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D EAR HONOURABLE MEMBERS. I do not believe you can appreciate how good it is to write to you. I have agonized over the issue of - well, is it really an issue? Far from it! It is a rat’s nest of issues: human life, definitions, expertise, rights, abortion, women, embryos - help! I struggled on with the demon, this foul issue. I confess to you that I was still persuaded that it is the foul issues ( I thought, for instance, of slavery in the past of the U.S.A.) with which the fiercely divided people most need help from their leaders. I believed that a leader ( MPs like yourselves, for instance) was a person who would spy the way out of the bog that we are in ( and what a great bog this is!) and then, with the rhetorical art that marks the politician, convince the people to follow - thus: ... Leading the people ... Out of the bog. Brilliant! But I came to see tha... Forgive me: why am I reporting to you my conclusions? I should just return to the actual events of my tale, so you can see everything for yourselves with much more clarity and delight, for is this not the journey you have already made? Am I ( wrestling with these important questions) not doing all you have already done? Will it not be pleasant to run quickly over your steps and see all that you have accomplished, survey all the questions you have laboured so greatly to answer? A s you recall from my last report, I had had the scales torn from my eyes regarding the vehement opposition to Motion 312. Now I understood: it was prompted by fear that any committee of MPs meeting to hear “what medical (or scientific?) evidence exists to demonstrate that a child is or is not a human being before the moment of complete birth ” would very likely finish with an answer that would support restricting abortions, even though opponents of the Motion said that “The biological or medical status of the fetus is irrelevant ” to the question of abortion. ( Why hate the Motion if it would lend no such support?) The fear is that listening to scientists ( i.e., those in the modern world who are equipped to say what kind of thing it is that resides in the womb and how we should refer to it: a sac of cells? an individual human being?) would quite likely lead in the direction of: human being not gestational sac ( thus backing us into the laws against harming human beings, raising the spectre of criminalization, etc.) . That looked to be the exact case against the motion. How interesting it was, then, that both those like M r. VALEUR-DE-BOIS ( people ready to count the Resident of the Womb a human being) and those who opposed his motion were inclined to think the evidence called for by Motion 312 might very well lead you, dear Members, to a common conclusion! It now struck me that, in my own efforts to fathom all of this, it was worth making a U-turn back to my earlier question: is it clear in Science what a human being is ? I was given more prompting to do so by the following. I s a person who says, “There will never be a consensus on what the fetus is , because this question is inherently subjective and unscientific,” in agreement with the person who says, Fetuses are biologically human in the sense that they are composed of human tissue and DNA ”? But it was one and the same person who said both! There is a mystery here, I thought, that I wished to unravel. I was reading the words of M s. J. HARTOOR ( a name that had been passed to me by my friend Prema) and, desiring to understand how this author could say both things, I read on. “Despite the potential that a fetus has for becoming a human being , and its similarities to a human being , we cannot say that a fetus is a human being ,” but all the same, she wrote, “Fetuses are biologically human ’.” ( I do not, she added, “secretly think a fetus is really a creature from outer space ....) ‘Human’, then, is a quality; ‘human being,’ an entity. “A flake of dandruff from my head is human , but it is not a human being , and in this sense , neither is a zygote .” In other words, we can identify scientifically what is from a human being , but we cannot tell whether a fetus IS a human being. I wondered, is there any bit of organic matter on the planet thought to be more baffling than this?! Why is it that only the fetus seems to exist in this fog of oblivion? And then I had a clue, in M s. HARTOOR s conclusion! Because there can be no consensus on the matter , the value accorded to a fetus is a subjective , personal matter . Individuals , not society as a whole , must choose what the s tat u s of a fetus should be .” Is it that Science is unsure of what the fetus is, or is it, rather, that society is unsure of its value ? “Society ,” she said, “cannot decide what the fetus is . There s a wide divergence of opinion on whether a fetus is a person , or a human being , and what its moral value should be .” Well that’s different! It’s really quite a bit clearer now, I thought! The mystery was not the nature of the fetus at all; it was the value & s tat u s of the fetus! The nature of the fetus is likely quite clear, which is why people think the evidence will show it. The “wide divergence ” is about the value of the fetus, and thus its s tat u s and personhood ( those who value it bestow on it the status of a person ; those who do not, do not). But people on both sides in this debate were not being clear about this. They were blurring nature & value and treating them as the same thing, as if both were uncertain. Sometimes the people doing the blurring were the same people who tell us ( and quite emphatically) that “The task of properly classifying a fetus in law and in science are different pursuits ,” and that “the status of a fetus should be based on personal beliefs , morality , and circumstances ,” not on science: science is irrelevant to the question ” of when a fetus becomes a person: that matter is a legal and philosophical one , not a medical one .” Are we not all agreed that blurring these issues is most unhelpful ! Let us, then, endeavour to say what we mean and mean what we say! Plainly, this bore further scrutiny. I returned to my question ( was there consensus in science or dissensus , as to the point at which we begin?) almost accidentally, for I found myself one afternoon in a used bookstore - one of those dust-filled dens clogged with thousands of cheap paperbacks and obsolete manuals ( but in which the occasional gem can be found) . I came across a set of textbooks on human reproduction and I decided to track down that sentence, in each, that explained what ensues at conception, for surely such a sentence would be found. But oddly, in these texts no mention at all was made of what conception conceives: The moment at which sperm and egg combine is the moment of conception or fertilization -the beginning of embryonic life .” ( Virginia E. Johnson, William H. Masters, & Robert C. Kolodny, Human Sexuality, 3rd ed., 1988, 109.) Life has begun, but whose life? The embryo’s. – Fertilization ... initiates the growth of the new human being .” ( Gary F. Kelly, Sexuality Today: The Human Perspective, 1998, 280.) It was so easy to say, ‘intiates a new human being,’ but this text did not; fertilization initiates “growth .” Once freed from the ovary , the ovum can survive for about 24 hours . If it is fertilized during that time , a pregnancy may ensue .” ( Gordon Edlin and Eric Golanty, Human Sexuality: The Basics, 2012, 56, 59.) What ensues is a pregnancy ,” which is a condition of the woman - not a new individual, as the embryology texts had said. But these were not embryology texts; they were texts in the field of Sexology. Was this a scientific challenge to the Embryologists? Did these books show that there was not a consensus within Science? If you are like me, since we were kids we have always believed that science ought to be changed by scientists for scientific reasons, the pivot of our conviction being that fifth-grade class on Galileo: if the Church didn’t like the science, tough for the Church. That is modern thought. I therefore asked, What was the scientific evidence, gathered by the Sexologists, that proved the Embryologists wrong to call the fetus a human being ( or showed them to be advancing merely one of many uncertain theories) ? I began to hunt for this. But it occurred to me one day that Sexology is at the front line of the application of science. It is a blended study of sexual biology, behaviour, and therapy - some of whose concerns are very clear in the title of this text: Human Sexuality: Making Responsible Decisions. These were textbooks developed to train the people whose job it was to help pregnant women N o. 4 5 JUNE 2012 } } The D I S S E N T I N G F U T I L I T A R I A N { { LE T T E R S T O M E M B E R S O F P A R L I A M E N T F R O M A C I T I Z E N O N T H E S U B J E C T O F T H E P R O P O S E D I N V E S T I G AT I O N I N T O O U R H U M A N I T Y W h a t c a n w e k n o w ? W h a t b r a i n s h a v e w e g o t? W h a t c a n w e s k i p ? W h a t m u s t w e n o t ? ! B The Honourable .................... , M.P. House of Commons Ottawa 3
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Dissenting Futilitarian no. 4

Mar 25, 2016

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Issue 4 of an epistolary newspaper addressed to Canada's Members of Parliament
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Page 1: Dissenting Futilitarian no. 4

D EAR HONOURABLE MEMBERS.

I do not believe you can

appreciate how good it is to write to you.

I have agonized over the issue of - well, is

it really an issue? Far from it! It is a rat’s

nest of issues: human life, definitions,

expertise, rights, abortion, women,

embryos - help! I struggled on with

the demon, this foul issue.

I confess to you that I was still

persuaded that it is the foul issues

(I thought, for instance, of slavery in

the past of the U.S.A.) with which the

fiercely divided people most need help

from their leaders. I believed that a

l ea d e r (MPs like yourselves, for instance)

was a person who would spy the way out of

the bog that we are in (and what a great bog

this is!) and then, with the rhetorical art

that marks the politician, convince the people

to follow - thus: ... Leading the people ... Out

of the bog. Brilliant! But I came to see tha...

Forgive me: why am I reporting to you my

conclusions? I should just return to the actual

events of my tale, so you can see everything

for yourselves with much more clarity and

delight, for is this not the journey you have

already made? Am I (wrestling with these

important questions) not doing all you have

already done? Will it not be pleasant to run

quickly over your steps and see all that you

have accomplished, survey all the questions

you have laboured so greatly to answer?

As you recall from my last report,

I had had the scales torn from

my eyes regarding the vehement opposition

to Motion 312. Now I understood: it was

prompted by fear that any committee of

MPs meeting to hear “what medical (or scientific?)

evidence exists to demonstrate that a child is or is not a

human being before the moment of complete birth” would

very likely finish with an answer that would

support restricting abortions, even though

opponents of the Motion said that “The biological

or medical status of the fetus is irrelevant” to the

question of abortion. (Why hate the Motion

if it would lend no such support?) The fear

is that listening to scientists (i.e., those

in the modern world who are equipped to say

what kind of thing it is that resides in

the womb and how we should refer to it: a sac

of cells? an individual human being?) would

quite likely lead in the direction of: human

being not gestational sac (thus backing us

into the laws against harming human beings,

raising the spectre of criminalization, etc.).

That looked to be the exact case against

the motion.

How interesting it was, then, that both

those like Mr. VALEUR-DE-BOIS (people

ready to count the Resident of the Womb a

human being) and those who opposed his

motion were inclined to think the evidence

called for by Motion 312 might very well lead

you, dear Members, to a common conclusion!

It now struck me that, in my own efforts

to fathom all of this, it was worth making

a U-turn back to my earlier question: is it

clear in Science what a human being

is? I was given more prompting to do so by

the following.

Is a person who says, “There will never be a

consensus on what the fetus is, because this question is

inherently subjectiv e and unscientif ic,”

in agreement with the person who says,

“Fetuses are b i o lo g i ca l ly ‘h u ma n ’ in the sense

that they are composed of human tissue and DNA”? But it

was one and the same person who said both!

There is a mystery here, I thought, that I

wished to unravel.

I was reading the words of Ms. J. HARTO OR

(a name that had been passed to me by my

friend Prema) and, desiring to understand

how this author could say both things, I read

on. “Despite the potential that a fetus has for becoming a

human being, and its similarities to a human being, we cannot

say that a fetus i s a human being,” but all the same,

she wrote, “Fetuses are biologically ‘human’.” (I do

not, she added, “secretly think a fetus is really a

creature from outer space....”) ‘Human’, then, is a

quality; ‘human being,’ an entity. “A flake of

dandruff from my head is human, but it is not a human being,

and in this sense, neither is a zygote.”

In other words, we can identify scientifically

what is f r o m a h u ma n b e i n g , but we

cannot tell whether a fetus IS a human being.

I wondered, is there any bit of organic matter

on the planet thought to be more baffling

than this?! Why is it that only the fetus seems

to exist in this fog of oblivion? And then I

had a clue, in Ms. HARTO OR ’s conclusion!

“Because there can be no consensus on the matter, the

va l u e ac c o r d e d to a f et u s is a subjective,

personal matter. Individuals, not society as a whole, must

choose what the stat u s of a fetus should be.” Is it

that Science is unsure of what the fetus is, or

is it, rather, that s o c i ety is unsure of i ts

va l u e ? “Society,” she said, “cannot decide what the

fetus is. There’s a wide divergence of opinion on whether

a fetus is a p e r s o n , or a human being, and what its

m o r a l va l u e should be.”

Well that’s different! It’s really quite a bit

clearer now, I thought! The mystery was

not the nat u r e of the fetus at all; it was

the va l u e & stat u s of the fetus! The

nat u r e of the fetus is likely quite clear,

which is why people think the evidence

will show it. The “wide divergence” is about the

va l u e of the fetus, and thus its stat u s

and p e r s o n h o o d (those who va lu e i t

bestow on it the stat u s of a p e r s on ; those

who do not, do not).

But people on both sides in this debate were

not being clear about this. They were blurring

nat u r e & va l u e and treating them as

the same thing, as if both were uncertain.

Sometimes the people doing the blurring

were the same people who tell us (and quite

emphatically) that “The task of properly classifying

a fetus in law and in science are different pursuits,” and

that “the status of a fetus should be based on personal

beliefs, morality, and circumstances,” not on science:

“science is irrelevant to the question” of when a

fetus becomes a person: “that matter

is a legal and philosophical one, not a medical

one.” Are we not all agreed that

blurring these issues is most

unhelpful ! Let us, then, endeavour

to say what we mean and mean what

we say! Plainly, this bore further

scrutiny.

I returned to my question (was

there consensus in science

or dissensus , as to the point at which we

begin?) almost accidentally, for I found

myself one afternoon in a used bookstore -

one of those dust-filled dens clogged with

thousands of cheap paperbacks and obsolete

manuals (but in which the occasional gem can

be found). I came across a set of textbooks on

human reproduction and I decided to track

down that sentence, in each, that explained

what ensues at conception, for surely such a

sentence would be found. But oddly, in these

texts no mention at all was made of what

conception conceives:

“The moment at which sperm and egg combine is the moment

of conception or fertilization -– the beginning of embryonic

life.” (Virginia E. Johnson, William H. Masters, & Robert

C. Kolodny, Human Sexuality, 3rd ed., 1988, 109.) Life

has begun, but whose life? The embryo’s. –

“Fertilization ... initiates the growth of the new human

being.” (Gary F. Kelly, Sexuality Today: The Human

Perspective, 1998, 280.) It was so easy to say,

‘intiates a new human being,’ but this text

did not; fertilization initiates “growth.”

“Once freed from the ovary, the ovum can survive for about

24 hours. If it is fertilized during that time, a pregnancy

may ensue.” (Gordon Edlin and Eric Golanty, Human

Sexuality: The Basics, 2012, 56, 59.) What ensues is

“a pregnancy,” which is a condition of the woman

- not a new individual, as the embryology

texts had said.

But these were not embryology texts; they

were texts in the field of Sexology. Was this

a scientific challenge to the Embryologists?

Did these books show that there was not

a consensus within Science? If you are

like me, since we were kids we have always

believed that science ought to be changed

by scientists for scientific reasons, the pivot

of our conviction being that fifth-grade

class on Galileo: if the Church didn’t like the

science, tough for the Church. That is modern

thought. I therefore asked, What was

the scientific evidence, gathered by the

Sexologists, that proved the Embryologists

wrong to call the fetus a human being (or

showed them to be advancing merely one of

many uncertain theories)?

I began to hunt for this. But it occurred

to me one day that Sexology is at the

front line of the application of science. It is a

blended study of sexual biology, behaviour,

and therapy - some of whose concerns are very

clear in the title of this text: Human Sexuality:

Making Responsible Decisions. These were

textbooks developed to train the people

whose job it was to help pregnant women

No.

4 5 JUNE

2012}}

The DISSEN TING FU TILITARIAN {{

L ET T E R S TO M EMB E R S O F PA R L I A M E N T F R OM A C I T I Z E N O N T H E S U B J E CT O F T H E P R O P O S E D I N V E ST I G AT I O N I N TO O U R H U M A N I T Y

W h a t c a n w e k n o w ? W h a t b r a i n s h a v e w e g o t ? W h a t c a n w e s k i p ? W h a t m u s t w e n o t ? !

B

The Honourable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , M.P.House of CommonsOttawa

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Page 2: Dissenting Futilitarian no. 4

and one-celled consumers of supermarket

goods. But then people began to ask, in two

beats: “Do we want to treat these women as

killers? Is that embryo human?” And so a Fog

of Mystery filled the womb.

I could indeed see that it would make

life easier if the CHOICE blazoned on

the protest signs I had witnessed were the

choice between, on the one hand, bringing a

pregnancy to term and, on the other, a health

procedure involving the removal of what

is not human . That is a choice between

innocence and innocence. But did people

really have cause to believe they did not

know? (And yet, still, as per our laws: if you

don’t know, and believe there might be a

human being residing there - in that womb,

in that derelict building - can you simply

proceed to destroy and demolish?)

Did people really have cause to believe they

did not know? That was one question. But I

began to wonder about something else: did

people really believe, themselves, that the

nat u r e of the fetus was a mystery?

I did some looking. Faye Wattleton

(another head of U.S. Planned Parent-

hood) said that, “we have deluded ourselves into

believing that people don’t know that abortion is killing.”

To pretend that it is not sends a signal of

“ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a

fetus.” American activist Merle Hoffman

writes, “We must be able to speak the truth to ourselves

by answering the question, ‘Is it a woman’s r i g ht to

c h o os e or is it k i l l i n g ?’ by saying yes –to both

- and taking full responsibility for that profound and

powerful truth.... It’s c h o os i n g v i ct i m s ... – you

choose, and that’s the power of that.”

Writer Camille Paglia declares herself

“a firm supporter” of abortion rights, but notes:

“I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder,

the extermination of the powerless by the powerful.

Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the

ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which

results in the a n n i h i lat i o n o f c o n c r et e

i n d iv i d ua l s and not just c l u m ps o f i n s e n -

sat e t i s s u e .”

Ms. Paglia does not find the logic of

abortion altogether beautiful: “I have never

understood the standard Democratic combo of support for

abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely

it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve

execution? –The pro-life position, whether or not it is based

on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved

than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on

demand.” But, warts and all, that logic is hers. It

is Hoffman ’s too: “It’s not just blood and tissue;

you leave it alone, in nine months you will have a child....

You have to accept the fact, ‘Yes, I am t e r m i nat i n g

p ot e nt ia l l i f e : t h i s i s my c h o i c e ’

- and that is an enormously powerful thing.... Within the

abortion decision women c h o os e t h e r e s u lts

o f t h e i r s ex ua l ity .... The act of abortion and

choice is p ow e r . It is women at their most powerful,

exercising the right of fetal existence....”

As unsettling as these statements sounded,

I also thought, how strangely refreshing

when compared to the denial and dithering

and blurring of distinctions I had so often

encountered in recent months. At least this is

consistent. No fear of Science here!

And yet, I was beginning to see there was a

position in this debate that was far different

from anything I had yet encountered. What

more was there to discover? You shall see

soon, as my letters come to an end.

I am, etc.

1 1 D i s s e nt i n g f ut i l ita r i a n . b lo g s p ot.ca

(including the panicked women who ask,

‘What am I going to do?!’) to make responsible

decisions. And they were published in times

when a abortion services were available

and b people often preferred to respond

to you according to ‘your morality’ not theirs.

I thought about this. What would I have

done, were I a clinic worker who: 1 did not

especially va l u e the fetus (and said, like

Ms. HARTO OR , that “life is cheap” - which

is to say, not usually so hard to replace),

2 did not like challenging someone else’s

moral outlook (which I understood to be as

circumstantial & culture-bound as mine), and

3 was faced with a young woman who was

pregnant, and very sad about the fact? I

would find my job a lot easier if I said nothing

about what she was pregnant with and just

talked about what she wished to do with

‘her pregnancy’. To such a person as me, that

would indeed seem the easiest way to help her.

Have you noticed something? People do have

other interests in sex than babies, and if your

field is to counsel those people it may seem a

lot easier to do that if you just don ’t have

a view on what the fetus is. So that becomes

a good reason for texts like these to narrate

the steps from zygote to embryo to fetus,

etc., instead of naming what is created. As to

what that was , the answer of these texts

seemed to be, Let it alone!

At the same time, it was also clear that this

had no bearing whatsoever on any “point in

the development of man’s knowledge.”

Did people really begin to ask, “Are

the Embryologists right?” The

answer was, I could find no evidence of

that, no scientific arguments launched against

them, no charges of scientific error. Rather,

training manuals for doctors, clinicians,

et al. (that is, the people who sit face-to-

face acreoss a desk with the young women

in desperation) simply decided to describe

pregnancy differently. They chose to

approach the fetus from the angle of

va l u e , so as to leave open

to these women whatever

options matched their own

valuations; they left the

business of valuation to the

patients & clients. As Ms.

HARTO OR explained, “an

unhappily pregnant woman may view

her fetus with utter dismay, bordering

on revulsion. She cannot bring

herself to refer to it as anything

other than ‘it,’ much less a human

being.” It could be that to set

embryological knowledge aside may be an

easier approach to care of this woman, but it

has no implication whatever for the status of

that knowledge as knowledge .

Turn, on the other hand, to those whose

job it is to study what conception creates

and you find the Biologists speaking quite

differently. As the text Human Embryology

explains, “it is the penetration of the ovum by a

spermatozoon and resultant mingling of the nuclear material

each brings to the union that –marks the i n it i at i o n o f

t h e l i f e o f a n ew i n d iv i d ua l .” (3rd ed.,

1968, 43) How interesting it was to find that

Dr. A. Guttmacher , a physician who later

became president of the Planned Parenthood

Federation of America (a leading provider of

abortion services) had written:

“We of today know that man is born of sexual union; that

h e sta rts l i f e as a n e m b ryo within the

body of the female; and that the embryo is formed from

the fusion of two single cells, the ovum and the sperm.

This all seems s o s i m p l e a n d ev i d e nt

to u s that it is difficult to picture a time when it

was not part of the c o m m o n k n ow l e d g e .”

(Life in the Making: The Story of Human Procreation, 1933, 3)

It is notable, don’t you think, that Dr.

Guttmacher did not change his tune

later, when he ran Planned Parenthood?

A book on which he served as consultant

states that “all organisms, however large and complex

they may be when full grown, begin life as but a single

cell. This is true of the h u ma n b e i n g , ... who

b eg i n s l i f e as a f e rt i l i z e d ov u m .”

(The Human Reproductive System, 1969, 88) That used

to go down smoothly, ringing not a single

alarm bell; up until the 1960s you could even

spell out what was just said -– that there is

such a thing as a single-celled human

being -– without triggering gasps of outrage.

But to speak like that once abortion is being

practiced is to say that abortion kills a human

being: and that the pregnant women not

ready to have children and the doctors ready

to help them are killing helpless people. And

so people began not to say this, and to phrase

that line on conception differently.

But I could discover nothing that had happened

to remove the idea of a single-celled

human being from the established fund of

common knowledge , once it had landed

there - except the question of the va l u e

of the fetus, a question that is not relevant– to

Science. As we are told all the time, the

s c i e nt i f i c q u e st i o n and the m o r a l

q u e st i o n (concerning status , person-

hood , worth) are two different questions.

You can’t dent scientific knowledge by

claimingthat a fetus has no inherent stat u s .

When a person understands that they do not

want a thing, they are not suddenly baffled

as to what that thing is, are they?!

Such exhausting work this was, to sort this

out! But, with a little labour I managed it,

and you too have done it, I am sure.

It suddenly dawned on me that I had

at last answered my second question,

which was, Is science agreed as to the

point at which human

beings exist? I found no

“divergence” among scientists

except for P r act i t ion e r s

moved by the question

of value , which is not a

scientific question, and

offers no cause for abandon-

ing the established science.

But then it also struck me

that I had also answer-

ed my first question as

well! It was, Why,

by 1973, was the consensus we once had

about “The difficult question of when life begins” lost?

Was any Knowledge lost by then? What was

lost was the will to apply the Knowledge

that we still possessed, concerning when

a human being is formed. So we are not

really describing any collapse of consensus in

knowledge at all.

What reason did people have, by that date,

to say they “did not know when life begins,

which is now a difficult question”? It is not a

difficult question scientifically ; it is a

difficult question morally , because to apply

the standard answer of science - a human

being begins at conception - is to imply that

pregnant women not ready to be mothers

are killing their children. But there was a

j u st i c e issue here (as Ms. HARTO OR

and Mr. VALEUR-DE-BOIS have both

acknowledged) that made people reluctant to

say that. Science had said that there were one-

celled human beings -– not one-celled voters,

to be sure, but indeed one-celled bus riders

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