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Scientists Claim They Cloned Humans
dustinbarbour writes "A South Korean-led research team has cloned human embryos to produce embryonic stem cells, a scientific first that promises to reignite public debate over cloning. Medical researchers hope to use cloned embryonic stem cells to someday treat diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson's. The cells potentially could create rejection-free transplant organ tissues." There's another story in the NYT.
...That they didn't claim to produce an entire embryo; just stem cells.
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Now the big question is: who to clone?
I, for one, can only think of people that should not exist.
Can we pass a law that stupid people aren't allowed near this stuff? We've got too many of them already.
It must be Thursday... I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Not according to "Coast to Coast Radio" with Art Bell. According to him, the UN already has millions of cloned army men stationed in secret bases in Siberia and Northern Minnesota.
Am in support of using stem-cells to repair organs. It's not really unehical at all. I mean an embryo doesn't have a personality or a self so it's hardly going to miss being alive.
They seem to be cloning the cloning messages.
How often did we hear this before?
They seem to be cloning the cloning messages.
How often did...
What's with the sensatioanlistic headlines this morning? KAZAA'ers PAY TO USE VPN TO BYPASS RIAA on a story about a company who offers public vpn for $6, with no implicit mention of Kazaa or FileSharing. And now WE'VE CLONED A HUMAN about a korean company who has cloned only an embryo to only a very early stage to generate stem cells, not making Steve 2.0 from Steve. Let's not go overboard, or am I talking out of turn? This is Slashdot, of course. Overboard is the story d'jour.
Th
The team detailed here has not cloned a human has such. It has cloned the stem cells in an embryo specifically for stem cells. The claims that they have made (also made in New Scientist this week) are not as radical as the claims made by the Raelians and Panayiotis Zavos, and so are much more believable than can be expected by looking at this title :)
I say all power to the team doing this as they are obviously going for something that is going to eventually become a pioneering field for saving life. I think the key issue is that they are cloning the cells (i believe) rather than the entire embryo, and so the issue of Sanctity of Life does not come into it.
Tim
tim
article here
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
"In related news, delegates to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention have attempted to introduce a "yes, you can marry your own clone" clause into the gay marriage debate."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
it's only a matter of time before someone does clone a human. There's nothing mysterious or exceptionally difficult about it as compared to cloning sheep, cows, horses, etc.
The ethical questions are something else entirely, due to the fact that at this time, there's no way to relibaly bring forth healthy clones (most have some sort of genetic defect).
There's also a general misconception that a clone will be just like the clonee. Something that's extremely unlikely, just look at identical twins.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
We need more! Make more people! Quick! There's just not enough baby factories in the world. Look at China, for example. There's hardly anyone there! It's an unpopulated wasteland! More clones now! Rah rah rah sis boom bah!
--- Ban humanity.
Your stem cells can be collected and stored at birth, from the cord blood that is thrown away anyway when they tie the knot to make your belly button. It should be standard practice to store them now from newborns for when stem cell technology matures in the future.
When I was at Uni, they told us a US company held a patent on the harvesting(?) of cord blood stem cells, and demanded a license fee which is hampering the introduction of this. Don't know how true that is.
Nevertheless, this bypasses peoples squemishness on the use of embryos for this type of thing, though I don't have a problem with it myself. I can see why this work has been done, but there are a number of ways to generate this material that isn't morally suspect.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
So let me get this right: Some guys in BFE clone human stem cells. Ok, fine. Gotcha. Meanwhile, the head of the IAEA is warning that the "World May Be Headed for Nuclear Destruction" because of the proliferation of nukes by Pakistan and North Korea.
Someone remind me please why it is that I should give a rat's ass about cloning, whether it's Joe Blow's stem cells or Adolf Hitler's own gametes? Cuz I just fail to see the significane of this at all, really.
Once they find the Heorot burial yard, and can dig up the appropriate genetic material, this research brings us closer to the possibility of a Beowulf cluster of real Beowulves.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
> Did they clone Paris Hilton? If not, I don't care.
Yeah, but the clone turned out to be short, fat, and prudish.
We'll send her right over. How many do you want?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
On this morning's Today programme on BBC Radio 4, this very thing was discussed. One of the interesting arguments: at what point to we determine an embryo a human being?
Is a ball of 100 human embryo cells a human being? One woman on the program was claiming - yes, this is so. I personally think that this is a bit extreme, almost "every sperm is sacred" extreme.
On an unrelated note, I find it ironic that the same people who claim that abortion at day 3 is criminal are often pro-death penalty.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
... and the inexorable march of science continues unabated. This is a significant breakthrough, if not a huge step forward, in the process, and there will probably be another within 12-18 months, and so on. FWIW, I think the most positive aspect of this is that it will bring bioresearch back into the public eye, and will hopefully foster intelligent, measured discussion on the obvious benefits and admitted drawbacks to all forms of new technology, bio, nano, or otherwise. As the proliferation of nuclear technology (now 60 years old) has shown, technology will out, despite all attempts to contain it. Therefore, we need to be discussing the ethics and ramifications of said technology well before it becomes public domain. Note that I'm not advocating the containment of technology -- heaven forbid! I'm merely suggesting that we're not yet ready to deal with these issues as a nation or as a race, and the time to begin thinking about them is sooner rather than later.
Stem cell technology has the potential to save millions of lives. Clearly, we need to issue bans on it.
What are the chances that when I get older I'll need to go overseas for a one of these new transplants (Now rejection free! Two kidneys for price of one!) because the US has banned all stem cell research and related items.
--- Ban humanity.
Can we clone some pretty girls to make supply so high to make them available for geeks too?
SHE does throw dice.
Worse than the first livestock cloning rates. Thats probably why success hasnt been reported before.
US labs suffer from high human egg costs. The going rate is about $4,000 per donor. It would cost a megabuck just for the egg cells.
Everyone has been posting that they didn't clone a human. No they didn't clone a human but the embryo grew well enough in a petry dish to suggest that if they did not extract the stem cells they could have cloned a human. Laws in South Korea allows them to create stem cells in this way but they are not allowed to clone an entire human. In the United States none of this is allowed and for a long time there have been discussions to make the laws more like South Korea (cloning of full humans not allowed but this research in cloning embryos and stuff like that is.)
Anyway, yeah the title is misleading BUT the scientists believe they could have cloned a human.
Opponents of cloning fear the development will lead to cloned babies.
What if it does? So what? Clone me anytime. All it means is that there will be another guy who looks just like me walking around. Will the clone think and act like me? Fuck no; the people who think cloned genes will equal a cloned mind are the types who worry about cloned little Hitlers running around. Don't place your faith in Hollywood movies to show you what cloning is all about.
Cloned people are not any less human than "naturally born" people. What makes a human is intellect, not just how one was born.
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"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
Tell me - *exactly* when does a "human embryo" become a "human"?
Late-term abortions are regularly performed on "human embryos", which are exactly the same age as "premature babies" which, with care, grow into "infants" then "children" then "adults".
I'd *really* be interested to hear how you distinguish between them.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
They transplated the nucleus of a somatic cell into an egg, cultured it to the blastocyst stage, then extracted the stem cells from them. In what sense does that not involve a cloned embryo? If they had implanted the egg into a uterus instead of extracting the stem cells it would have developed into a more or less normal human.
An embryo is "In humans, the prefetal product of conception from implantation through the eighth week of development."
Late term abortions are performed on the fetus, and are not done in the first 8 weeks.
That is why they are called "late term".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I really do not understand why people can't see a common sense middle ground to this whole abortion debate.
Sure an exact demarcation of when an embryo is a baby will never be agreed upon by everyone, but why isn't it an acceptable demarcation to check if the embryo has brain activity?
We use that as a measure to determine if already born people are dead or alive... so why not use it to determine if something is no longer an embryo? "I think therefore I am", so if an embryo thinks, it has to be a living human.
Is such a measurement not a good comprimise? It isn't based on religion or politics, but instead on science. Seems objective if you ask me.
Group A: Primarily Christians and other Religious groups. Are against Cloning for the above reasons. Becuase God's against it.
Group B: Us heathens who believe otherwise, those who hope to benefit medically from the research and sadly those who want to make a profit.
So for some reason in America Group A can get laws passed to ban the research. However isnt religious oppression illegal in the US? So why dont the lawyers that represent those companies fight it on grounds of religious oppression?
What if you clone yourself and genetically modify the DNA to make it a member of the opposite sex, apply some rapid growth and then have sex with it, does that count as masturbation or incest ??
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Slipper slope fallacy - actually, one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. Therapeutic cloning can be done without us having to do reproductive cloning.
"In my opinion, and that of the majority of the Council, the only way to prevent this from happening here is for Congress to enact a comprehensive ban or moratorium on all human cloning."
False Dillema fallacy. Kass is saying that we either completely ban all cloning, or we'd have to deal with and accept all types of cloning. In actuality, we can allow cloning for therapeutic purposes(you know, to save lives), while disallowing, or greatly limiting it for reproductive purposes(eg allow it for people who have no other way to reproduce, but disallow it for people who want to clone a legion of duplicates to satisfy their vanity/megalomaniacal ambitions).
Yes, but unless they have also conquered the problem with Telomeres, the resulting human would at best have a greatly shortened lifespan, and may have all sorts of other problems.
I have mixed feelings on this one. The method they have used provides a viable alternative to using aborted fetuses and embryos for harvesting stem cells and at the same time looks like an answer to the problem of rejection. Aside from the "we shouldn't clone" argument, I think the only other complaint is the use (and destruction) of the egg cell. While this may seem trivial to many, there are some people who will still be very upset by it.
Does anybody know whatever happened with the research on harvesting real adult stem cells from fat tissue? I would think this would solve both the rejection AND Telomeres problems, as presumably these cells would have lain dormant and not used up their life cycle like other cells in the body.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Ok, but after self reflection, I confirm my existence because I am aware of my self. I do not confirm my existence because I am white.
Also, as far as we know, and yes it is a "logical jump", thinking can be measured by measuring brain activity. So this seems like it is a far more objective measure of life/no-life than any other currently purposed measure.
The "when it is born" measure is obviously flawed because it is largely based on the location of one's body (inside vs outside the womb).
But the "when it was conceived" measure is also flawed as we could claim that sperm and eggs are living humans because they have the "potential" for life. So a menstrating women is committing manslaughter and so is a man, who lets a sperm go to waste. We could even go back further and say that the materials used to create a sperm have "potential" for life...
Can't you get stem cells from liposuction...
Yeah, but the result would look a bit like this..
This is called the fallacy of drawing the line. It's defined as:
Line Drawing Fallacy: This fallacy uses false dilemmas in dealing with vague concepts: If your cannot draw a line to demarcate the edge of the concept, it is dismissed as hopelessly unclear.
In this case we can distinguish the extremes. Asking when it becomes a human only clouds the issue. I like the idea one of the other posters posited about checking for brain activity, as that's the socially accepted standard for killing/allowing someone to die (depending if you want to use an euphmism).
You can kill anything that is alive. For instance, you can kill a plant. You can kill a single cell. If you want to kill a party, just bring up this topic.
The issue is more along the lines of "is an embryo a Human?" Certain religious people would say yes.
But I still oppose abortion (all cases) . I don't oppose cloning - but I do oppose treating cloned humans as convenient cell farms.
Why? Because I think humans and human life has value- in and of itself. That value isn't increased or decreased by the existence (or not) of a God- or even several Gods.
If you don't believe that then I can understand you supporting abortion and cloning embryos for their cells (but you're wrong). If that is your stance then I would assume that if you are consistent that you must oppose Murder being a crime?
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
is that a story like this immediately transforms itself in the minds of some very ignorant people, into: Scientists are now able to create fully adult genetic and mental duplicates of me, who will look, talk, and act just like me, sleep with my wife and take over my life just like in The Sixth Day, and furthermore they will all be abominations in the eyes of God!! The reality of what's possible with cloning is far more mundane than our sci-fi nightmares, but the general public rarely concerns itself with the differences. Lets see:
Sci-Fi | Real Life
Genetic duplicate | Check
Adult | Baby
Same memories | No memories
Same personality | Somewhat similar personality
Steals my identity | WTF?
JC wouldn't like it | You are an idiot
Are we supposed to just wait around diseased and dying contently?
Also, it's still rather uncertain how versatile cord stem cells are compared to embryonic stem cells.
Pretty clear - they DID clone embryos, then killed them.
Let's not get into a killing-an-embryo-is-killing-humans discussion. A 7-day old human embryo is indistinguishable from most other embryos at that percentage through fetal developemnt (~1/39th). At 1/39th development, it is identical to all mamals and almost identical to all vertebrates. Mathematically and biologically, this is no different than doing it with sheep or fish.
~Will
sig?
They didn't kill an embryo, they stopped it's multiplication and took a fraction of its cells. At day six, they were up to what? A hundred cells?
Please don't suggest that you seriously think that a chemical treated skin cell had the potential to grow into a healthy baby.
And since a subset of the cells are a) still alive and b) flourish and multiple, they haven't killed anything any more than losing cells to the outer layers of your Epidermis kills you.
Try not to let the word embryo drum up your emotions.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Tell me - *exactly* when does a "human embryo" become a "human"?
It's the simplest question in the world. You want the truth? You want to know exactly when an embryo or fetus becomes a human?
It becomes a human the moment that the woman carrying it decides she wants it, and it is a tragedy if something goes wrong. She'll sing to it, look at the sonographs, eat right, and buy baby supplies.
If she doesn't want it, it's a simply a piece of extra tissue and can be terminated and disposed of.
Got it? Good.
By the way, the father's view on the issue either way happens to be irrelevant.
...
On another note, a lot of women regret them later and have bad dreams, suicidal thoughts, etc.
On another note, a lot of people have bad dreams, suicidal thoughts, etc. whether they've decided on an abortion or not.
Ergo, it's just pathetic human laziness and lack of consideration for the consequences of our actions that causes the issue in the first place.
I'm so comforted by the thought that rape victims are just lazy. It eases a great burden on my mind to think that anyone who gets raped is just a "victim" of pathetic human laziness and that they didn't consider the consequences of the rapist's actions.
Just a bit of friendly advice.... you either need to start picking your words more carefully to actually say what you think that you are saying, or you just need to not talk altogether. I know you're not really meaning to say such idiotic things, but you keep doing so anyway, presumably because you don't take the time to think about how your're wording your thoughts.
I do not agree that there is not some point where the living lump of senseless flesh ceases to become a mound of organic material and begins being a human being. No capability for thought equates to a non-functional human mind which is, in effect, a vegetable. Once there is discernible brain activity, the being becomes a living human, and abortion becomes an option only for the prevention of serious medical complications.
Of course, you have a few idiots who abuse it and use it as birth control because they really are stupid and careless, but I have a hard time believing they're in the majority. Stupid people tend not to have that kind of money lying around.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
How is this an alternative to using aborted fetuses and embryos for harvesting stem cells? This _is_ an aborted embryo (albeit in vitro, but the adults from in vitro embryos seem perfectly normal).
Regarding the destruction of an egg cell, a woman's body does this every month, and a woman starts off with over 100,000 eggs, of which obviously almost all are destroyed at some point.
That's an interesting point regarding the fat cells - I hadn't heard anything about using them for cloning. Thanks for the info!
An argument for this technology strictly from the perspective that it "could save lives" is a weak argument. The human research conducted by Nazi Germany could "save lives". Shoving hot spikes in people's toenails would no doubt teach us alot about pain and perhaps lead to better pain relievers.
Fortunately, most people- even those who deny it-have some sort of moral sense prohibiting the logical conclusion of "anything in the name of science", or more broadly "the ends justify the means".
This argument also has the very un-scientific assumption that the hypothesis is correct. This technology could cost lives. This research could prevent funding on research into umbilical cord stem cells. So the person who says it should be done because it "could save lives" has actually already made up their mind that it will, and refuses to consider any other possibilities.
The question then is not whether this technology can save lives, but whether it is ethical to procede in this fashion. Here, the core issue is when life begins. If it begins at the zygote stage, then this technology is murdering for scientific gain. The trouble is, there is no clear-cut way of drawing that line- is it when the organism is self aware? Then abortion should be acceptable several months- even years- after birth. Is it when heart activity starts? The problem with this is that we know a person may be alive and recussitated for several minutes after his heart has stopped. Brain activity? Then maybe those with less brain activity- Alzheimer's patients, mentally ill etc.- should be killed as well, since their life is of less value by that criteria.
No, the only logical point to say life has started is at the very beginning. Researchers have the unique challenge of finding ways to enhance human life without taking or harming it. Granted this can be difficult, but I have confidence that people can work within ethical limits and still find honorable ways to do the things they are now trying to do through cloning and abortion.
Does anybody know whatever happened with the research on harvesting real adult stem cells from fat tissue?
From fat tissue? At last, jobs will go back to Americans!
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
It's not quite the same thing, although some of the same arguments are valid. In this case, there was no "conception" that took place, not even in vitro. In vitro fertilization involves the introduction of sperm to egg outside of the woman's body. However, for this project, they took an egg, removed the nucleus, and replaced it with the genetic material of skin cells (presumably from an adult, but that wasn't clear). Although this could presumably grown into a functional human, I think there would be longevity problems because the amino acid sequences that control cell division (Telomeres) would be greatly shortened and cell arrest would take place much sooner.
Regarding the destruction of an egg cell, a woman's body does this every month, and a woman starts off with over 100,000 eggs, of which obviously almost all are destroyed at some point.
Good point. The difference is that the cells destroyed monthly would be considered "natural" whereas the cloning process is "unnatural". For many, this is probably unimportant, but there are some who possess religious or philosophical beliefs that would greatly oppose this. It's something we have to at least be sensitive to, even if we don't agree with their viewpoint.
That's an interesting point regarding the fat cells - I hadn't heard anything about using them for cloning. Thanks for the info!
Glad I could provide some information. If you're interested, here's an article about it.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
I'm pretty sure they already cleared up the issue with telomeres. The problem resulted from using cells at the end of their division cycle (50 divisions) so that it wasn't active when they tore the nucleus out. It's been found though that the nucleus can be taken out at the beginning of this cycle resulting in an interesting phenomenon where the cloned cell then gets extra telomeres and is potentially superior to the original.
Pig-human chimeras contain cell surprise...at New Scientist...here:
9 94558
...The injections must be given after the body plan of the fetus has developed, but before the immune system is active. The former ensures the animals look like normal pigs and sheep....
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99
Pigs grown from fetuses into which human stem cells were injected have surprised scientists by having cells in which the DNA from the two species is mixed at the most intimate level.
It is the first time such fused cells have been seen in living creatures. The discovery could have serious implications for xenotransplantation - the use of animal tissue and organs in humans - and even the origin of diseases such as HIV.
The adult pigs that had received human stem cells as fetuses were found to have pig cells, human cells and the hybrid cells in their blood and organs.
"What we found was completely unexpected. We found that the human and pig cells had totally fused in the animals' bodies," said Jeffrey Platt, director of the Mayo Clinic Transplantation Biology Program.
The hybrid cells had both human and pig surface markers. But, most surprisingly, the hybrid cell nuclei were found to have chromosomal DNA that contained both human and pig genes. The researchers found that about 60 per cent of the animals' non-pig cells were hybrids, with the remainder being fully human.
I CANNOT believe that these animals looked like "normal" pigs. If the Pig and Human nuclear DNA mixed, and the animal was 60% percent human, one would think that the animals were more human than pig.
Cloning isn't so bad when compared to an experiment like this gone awry.
Percentage of abortions performed due to life or health threat to the mother: 1%
Percentage of abortions performed due to rape or incest: 2%
Percentage of abortions performed due to health of the baby: 4%
Percentage of abortions performed for social reasons: 93%
Source: "Why Do Women Have Abortions?"
A. Torres & J.D. Forrest, Family Planning Perspectives, Jul/Aug 1988
Full Table of that article.
2001 data from Minnesota Planned Parenthood:
Population of Minnesota - 4,919,479
Number of births in Minnesota - 66,620
Number of patient visits to Planned Parenthood for family planning, cancer screening and treatment, annual exams, and screening and treatment for STI (sexually transmitted infection) - 132,728
Number of abortions performed in Minnesota - 14,833
Number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood - 2, 789 (18%)
Percentage of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood as compared to patient visits - 2%
Number of abortions performed for minors (under 18) in Minnesota - 838 (6%)
Number of abortions performed for adult women in Minnesota - 13, 995 (94%)
Number of abortions performed at under 9 weeks estimated gestational age in Minnesota - 9,008 (61%)
Number of abortions performed at 15 weeks or under - 14, 008 (94%)
Percentage of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood at 16 weeks or under - 100%
Number of abortions performed at over 16 weeks in Minnesota - 816 (6%)
Number of abortions performed in Minnesota due to severe fetal anomalies, rape, incest, or to protect woman's health - 1,792 (12%)
Number of women who reported using contraceptives at time of conception in Minnesota - 3,915 (24%)
Post-operative complication rate for abortion in Minnesota - 1%
Inter-operation complication rate for abortion in Minnesota - 0.2%
Sources: Induced Abortions in Minnesota January - December 2001: Report to the Legislature. Center for Health Statistics, Minnesota Department of Health. Planned Parenthood of Minnesota/South Dakota Annual Report 2001.
I attended a lecture by a big-wig stem cell researcher (sorry, don't recall his name) at my University a few months back, and he addressed the topic of getting stem cells from adult tissues.
He said that the stem cell research community was initially very excited about this line of research when it first made headlines, because it could allow the same research without the ethical issues connected to embryo's.
Unfortunately, though early results looked promising, subsequent investigations cast doubt on how useful adult-derived stem cells would be compared to the unlimited pluripotential of embryonic stem cells to turn into other cell therapeutic cell types.
Also unfortunately, the prospect of using adult stem cells in place of embryonic stem cells is still ceased upon by opponents of embryonic stem research to win over those who don't know the science, and to cast the scientists as being unethical in the face of perfect alternatives. But the science doesn't back this position up.
Roaches have brain activity, and yet most of us have no qualms about killing them. We like to think we are being rational about the issue of life, but we are really just following our instincts for the most part. It seems to mostly boil down to similarity.
If something is similar to us then we admire it(dog), if it is disimilar we dislike it(roach). Whether it is 'alive' does not enter the picture. Some people have in their heads a simplistic picture of embryos at this stage as miniature humans and others see them as a clump of 100 undifferentiated cells. So the real debate is 'how similar to us are they?' because similarity is what we base our 'decisions' of mortality against.
And what of miscarriages where the woman's immune system attacks embryos and aborts the fetus? Should we charge the mother with murder?
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Cloning is like prostitution. Moral or not, legal or not, people are going to do it and get paid for it. The question is whether we want an open, regulated industry or an underground one.
Your mantra - genetically human is human - is too simple. For example, many different types of human cells are cultured in labs all around the world. They are derived from adult humans... every type of cell from neurons to muscle cells to adult stem cells. One of the first such cell lines ever made, HeLa, is actually named for Helen Lang, the person from whom the original cell came. All these cells are as genetically human as any cell of a similar type in your body or mine. I feel no remorse when, in the course of my research, I bleach a plate of them and kill several million of them. Scientists DO draw a distinction between a single cell, an embryo, and a child. They represent very different points on the developmental pathway, and therefore cannot be treated as equivalent. Whether you think cloning is right or wrong, you shouldn't oversimplify the situation.