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Chimeras, Hybrids, and the Ethics of Science

  
 
Sean the frumious Bandersnatch
12:57 / 27.01.05
I'm not sure if this is going to turn into a headshop thread or a laboratory one, but I'm putting it here to start with.

National Geographic ran this article about chimeras- animals with human attributes. Here are some highlights...

...genetically engineering mice to produce human sperm and eggs, then doing in vitro fertilization to produce a child whose parents are a pair of mice.

...Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice.

...Before being born, the mice would be killed and dissected to see if the architecture of a human brain had formed.

..."It's the scientists who want to do this. They've now gone over the edge into the pathological domain."

What do people think about the scientific, religious, and ethical aspects of these breakthroughs? Is it worth doing, and where should we draw the line? I'll offer my opinion when I have more time and am not so mindfucked, but I'm very subjectivist and right now I would like to read the opinions of the more objectivist lithers.
 
 
Sean the frumious Bandersnatch
13:03 / 27.01.05
And Impulsivelad, if you're reading this- yes, the article did remind me of your kobuta comic.
 
 
Mirror
20:59 / 27.01.05
This whole question seems to hinge upon the artificial division between human influence and "natural" evolution and adaptation.

I find it to be really problematic to make this distinction. First off, humans wouldn't even exist were it not for the massive changes to the earth caused by previous animals and plants (and members of other kingdoms, of course). One might argue that human beings are the first to make such changes with "knowing intent," but this is a difficult row to hoe objectively, as well. Who's to say that the blue-green algae didn't "intend" to radically change the Earth's atmosphere by introducing free oxygen?

Ultimately, ethical questions relating to knowing human alteration of the biosphere are only interesting in a subjective fashion. Objectively, the earth's going to roast in about 4 billion years when the sun starts to run low on fuseable hydrogen and expands into a red giant, and will eventually freeze with the heat death of the universe.

Subjectively, we may not want to mess up our biosphere, or we may want to explore the radical new world of human-animal chimerae for our own benefit or merely for the hell of it, but I don't think that objectivity has much to say here.

Myself, I'd like to see some cool shit before I die if we can avoid fucking up what we've already got in the process. And I don't buy this bit about "species integrity" being a-priori ethically good. The current biodiversity merely an artifact of the present moment in evolution - and for our own sakes, it would be nice to avoid reducing it. Whether creating chimeras would reduce or increase biodiversity is a question that we can't answer yet because it's too chaotic a system to predict accurately.
 
 
Lurid Archive
16:09 / 28.01.05
This whole question seems to hinge upon the artificial division between human influence and "natural" evolution and adaptation.

Thats one way to put it, and I think it may be a useful way of looking at it in the face of a particular type of religious objection, but it isn't the only grounds for debate. For some, like myself, who have a problem with animal experimentation per se, this seems at first glance to be a fairly sickening way to treat animals. I could be wrong, and I admit that I am not really sure about the potential benefits of this research and the related welfare issues, but for me it is less a case of blurring species boundaries than that of blurring the boundaries between an animal and an object whose purpose is defined purely in terms of human utility.
 
 
Mirror
23:03 / 28.01.05
That argument's more compelling to me, but where does one draw the line between an "animal" and a mass of cultivated cells? The ethical line here is similar to the one in the human abortion debate in some ways.

In creating a chimera, the researchers are manipulating cells in the earliest stages of development. It's really difficult to say whether this sort of bioengineering results in an "animal" at all. The fact that a mouse with human brain matter still looks like a mouse to us elicits an empathic response, but what's really the difference between this and the synthetic veal that's produced by growing cow muscle cells in a vat of nutrient liquid?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
19:17 / 30.01.05
what's really the difference between (a mouse with a human brain) and the synthetic veal that's produced by growing cow muscle cells in a vat of nutrient liquid?

The mouse/chimera is incrediblyt more complicated, though, isn't it, and as we all know the more complicated the formula is the more chance there is for chaos to seep in and fuck things up, and I know that on Barbelith we like chaos, but still.

The other point is, its not "we" who are getting the chance to play god, its not the animals who are choosing to let their kids get ears stuck to them, its big corporations out for money in nearly all the cases.
 
 
Mirror
17:46 / 31.01.05
The other point is, its not "we" who are getting the chance to play god, its not the animals who are choosing to let their kids get ears stuck to them, its big corporations out for money in nearly all the cases.

It's "we" as in Homo Sapiens Sapiens. And while corporations fund some of this research, a lot also goes on at public universities as pure science in the quest to expand human knowledge.

It ultimately comes down to basically a religious issue, whether or not one thinks it's "appropriate" for humans to modify our environment, possibly to our own detriment. Every advance in medical science, from organ transplants to life support systems, has been questioned on ethical grounds. I don't really see how what's being done is that much more radical.

This sort of exploration will occur at some point in human history, irrespective of our current prejudices. Whether we're culturally ready for it at the moment is a completely different question.
 
 
Lurid Archive
18:17 / 31.01.05
That argument's more compelling to me, but where does one draw the line between an "animal" and a mass of cultivated cells? The ethical line here is similar to the one in the human abortion debate in some ways.

Yeah, I think that is about right and the determination is just as murky. That is, there aren't really very clean answers about when embryos should be considered persons, with all the attendant rights. In the same way, I don't think it is easy to come up with a set of guidelines for this technology either. Myself, I tend toward scepticism with regards to all animal testing, though I am quite aware of the difficulties of that position.

It ultimately comes down to basically a religious issue, whether or not one thinks it's "appropriate" for humans to modify our environment, possibly to our own detriment.

Well, no. I'm sounding a note of caution without invoking religion. And partly, I am worried about the objectification inherent in referring to other species as "our environment". As if animals exist purely as a resource for humanity. You know, from a certain point of view, that persepctive is rather more religious than mine.

This sort of exploration will occur at some point in human history, irrespective of our current prejudices. Whether we're culturally ready for it at the moment is a completely different question.

But this framing of progress versus prejudice simply sweeps important issues under the carpet. One could make your argument with regards to testing on humans, but I think failing to address the ethical points in that situation would be seen as remiss. Now, you might not take seriously any comparison between human and animal welfare. And you might think that a sliding scale of responsibility between them, such as I would argue for, is plain silly. But I have made the point, so you can't pretend it isn't there.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:56 / 02.02.05
Myself, I tend toward scepticism with regards to all animal testing, though I am quite aware of the difficulties of that position

You know I used to feel that way but after years of E45, Vaseline, hydrocortisone cream etc. it turned out that the only thing that helps my eczema is a product that is comprised of ingredients that have specifically never been tested on animals.

you might think that a sliding scale of responsibility between them, such as I would argue for, is plain silly

I don't believe that an aborigine suffers less when you vivisect them, why would I believe it of an animal? Why would I believe that it's less painful for a mouse? So then to do that unneccesarily must be abhorrent and it seems to me that killing an animal after growing a bit of a person inside them isn't reasonable unless it's done for an extremely specific purpose. Ethically it's wrong to do this so in order to justify it there should be a bloody good reason for it and frankly that hasn't been detailed clearly enough.
 
 
astrojax69
01:44 / 03.02.05
And I don't buy this bit about "species integrity" being a-priori ethically good.

me neither. in fact, i find constantly intriguing the notion pointed out in the initial article that canada has introduced laws for the prohibition of non-human & human cells being conjoined, specifically human and non-human... why the singling out only of humans? if this mixing species is allegedly wrong, why shouldn't the prohibition be extended to protect all species?

more generally, i don't know that i can really have a problem with all this. after all, darwinism seems to suggest that it is mutations that are best equipped to survive the given environment are the ones that exist. our consciousness and intellect is one such mutation and it is the progenitor of these chimeras, so in that line of thinking, these things are all quite 'natural'. hmmmm???

wouldn't mice parents scare the teachers at p&c night?? (especially if they are elephants!)
 
 
Mirror
01:09 / 04.02.05
While the animal testing debate is related to this one, I think that it's a slightly different issue, simply because without human intervention the chimeras wouldn't exist at all.

Also, how does the large variety of animals and plants produced by selective breeding fit into this issue? The world's principle cereal crops have all been highly hybridized over the course of thousands of years to increase yield and other desirable qualities. While this isn't interspecies breeding, are we to draw an arbitrary line at an amount of genetic material that it's ethically "acceptable" to combine? IIRC, we share something like 98% of our genetic material with all other animal species! Even if you draw the line at the possibility of sexual reproduction, you run into problems. Recent research has suggested that viral modifications to DNA are historically responsible for transfer of small amounts of genetic material between species!

When I state that it comes down to a religious issue, I don't necessarily mean that literally - I mean that it's a decision that one must make in absence of compelling objective evidence one way or the other. It's "good" vs "bad" instead of true vs false.

But this framing of progress versus prejudice simply sweeps important issues under the carpet. One could make your argument with regards to testing on humans, but I think failing to address the ethical points in that situation would be seen as remiss.

If we eliminate for a moment possible religious (I'm using the term with its usual meaning here) objections to the creation of chimeras (and for that matter, animal testing) I think that what's left is the ethicality of unintentionally (but possibly with full knowledge) causing suffering to a living being as a side effect of the pursuit of knowledge. This is such a murky area that I don't see a whole lot of point probing it. I will, however, ask this question of all of you.

What are you, personally, willing to give up in terms of medicine, energy consumption, and habitat to reduce the effect on the biosphere? All human consumption has the potential to cause suffering, from the dieoffs of coral reefs due to global warming to the prarie dogs I see squished on the highway. In our very existence, we have no choice but to weigh our self interest against the suffering of others.

I propose that the potential benefit that humankind (and other species as well, through our actions!) can gain from such research
in the longest term tips the scales heavily against the ephemeral suffering of artificial creatures.
 
 
Seth
07:24 / 04.02.05
Everyone's in favour of saving Hitler's brain, but when you put it in the body of a great white shark suddenly you've gone too far!
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:35 / 04.02.05
artificial creatures

Can you elaborate and explain your application of this phrase? What precisely are you referring to? Mice? Rabbits? Wheat?
 
 
Mirror
02:30 / 05.02.05
Artificial, as in artifacts. Creatures that would not exist were it not for human intervention.

That which is artificial is a proper subset of that which is natural, and the complement of the set of that which is gaian.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:31 / 05.02.05
That which is artificial is a proper subset of that which is natural

Hang on... so all artificial things are natural? Because they use components taken from nature, right?
 
 
diz
05:03 / 06.02.05
for me it is less a case of blurring species boundaries than that of blurring the boundaries between an animal and an object whose purpose is defined purely in terms of human utility.

for me, and i know this is a hotly contested issue, there is no boundary between an animal and an object whose purpose is defined purely in terms of human utility.

i don't believe that there is an objective purpose to anything, and that we only give things meaning through intent. things have value only insofar as someone generally recognized as a person by other people values them, and that applies to animals, plants and fetuses, too.

it may be to our advantage not to fuck with certain things. i think it's certainly to our long-term advantage to increase biodiversity and it's just foolish to break complex biosystems that we still can't replicate and happen to need to survive. but that doesn't mean there's any transcendent value in those things beyond that.

all of the above is in human terms, by the way. i don't expect the universe to give a shit one way or the other.

Artificial, as in artifacts. Creatures that would not exist were it not for human intervention.

what's so special about human intervention? we're just doing what we do, like any other tool-using animals, and tool-using is just as much a "natural" part of evolution as any other behavior.

Hang on... so all artificial things are natural? Because they use components taken from nature, right?

personally, i don't accept a hard distinction between "artificial" and "natural," because human "artifice" is just as "natural" as anything else.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
09:23 / 06.02.05
for me, and i know this is a hotly contested issue, there is no boundary between an animal and an object whose purpose is defined purely in terms of human utility.

I think that "hotly contested" is something of an understatement here. Universally rejected would probably be rather closer to the truth, since in my experience it is hard to find people who consider animal welfare (beyond utilitarian biodiversity concerns) to be the same as "brick welfare". I suppose you may be doing something tricky here with human utility. So, for instance, it is generally considered that children who torture animals for pleasure are troubled. So, you might say that there is nothing wrong with the torture per se, the only concern being child welfare. I'm not sure you mean that, however.

i don't believe that there is an objective purpose to anything, and that we only give things meaning through intent. things have value only insofar as someone generally recognized as a person by other people values them, and that applies to animals, plants and fetuses, too.

This is fair enough, if I've understood you correctly, and largely irrelevant, I think. You are probably right that one cannot obectively ground morality, and in particular the moral objection to the torture of animals, say. But so what? Largely, I'm not interested in trying since I consider having some ethical sensibilities to be part of humanity. Not everyone has them and people disagree what they are, but it is, on the whole, the way we work.

Having said that, there is good reason to believe that most of us do oppose needless suffering, in animals as well as humans. And I'm finding it very hard to believe that you mean what you said in your opening sentence, diz, except as some kind of meta point. Perhaps you are saying that, for you, ethics are constructed from first principles using purely utilitarian concerns after which you arrive at some unremarkable conclusions - like being opposed to the torture of animals. If so, I can only say that your presentation is unhelpful.
 
 
Lurid Archive
09:25 / 06.02.05
Ooops. The above was me and not Mordant.
 
 
Mirror
03:44 / 07.02.05
Hang on... so all artificial things are natural? Because they use components taken from nature, right?

Well, yes. Not only are artificial things natural because they have natural components, but they are also merely the result of a natural process (humans doing their thing) just like reefs are the result of coral polyps doing their thing. Just look at the etymology of the word - that which is artificial is the product of artifice, and has the property of being an artifact. Artifice is by definition a human purview, although as Diz pointed out it's still natural as well.

"Artificial" is not an antonym of "natural," despite the fact that the term's been a bit bastardized to assume that connotation over the years. I tend to think (in a Sapir-Whorfy kind of way) that this little semantic smudge does something to increase man/nature dualism. I use the term "gaian" to describe things that do not exhibit signs of human intervention, and while that may be offloading the problem on another word to some degree I have the (probably vain) hope that if people would regard themselves as less separate from nature they might be a little more cautious about majorly upsetting the balance.

I realize that given the position that I've taken on the whole chimera issue this may sound like a strange thing for me to say. However, I tend to draw the lines pretty tightly around how I think this sort of experimentation should be allowed out of the lab; for example, I'm definitely opposed to allowing GMO's to interbreed with gaian populations at the moment, just because we don't have enough information to determine what the effects will be. I don't have the same problem with creating chimeras in the lab for research purposes.

So, for instance, it is generally considered that children who torture animals for pleasure are troubled.

I'm going to call strawman on the whole animal torture by children argument, because intent is of critical importance. Society doesn't work well when it contains individuals that take pleasure in the suffering of others. Performing research that may have great potential benefits to society and an acknowledged (and regretted) cost in terms of animal suffering is not the same thing.
 
 
Lurid Archive
09:07 / 07.02.05
Mirror, I agree. I was merely trying to establish a baseline that rejects *needless* animal suffering, however you want to justify that. I would go a good deal further, myself, and most people would go at least as far as ruling out animal testing for cosmetics.
 
 
Mirror
18:26 / 07.02.05
I definitely agree on the cosmetics question - torturing animals for the sake of vanity is despicable.
 
 
tom-karika nukes it from orbit
09:46 / 09.02.05
I have some issues with the use fo the word 'Torture' here. Does that not imply pain for pain's sake? Or at least pain for the sake of something corrupt or criminal.

I dont' consider cosmetics themselves inherently corrupt or criminal, so I wouldn't call hurting a mouse in order to make them 'Torture'. But I do agree that it is immmoral and bad in many other ways.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:54 / 09.02.05
I have some issues with the use fo the word 'Torture' here. Does that not imply pain for pain's sake? Or at least pain for the sake of something corrupt or criminal.

Well, no. Mirror has said that torturing a mouse for the sake of vanity is bad. However, that leaves open the possibility that torture can be used in other ways and for other aims that are permissible. Even as we speak, torture is being used to protect our freedom, after all.

Next up, though, how do we define "vanity"? Wanting to have a new shade of eyeliner that brings out our eyes may be vanity, but what about not wanting to die of cancer? Or of extending our lifespan, or something like that? From the mouse's point of view, surely this is all vanity?
 
 
Mirror
17:24 / 09.02.05
"Torture" was perhaps the wrong word, but it's not too far from the mark. Perhaps it should have been "Knowingly causing suffering and death for the sake of vanity ..."

Haus's observation that human survival and the advancement of human knowledge could be perceived as vanity by the mouse is, while not irrelevant, also not particularly helpful. From the perspective of a lot of species, things would be better if humans weren't around at all, but we don't have a thread discussing the ethicality of human existence.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
18:34 / 09.02.05
Well, no. I wasn't talking about the advancement of human knowledge. I was talking about, specifically, some humans with access to certain expensive medical facilities living longer than they otherwise would. Those are different things.
 
 
Cat Chant
09:28 / 10.02.05
diz wrote:

things have value only insofar as someone generally recognized as a person by other people values them, and that applies to animals, plants and fetuses, too... all of the above is in human terms, by the way. i don't expect the universe to give a shit one way or the other.

but also wrote:

what's so special about human intervention? we're just doing what we do, like any other tool-using animals, and tool-using is just as much a "natural" part of evolution as any other behavior.

This looks like a kind of argument I've seen elsewhere, and I may be misunderstanding, but can you clear something up for me, diz? Because this seems to be a circular argument. First of all you justify drawing an absolute division between humans and other animals, on the basis that humans create the 'human terms' in and through which 'animals' have to be understood (animals-for-humans being a slightly different entity than animals-for-themselves, which is presumably close to what 'the universe' would understand by 'animals'). Yes? Then you justify this in turn by, precisely, conflating humans and animals: it is the (animal) nature of humans to behave in such a way as to draw an absolute distinction between themselves and animals. That's where it seems to me to become circular: you justify the non-animality of humans on the basis of the animality of humans.

Or am I misunderstanding you? If so, how?
 
 
astrojax69
02:10 / 11.02.05
Even as we speak, torture is being used to protect our freedom, after all.

you say this, haus, like it is ok...

shouldn't the efforts to propogate freedom be for everyone's freedom, not just someone's 'our freedom'?

and, second, should such a practice be condoned just 'cause it is doing nice things for freedom?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:29 / 11.02.05
you say this, haus, like it is ok...

No, astrojax, you hear it like that. Think better.

Now, are you relating your comments on freedom to Chimerae and medical experimentation? That is, do you believe that if freedom is a universal right, scientists should be free to experiment as they choose? Or that animals should be free to live without medical interference?
 
 
Mirror
14:22 / 11.02.05
I was talking about, specifically, some humans with access to certain expensive medical facilities living longer than they otherwise would.

As vanity from the perspective of a subject of animal experimentation.

That's fine - and from the perspective of the quadrupeligic who's hoping that chimeric research will allow hir to walk again, the mouse's plight is regrettable but irrelevant. This gets us nowhere.

The best that humans can do is to act with enlightened self interest, by pursuing research that can benefit our species (and potentially others) with full knowledge and sympathy for its cost.

I think that this thread needs to step back for a moment from the concept of suffering, because it's not at all clear that the type of research that we're talking about involves suffering at all. The more interesting question is whether or not species integrity is a priori good. As I've mentioned before, I don't think that there's a compelling argument in favor of this; however, we need to be aware of potential impacts on our environment should such experiments ever be allowed out of the lab.
 
 
astrojax69
02:07 / 19.02.05
Now, are you relating your comments on freedom to Chimerae and medical experimentation? That is, do you believe that if freedom is a universal right, scientists should be free to experiment as they choose? Or that animals should be free to live without medical interference?

i really don't know, haus. this is one of the biggies, isn't it? where is the line that says that splicing a navel orange branch onto a blood orange tree and harvesting the results is ok but splicing genetic material for human ears onto rats' backs is ghastly and abhorent and 'against nature' [paraphrased, but a common theme of press articles about that]

i can really find no way to disentangle the arguments - i sort of think i am bound to think it ok for scientists to fark about in labs and create chimerae. after all, evolution tells us life on earth mutated from single cell organisms. i guess a whale shark is a big mutation from that; has anyone asked the single cell organisms what they feel about all this? why is a 'natural' mutation that results in a new species with new adaptations to fit an environment better than any previous species to be preferred from human intervention in the process?

wither life?
 
 
alas
15:23 / 19.02.05
The best that humans can do is to act with enlightened self interest, by pursuing research that can benefit our species (and potentially others) with full knowledge and sympathy for its cost.

This is where I think we fail and will continue to fall. Do you really think we are any where close to this point--i.e., the point at which we have FULL knowledge and sympathy for its cost?

In this culture, we are deadened to the effects of our lives on other people, other animals, on natural resources every day. Privileged people are virtually incapable of paying attention to the full cost of every endeavor we undertake. We would not be living this lifestyle if we were, I am quite certain. It is impossible for scientists to not come from a privileged position: they cannot have and will never have a "God's eye view" onto the entirety and complexity of the world's network of ecosystems. It's a fantasy when it's applied to "God" and it's equally so when humans are standing in for God.

I am not certain we can control this so well as we think, I am not certain we have any clue about what would constitute "full knowledge" . Speaking from a US perspective, science here is far to dependent on and implicated with profit-making endeavors, in the forms of grants, etc. for me to have any sense that it is capable of such deep knowledge and sympathy: the game is simply not set up that way.

And I'm finally not convinced "full" knowledge is possible at the level needed for such an endeavor, not simply speaking as a crazy humanities person: we can't even predict the weather beyond 60% accuracy more than 5 days into the future. How can we be so arrogant as to assume we can predict the outcomes of such radical experimentation, generations hence?
 
 
Loomis
15:24 / 19.02.05
why is a 'natural' mutation that results in a new species with new adaptations to fit an environment better than any previous species to be preferred from human intervention in the process?

Presumably because the natural mutation happens slowly and doesn't cause suffering to the individual animals in question. It's not about whether it's natural to do something; it's a case of causing pain and suffering. Creating an animal with all its skin and bones in the wrong places so it lives in agony just because you're curios about the result is just like pulling wings off flies.
 
 
Lurid Archive
09:20 / 21.02.05
I'm completely with Loomis on this, and remain a little bemused at the way Mirror keeps wanting to have an argument with religious types. That said, it is possible that you can do this kind of thing without causing suffering, in certain cases. In that siutation I'd be less strongly opposed to it, though my personal position is that animal testing is ethically suspect in all cases. But I'm not at all convinced that the suffering of animals is irrelevant to this dicsussion.

I'd also like to pick up on what alas said, though it might be better for another thread,

How can we be so arrogant as to assume we can predict the outcomes of such radical experimentation, generations hence?

because I vacillate between agreeing with this - in the case of GM foods, for instance - and thinking it is too incomplete to have much weight. I guess the whole "God's eye view" criticism of science is something that has always struck me as weak, to a large extent. While I support the precautionary principle and the role of ethics in research (as do most scientists, in differing ways) that alone cannot be enough to object to a specific piece of research.

Hmmm. Perhaps I am not quite seeing the specific experimentation discussed here as particularly "radical", mostly because I don't see any proposed large scale environmental consequences, unlike in the case of GM foods. The only fall out I can see is a killer virus type of scenario, but thats not quite what we are talking about.
 
 
lord henry strikes back
12:52 / 23.02.05
Presumably because the natural mutation happens slowly and doesn't cause suffering to the individual animals in question.

Actually natural mutation only happens slowly on a species wide scale. At the individual level an orgaism either has a mutation or it does not. When it comes to suffereing, it is genetic mutation that is the root of many of the worst degenerative conditions suffered by both humans and animals.

In retrospect it can appear that evolution is a smooth, almost planned, endeavour, but, of course, it is nothing more than a string of random mutations, most of which are disastours, only the smallest number of which confer an advantage and form the basis for a new species, sub-species etc.
 
 
Mirror
17:43 / 01.03.05
I'm completely with Loomis on this, and remain a little bemused at the way Mirror keeps wanting to have an argument with religious types. That said, it is possible that you can do this kind of thing without causing suffering, in certain cases. In that siutation I'd be less strongly opposed to it, though my personal position is that animal testing is ethically suspect in all cases. But I'm not at all convinced that the suffering of animals is irrelevant to this dicsussion.

I don't think the argument that this sort of research causes suffering has been very well established in this thread. What evidence are you proposing to support this claim? To refer to the thread summary, do pigs suffer because they have human blood flowing? Does having the brain tissue of a different organism cause suffering? If we were to engineer a genuine goat/snake/lion chimera (complete with firebreathing ability) would it be in pain, or unhappy?

It's a little odd to me that you think I want to have a discussion with religious types. Religion hasn't been a factor on this thread for quite a while.
 
  
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