Chinese Bioethics Research Articles

審慎地擁抱未來

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.
 As a measure of biomedical intervention, brain–computer interfaces in the era of artificial intelligence (AI-BCI technology, ABT) pose enormous ethical challenges in terms of human autonomy, mental integrity, identity, data privacy, and control while achieving therapeutic goals. It is necessary to analyze and differentiate these ethical challenges one by one, but more importantly, to find the truly safest, most effective, and most ethical ways to implement biomedical interventions and ensure “responsible research and innovation” in biomedical fields. In the context of the international development of consistent ABT standards, the policy formulation of “a right to mental privacy” and brain data security in Chinese bioethics will be a heavy and arduous task.

Chinese Traditional Bioethics.

Chinese traditional bioethics is based on the life origin theory of "Qi (vital force) permeates everything under heaven", the attitude towards life theory of "loving people" and "loving things", and the life transcendence theory of "eternity" and "immortality". The life origin theory answers the question of how life comes into being, which is the basis for exploring the mystery of life. The attitude towards life theory gives answers to the question of how to treat life properly and establishes the basic requirements and criteria for treating life. The life transcendence theory responds to the question of how to make life more meaningful. Those three thoughts support each other and explain each other with the inner logical band between these three basic thoughts, and tentatively offers a reasonable way for the reconstruction of traditional Chinese bioethics, which can be a special theoretical resource for today's bioethical research.

Introduction of Bioethics in China

Abstract Bioethics began in the 1980s in China, being borrowed and introduced from western countries. But the Chinese bioethics has been seeking a different model from western bioethics, grounded on its philosophical basis and cultural environment. Some significant progress has been achieved in the academic field of bioethics, the policy makers and government regulation. Though China shares some common bioethical issues and discussion with other countries, China is facing some special challenges, including Doctor-Patient-Relationship, and health inequality in health care reform.

如何看待“靈性”在世俗醫學－生命倫理學中的位置？

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract in English only.In a recent article, Jeffrey P. Bishop addresses the biopsychosociospiritual approach to medicine that has gained popularity in the past few decades as a way to correct the reductionism and scientism of biomedical ethics and “personalize” the colder aspects of scientifically and technologically advanced biomedicine. Although he welcomes the attempt to bring religion and spirituality back to contemporary medical discourse and practice, Bishop is quite critical of the “the total care approach” entailed in bio-psycho-socio-spirituality. For him, what is labeled “religious” or “spiritual” is nothing more than a kind of liberal or humanist discourse operating within the framework of secularized medical control via its various metanarratives of social functioning. Bishop’s challenge is significant because it remains open to question how in biomedical ethics we should acknowledge the distinct roles played by different religions and spiritual traditions in biomedical decisions, which very often go beyond the social and technological dimensions of biomedicine.Bishop’s contextualization of Western biomedicine is also useful for helping Chinese bioethicists to understand that any attempt to reconstruct Chinese bioethics will go nowhere if we confine ourselves to concepts that address particular issues in particular contexts in the history of Western medicine. For example, for traditional Chinese medicine and medical practice, the challenge may not be too much depersonalization or too much scientism, but rather how to depersonalize or become more scientific in certain situations. Therefore, Bishop is correct when he points out that rather than embracing Western biomedicine, or biopsychosociospiritual medicine, China should turn to its own spiritual traditions borne out of the life-worlds of its people to fully understand its potential and limits.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 88 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

Individuals are Inadequate: Recognizing the Family-Centeredness of Chinese Bioethics and Chinese Health System

This paper is aimed at a critical assessment of the moral framework of the current Chinese health system from a Confucian perspective, by focusing on the debate between the individual directed approach and the family-oriented approach to a health care system. Concerned with the nature and status of the family in communal life, the paper deals with the following questions: to cope with the frailties of material life (including susceptibility to disease), what good is presupposed by human existence and flourishing; why it is the family that serves as the primary locus of bearing and realizing this unique good; and what kind of society might possess the structures necessary to achieve the good thus conceived. All these questions lead to a revision of the theory of justice required in health care, in favor of family health saving accounts as an important institutional guarantee.

走向中國生命倫理學——重審後基礎之醫學道德

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.當代西方面臨多重挑戰，有些是理論層面的，有些是實踐層面的。目前佔主導地位的西方世俗文化的普世主義的道德和生命倫理學工程認為道德基礎可以從道德哲學系統中的有效論證來獲得。這種思維方式源於西元前5 世紀希臘的世俗化，並在13 世紀的西方獲得新生。其後的體系基於對理性的信仰，喪失了維繫西方基督教信仰的承諾，導致康德的理性主義道德工程。1970 和80 年代出現的西方生命倫理學對個體自主性的強調試圖得到這一道德工程的印證，但這種努力已經擱淺：期望依賴普世主義的術語，通過有效理性論證來確保具體內容的所有嘗試，到頭來都不過是乞題論證、循壞論證、或無窮後退，因為人們沒有可能通過對基本前提和證據規則的理性反思來必然地達成共識。人們總是需要進一步的背景前提和規則。從歷史的脈絡來看，一旦西方世俗道德反思拋棄其上帝之眼的視角，標杆化的世俗道德體系就會陷入麻煩。一切強調無名氏的道德視角，無論是以沒有境遇的道德主體身份出現，還是以大多數人的最大利益原則出現，都無法提出標杆化的規範內容。文章認為，西方現代社會-民主制福利國家醫療資源的配置方式所引發的財政上的不可持續的危機帶來三個基本難題：(1) 醫療權利一旦確立，它們所帶來的道德風險；(2) 依靠後人為今人交付醫療服務的做法所帶來的人口風險；(3) 社會保險計劃誘發政治家玩弄空頭支票所帶來的政治風險。西方社會所面臨的危機，無論是經濟上的，還是文化上的，都為我們提供了很好的理由說明我們需要重新考量構建在中國文化視域下的、更有能力迎接21 世紀倫理學挑戰的生命倫理學。Unnoticed by many bioethicists, the very foundations of the dominant Western secular morality, and by extension the foundations of the dominant secular bioethics of the West, have been brought into question. After Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and in the light of arguments by philosophers from G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) to Richard Rorty (1931-2007) and Gianni Vattimo (1936-), it has become ever clearer that neither the content of the dominant Western secular morality nor the content of the dominant Western bioethics can be secured as canonical through sound rational argument. Western secular morality and Western secular bioethics have become foundationless. They are not secured by a canonical moral rationality or by being anchored in being as it is in itself. Theimplications are wide-ranging. This paper sketches both what it means to do bioethics after foundations, and what opportunities exist for rethinking the possibilities for a Chinese bioethics.Among the difficulties of the Enlightenment moral project is that it attempted to understand individuals in anonymously universalist terms. To do this, individuals had to be considered outside of their social and historical contexts. They were as a consequence portrayed as bare moral agents. This is most saliently the case with Immanuel Kant, who understands his morality in terms of the kingdom of ends, within which all members, save God, are fully interchangeable. The members of the kingdom of ends are persons without sex, sexual orientation, species-membership, history, or family. This state of affairs is tied to a universalist, egalitarian vision of persons and society, which in the West has been understood in terms of a social-democratic morality and political agenda. The difficulty is that it is now clear that there is a challenge to the financial sustainability of healthcare allocation within social-democratic welfare states. The difficulties stem from at least three challenges to its sustainability: (1) the moral hazard due to the inclination to overuse entitlements once they are established, (2) the demographic hazard due to relying on future generations to pay for the health care of current recipients (i.e., when there are fewer children, financing becomes difficult), and (3) the political hazard due to social insurance schemes that reward politicians for promising benefits even when sufficient funds may not be available.For scholars doing bioethics in China, this state of affairs means that Chinese bioethicists are freed from having to meet secular Western bioethicists on the terms established by secular Western bioethicists. Instead, they can fashion an authentically Chinese bioethics, which nests its own moral commitments within the traditional Confucian moral narrative of China. A Chinese bioethics need not, and should not, in content or form be like the bioethics of the dominant secular morality and bioethics of the West. Given the character of secular morality and bioethics, given its inability to establish a universal, canonical morality through sound rational argument, as well as given the particularity of all morality and bioethics that possesses content, and given the promising moral content salient in Chinese culture, a move by Chinese to establish a Chinese bioethics becomes quite plausible.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 46 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

The Confucian bioethics of surrogate decision making: Its communitarian roots

The family is the exemplar community of Chinese society. This essay explores how Chinese communitarian norms, expressed in thick commitments to the authority and autonomy of the family, are central to contemporary Chinese bioethics. In particular, it focuses on the issue of surrogate decision making to illustrate the Confucian family-grounded communitarian bioethics. The essay first describes the way in which the family, in Chinese bioethics, functions as a whole to provide consent for significant medical and surgical interventions when a patient has lost decision-making capacity. It is argued that the practice of not having an established order for surrogate decision makers (e.g., spouse, children, and then parents), as it is done in the United States, reflects the acknowledgment that the family as a social reality cannot be reduced to a stereotype of the appropriate order of default decision makers. This description of the family as being in authority to make surrogate decisions for an incompetent family member is enriched by an elaboration of the differences among the concepts of patient autonomy, family autonomy, and moral autonomy. The Chinese model, as well as the Confucian communitarian life of families, engages a family autonomy that is supported by a Confucian understanding of moral autonomy, rather than individual autonomy. Finally, the issue of possible conflicts between patient and family interests in relation to a patient's past wishes in the Chinese model is addressed in light of the role of the physician.

儒家生命倫理視野下人工生殖倫理觀之構建

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.隨著人工生殖技術的發展和應用，相伴而來的社會倫理問題也日益增多。為了使該技術真正做到以人為本、為人類的生存和發展而服務，及為人類的圓滿生活造福，探討和構建一種適應現代人工生殖技術發展和應用的倫理觀有十分逼切的需要，以指導並引領人工生殖的研究和運用及發揮技術的正面效應。儒家生命倫理以“仁愛”、“以義制利”、“天人合一”及對人類的終極關懷作為生命科技發展的最高價值判斷標準，為現代人工生殖倫理觀的構建提供了深厚的文化底蘊和理論依據。儒家生命倫理觀不僅能為該技術的應用提供價值標準，而且最重要的是能引領世人以理性的態度，從人與人、人與社會以及人與自然之間三個方面和對人的終極關懷、對現代生命科技發展及其應用進行反思，從人類整體的利益去認識現代生命科技的弊端和危害，從而調整人類自身行為，限制自身欲望，實現人類可持續發展。因此，重新認識和發掘儒家生命倫理思想，從儒家生命倫理視野下構建人工生殖倫理觀有著深遠的社會意義。With the development and application of artificial reproductive technology, humans are able to “artificially reproduce.” However, a series of ethical problems and conflicts have arisen from the practice of artificial reproduction, suggesting that modern artificial reproductive technology serves as a kind of “double-edged sword” – it provides both benefit and harm to human beings. How to attend to the ethical conflicts arising from artificial reproduction, and more importantly, how to develop adequate contemporary ethics to provide guidance to society regarding artificial reproduction, are crucially important ethical tasks that must be addressed. This essay argues that Confucian ethical wisdom and principles should be drawn upon to develop a legitimate Chinese bioethics and a suitable Confucian ethical construction of artificial reproduction in contemporary Chinese society.Based on Confucian ethical wisdom and insights, this essay argues that a Confucian ethical construction of artificial reproduction should include the following principles to direct relevant policy formulation and guide human conduct. The Confucian principle regarding human life is that humans are the most noble of all sentient beings. Regarding the relation between morality and benefit, Confucianism advocates a harmonious association, in which benefit should be pursued under the constraint of morality. Regarding a suitable view of nature, Confucian wisdom emphasizes the unity of Heaven and human – the Dao of Heaven is, in the metaphysical sense, followed by both nature and humanity. Regarding lives and things in the world, Confucianism upholds the ideal of honoring life and caring for things to create an ordered world. Regarding life and death, the Confucian vision is that life should be happy and death should be peaceful. Regarding one’s social responsibility, the Confucian principle is that one must follow the call of righteousness (yi) and should never violate righteousness for one’s self-interest. This essay argues that these valuable intellectual and moral resources should be drawn upon in shaping a contemporary Confucian ethical construction of artificial reproduction.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 140 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

中國生命倫理學建構問題探論: 基於歷史與邏輯統一的視角

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.任何事物的邏輯體系的構建必須與這個事物的實際發展過程和人類對它的認識過程相統一，才可能是正確的和合理的。所以歷史與邏輯的統一是考察具有哲學特性的生命倫理學學科建構的重要認識視角和方法根據。換言之，中國生命倫理學的形成與發展本質上應該是歷史與邏輯的統一。由於特定歷史階段的中國社會現實思想和人文環境的原因，中國大陸的生命倫理學在其形成階段就存在先天的缺陷，而在其發展過程中又因為先天缺陷沒有得到矯正而導致自身邏輯演化過程的某些失常，在當代中國社會轉型和科學技術快速發展引發生命倫理問題層出不窮的現實面前，中國應當構建具有自身傳統文化基礎和形而上學、真正屬於中國自己的生命倫理學。中國生命倫理學的進步，要在與哲學、與醫學和與社會三方面的對話能力的提升中實現。The rational logic of a thing is inevitably a reconstruction of its actual developing process in light of human understanding. That is to say, it is reasonable to investigate the circumstances and characteristics of a subject of matter from the perspective of the unity of its history and logic. Bioethics, a popular discipline in contemporary society, is no exception. This essay examines the shaping and development process of Chinese bioethics in the last thirty years.Western bioethics was launched in the United States in the early 1970s. The development of Western bioethics reflects reasonable Western religious, moral, and social reactions to changing bioemedical realities in Western society. In other words, Western bioethics embodies a unity of history and logic in the West. However, this is not the case for Chinese bioethics. When Western bioethics was introduced to China in the late 1970s, it was adopted as a fashionable reaction to new biomedical technologies and their divorce from Western religion, culture, and ethics as a system of values. This was partly because there were political and ideological restrictions in China at that time, and partly because Chinese scholars lacked a comprehensive understanding of Western history and culture. Initially then, the Chinese had a very limited understanding of Western bioethics.This defect has not been effectively overcome through the development of Chinese bioethics in the past thirty years. First, Chinese scholars have continued to introduce and discuss issues addressed in Western bioethics, and yet have ignored the biomedical and health care challenges confronting China. In analyzing Chinese issues, they have tended to copy Western bioethical theories, doctrines, and principles (especially the famous four principles proposed by Beauchamp and Childress), and to apply to them as norms. It seems that they have forgotten that China has long-standing moral traditions that are still pertinent to people’s lives in general, and to bioethical issues in particular. Fortunately, increasing numbers of Chinese scholars have recognized that a legitimate Chinese bioethics requires a reasonable reconstruction of Chinese metaphysical and ethical conceptions for dealing with contemporary Chinese problems. This is the only way to build a Chinese bioethics in its true sense of the unity of history and logic.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 75 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

老齡化背景下長期照護的現實選擇: 基於儒家倫理觀的思考

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.中國邁入老齡化國家之後，失能老人的長期照護將會成為未來養老問題中的難點。失能老人作為病患的權利需要靠社會的福利制度來得以維繫，這在目前中國福利制度仍未十分健全的情況下是很難實現的。本文將通過對中國儒家倫理觀的思考，吸取其精華，探索老齡化背景下符合中國國情的長期照護發展之路。According to the standard set by the United Nations, if more than 10% of the population of a society is over 60 years old, then that society qualifies as an aging society. This means that China has been an aging society since 2000. Currently, China has one hundred and forty-nine million people over 60 years old, of which more than thirty million require long-term care to various degrees. 8% of elderly rural Chinese are unable to afford institutional long-term care, even if such institutional care is available. Obviously, China faces grave challenges in providing long-term care for its ever-increasing elderly population.Unfortunately, Chinese bioethics has failed to conduct careful research on these challenges to develop appropriate Chinese public policy on long-term care. This essay offers a Confucian ethical approach to the issue and proposes a series of policy recommendations framed in terms of Confucian ethical concerns. As is well known, Confucian ethics places great emphasis on the virtue of filial piety (xiao) on the part of children, who are expected to respect and take care of their elderly parents. It is the Confucian view that elderly people should, insofar as is possible, live at home, with the assistance of their children, and lead their elderly lives among their children and grandchildren. Living in an institution with other elderly people is not considered a normal, much less ideal, human living environment. This essay argues that this Confucian value should be preserved in contemporary Chinese society. This requires proper policy formulation and governmental contributions. First, in moral education, the Confucian virtue of filial piety and familial interdependence, rather than individual independence, should be promoted. Second, the government should provide financial incentives and awards to children who choose to stay home to take care of their elderly parents or grandparents. Finally, based on the Confucian virtue of beneficence (ren), the government should offer special assistance to families with seriously disabled elderly members. People should also be encouraged to organize volunteer groups to offer help to needy families. In short, the Confucian moral principle of reciprocity (“do not impose on others what you would not want others to do to you”) suggests that if we do not want to be abandoned by our children and by society when we become old, it is high time for us to act and set appropriate long-term policies.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 935 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

BIOETHICS IN CHINA

Historically, the preconditions for the emergence of bioethics in China. were political reforms and their applications. The Hanzhong Euthanasia Case and the publication of Qiu Ren-zong's academic work Bioethics played a significant role in the development of bioethics in China. Other contributory factors include the establishment of the Chinese Society of Medical Ethics/Chinese Medical Association (C.M.A), the publication of the Journal of Chinese Medical Ethics, and the teaching and education of bioethics in China. Major achievements of bioethics in China include the establishment of ethics committee and ethics review system, active international communication and cooperation among the academic circles, and the successful management of the 8th World Congress of Bioethics in Beijing in 2006. Chinese bioethics focus on native Chinese realities and conditions, absorb the international research achievements in relevant fields, and combine international ideas with traditional Chinese doctrines. Admittedly, there are still some aspects to be improved, yet bioethics has attracted a lot of attention from the core leadership in China and has gained sound financial support, which augers well for its further development. This article also briefly introduces the development of bioethics in Hong Kong and Taiwan, China.

The Development and Perspectives of Chinese Bioethics

Bioethics began to emerge in the late 1980s in China, which was borrowed and introduced from western countries. But the Chinese bioethics has a different model from western bioethics in its philosophical basis and culture environment which have been influenced by Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Academic researchers of bioethics, policy makers and the public have different opinions to the bioethical issues. Though sharing some similarities with those of western bioethics, the Chinese bioethics has certain different and urgent topics, such as health inequality in health care reform, physician-patient relationship, and different model of the informed consent.

The Rights Design and Institution Arrangement of Genetic Testing Technology: With Analysis on Legalization of Chinese Bioethics in Bioethics Globalization

AbstractConsidering from the viewpoint of legal practical reason, the essence of a serial of ethical and legal issues brought in by life sciences technology is, how legal practitioners apply their reason to the procedure of choosing justifiable actions. To put it in detail, it means on the basis of overall holding the structure of Chinese society benefits and deliberating the inertia of Chinese traditional ethics, how legal practitioners balance the benefits of every aspect and take proper actions, so as to fulfill a good interaction between life sciences technology and social norms system in China and then realize the terminal goodness of human beings finally benefit human beings and their living environment.Considering that life sciences technology is a new kind of sciences and technologies which can bring a ethical shocking, in order to solve the above problem, to fulfill a good interaction between life sciences technology and social norms system in China, it should be commenced with the following five points: (1) strengthen the independent R.N.D. capacity of biological industries; (2) unveil and cross-examine the hidden factors of ethics and value; (3) establish a new social ethics and value system; (4) legalize bioethics norms;(5) introduce a flexible ethics restriction institution.In order to expound and prove the aforesaid viewpoint, this paper taking genetic testing technology as the case, according to the trend of bioethics globalization, linking up with the statements and declarations of international organizations, it takes designing correlative person's rights of genetic testing technology and establishing a more systemic and comprehensive legal system as the entrance to argue bioethics legalization of genetic testing technology in Mainland China, and then tries to find out the main contradictions in bioethics field. Afterwards, taking reconciling the contradictions and solving the problems as the purpose, it tries to extract the pivotal issue of bioethics and manages to find out the ways of solving this problem.The reason for choosing genetic testing technology as the case to analyze is: as the frontier technology of the 21st century, genetic testing technology not only is guiding and common in sciences and technologies, but also can reflect the characteristics and scientific risks of life sciences technology comprehensively. Furthermore, it has already been market-oriented in China. The further development and application of this technology will give rise to the reinvigoration and rebirth of medical diagnosis and put forward the realization of individualized medical treatment. However, the current market-oriented of this technology is conflicted with the traditional ethics view of human beings and influenced the social stabilization terribly. Thereof, with the point of view on designing rights of the correlative person of genetic testing technology, this paper tries to construct a more systematic and comprehensive legal system, and then taking it as the clue to argue the present situation of bioethics in China.

Which Care? Whose Responsibility? And Why Family? A Confucian Account of Long-Term Care for the Elderly

Across the world, socio-economic forces are shifting the locus of long-term care from the family to institutional settings, producing significant moral, not just financial costs. This essay explores these costs and the distortions in the role of the family they involve. These reflections offer grounds for critically questioning the extent to which moral concerns regarding long-term care in Hong Kong and in mainland China are the same as those voiced in the United States, although family resemblances surely exist. Chinese moral values such as virtue and filial piety embedded in a Confucian moral and social context cannot be recast without distortion in terms of modern Western European notions. The essay concludes that the Confucian resources must be taken seriously in order to develop an authentic Chinese bioethics of long-term care and a defensible approach to long-term care policy for contemporary society in general and Chinese society in particular.

Chinese researchers promote biomedical regulations: what are the motives of the biopolitical dawn in China and where are they heading?

In the past five years, China has experienced increased efforts to regulate activities in biomedical research and practice. Background is provided on some of the key developments in Chinese bioethics especially in relation to genetics, stem cells, cloning, and reproductive medicine. This background sets the stage for a document entitled "Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research," proposed by the Bioethics Committee of the Southern China National Human Gene Research Center, Shanghai, which is reprinted in this volume of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal.

從中國生命倫理學到複製人類的道德問題——一個方法學上的省思

從中國生命倫理學到複製人類的道德問題——一個方法學上的省思

China: Moral Puzzles

This is the first of a set of three articles concerned with "bioethics on the Pacific Rim." The author, vice president of Beijing Medical University and vice chairman of the Beijing Academic Association for Morality, identifies population control, euthanasia, and the allocation of health care resources as bioethical issues of current interest in his country. Population policy in China is grounded in public welfare arguments. The idea of a right to choose one's death is found in Chinese philosophy, although Chinese legal experts believe that euthanasia is not compatible with present criminal, civil, or family law. Allocation of health resources remains a problem in China, even throughout the free medical service that serves a small portion, largely composed of government employees, of the country's population of 1.08 billion.The systematic study of modern medical ethics and bioethics in China began in the early 80s, although medical moral theory dates back to 475 B.C. In October l988 the 1st Chinese bioethics association was founded. The most popular topics for their symposia include: population control, euthanasia, and the allocation of health care resources. Birth control and population policy in China are both attempting to slow the 15 million annual increase in population. Family planning services are available for all married couples that seek it including sterilization and abortion. The current policy is that families should have only 1 child; ethnic minorities and rural residents are exempt. All policies on population control, abortion, and contraceptives are grounded in public welfare arguments. What they oppose is a long tradition in Chinese culture of large families. Euthanasia in China is an old topic with traditional wisdom stating that each person should have the right to chose their means of death. However for medical personnel it provides 2 dilemmas. 1st, the deontological position that doctors have a duty to both saving a patient's life and relieving pain. The doctor can not forsake one for the other. 2nd, the patient's personal benefits may conflict with the family's or society's overall benefits. Legal experts in China feel that euthanasia is incompatible with Chinese marriage law which prohibits the mistreatment or abandonment of family members. Allocation of medical resources is another issue because 800 million Chinese are not covered under the state's free medical care. Of those who are, there is limited capacity and the issue of who gets care is currently being debated.