem cells or not. And why exactly are we supposed to rush into crossing moral boundaries and ponying up billions of dollars in research money to save Michael J. Fox or Superman? It is a really bad use of celebrity to plump for the solution of YOUR special disease at all cost. And a bit hysterical, even cowardly. We are supposed to thrash around, do anything, to save these hollywood narcissists, including lose our humanity. I'm personally sick of their public whining when their mortality bites them in the ass.
The cells in question (some 400,000 of them) are being discarded en masse from in vitro fertilization labs anyways, so it's a choice between either letting them get thrown away-- or using them for research that could save lives.
It amazes me how people turn the deep discussion of morality into a simple discussion of waste. They trivialize the subject. They dismiss the un-responded-to point that it is immoral to tear unique human genetic combinations apart for research because of the selfish human need to live forever. To be perfectly clear, it is not a question of wasting a resource by discarding fertilized eggs; it is a question of using those eggs for research contrary to the correct moral strictures against experimenting on humans without their permission. Stop turning it into a mere question of "wasting research food".
Oh, and by the way, I'm not a religious nutcase. I don't believe in gods and demons. Religion is an attempt to explain moral impulses, not the source of moral impulses.
Re:Michael J Fox has Parkinson's...So what?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Note: I am not really trying to be an ass here, just pointing out that there are some basic assumptions in this argument that are probably still up for debate.