Latest news with #HumanGenomeProject
Daily Mirror
2 days ago
- Science
- Daily Mirror
‘Super humans' fears as scientists aim to create first human genome in a lab
Synthetic Human Genome (SynHG) project sparks fears that rogue scientists could create enhanced 'super humans' in decades to come British scientists are launching a controversial project to create the first synthetic human DNA in a lab. While they insist there is no intention to create a full synthetic human, researchers from universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Kent, Manchester and Imperial College London aim to write the first human genome from scratch. Some fear that opening this area of research could lead to rogue scientists seeking to create enhanced 'super humans' in decades to come. The Synthetic Human Genome (SynHG) project is being led by the Wellcome Trust, the world's largest medical research charity, and aims to boost health and treat incurable diseases. Michael Dunn, research director at Wellcome said: 'Our DNA determines who we are and how our bodies work and with recent technological advances the SynHG project is at the forefront of one of the most exciting areas of scientific research. Through creating the necessary tools and methods to synthesise a human genome we will answer questions about our health and disease that we cannot even anticipate yet, in turn transforming our understanding of life and wellbeing.' A leading genetic scientist has warned that creating human genetic material could lead to enhanced humans or even creatures that have human DNA. Prof Bill Earnshaw, of Edinburgh University, told the BBC: "The genie is out of the bottle. We could have a set of restrictions now, but if an organisation who has access to appropriate machinery decided to start synthesising anything, I don't think we could stop them. If we manage to create synthetic body parts or even synthetic people, then who owns them. And who owns the data from these creations?" How will it work? The human genome is the genetic information that makes us physically who we are. It is made up of DNA which is contained in every cell in our body and carries the genetic information it needs to do its job. Between 1990 and 2003 an international team of scientists took part in the Human Genome Project (HGP) to identify all human genes and sequence the three billion DNA base pairs. Now this information means scientists could take our understanding on another giant leap by not just reading DNA - but creating it. The team behind it insist the work of the SynHG (Synthetic Human Genome) project will be confined to test tubes and petri dishes and there will be no attempt to create synthetic life. They will first build blocks of DNA to create a whole human chromosome which decide how our cells develop and repair themselves. By experimenting on these chromosomes scientists could learn why some DNA reacts a certain way and how to modify it. This could help tackle inherited diseases which occur when genes go wrong. Prof Matthew Hurles, director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "Building DNA from scratch allows us to test out how DNA really works and test out new theories, because currently we can only really do that by tweaking DNA in DNA that already exists in living systems". The team hope to first create a fully synthetic human chromosome, which makes up approximately 2% of our total DNA. Professor Jason Chin, of Oxford University, will lead the SynHG project. He said: 'The ability to synthesize large genomes, including genomes for human cells, may transform our understanding of genome biology and profoundly alter the horizons of biotechnology and medicine. With SynHG we are building the tools to make large genome synthesis a reality, and at the same time we are pro-actively engaging in the social, ethical, economic and policy questions that may arise as the tools and technologies advance.' The Wellcome Trust cautions that building a complete synthetic human genome to help change and treat human health could take decades. Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, of the Francis Crick Institute, said the project could create 'synthetic cells that can be grown in a lab'. He added: 'If these were to ever be used in humans, it would be important to design them carefully so that they can't lead to tumours or produce novel infectious particles. I would urge incorporating a genetic 'kill switch' to eliminate them from any location in the body or at least to make them easy for the immune system to find and destroy. There is no suggestion to make synthetic humans. We have no idea how to do this and it is likely to be very unsafe.' Such research has been taboo until now because of concerns it could lead to designer babies or unforeseen changes for future generations. Sarah Norcross, Director of the Progress Educational Trust (PET), said: 'We must recognise that this sort of work is not without controversy, and that is vital for researchers and the public to be in communication with one another. The public must have a clear understanding of what this research entails, while researchers and funders must have a thorough understanding of where the public wants to go with this science.' Dr Tom Collins, research lead at Wellcome, told the BBC: "We asked ourselves what was the cost of inaction. This technology is going to be developed one day, so by doing it now we are at least trying to do it in as responsible a way as possible and to confront the ethical and moral questions in an upfront way as possible".
Indian Express
2 days ago
- Health
- Indian Express
Can we build human DNA from scratch? UK scientists say they've started working on it
In a quiet lab in the UK, a bold scientific experiment is taking its first steps: one that could fundamentally change how we treat disease, how we understand life, and how we define what it means to be human. With the backing of the world's largest medical charity, researchers are now working to build parts of human DNA molecule by molecule. For supporters, it's a moment of historic promise — a leap forward in the fight against incurable illnesses. For critics, it opens the door to dangerous ethical terrain, including the spectre of designer humans and synthetic life. The project is backed by a £10 million initial grant from the Wellcome Trust, as per BBC. The initiative — called the Synthetic Human Genome Project — aims to construct human DNA from the ground up, marking what scientists believe to be a world first. Dr Julian Sale of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, a lead researcher on the project, described it to BBC News as the next giant leap in biology. He said: 'The sky is the limit… We are looking at therapies that will improve people's lives as they age… to generate disease-resistant cells that can repopulate damaged organs, like the heart, liver, and immune system.' The project builds on the Human Genome Project, completed 25 years ago, which enabled scientists to read human DNA like a barcode. The new goal goes further: not just to read, but to build sections of DNA — and eventually entire chromosomes — from scratch. By assembling artificial chromosomes in the lab, scientists hope to explore how genes govern repair, development, and illness. The team believes this could help unlock new treatments for genetic disorders and age-related diseases. But the project has raised serious ethical concerns. 'We like to think that all scientists are there to do good, but the science can be repurposed to do harm and for warfare,' said Dr Pat Thomas, director of advocacy group Beyond GM, warning against potential misuse by rogue actors. Professor Bill Earnshaw, a genetics expert at Edinburgh University, echoed the fears: 'The genie is out of the bottle. We could have a set of restrictions now, but if an organisation with access to the right machinery decided to synthesise anything, I don't think we could stop them.' To ensure ethical checks, a dedicated social science programme will run in parallel, led by Professor Joy Zhang at the University of Kent. The initiative will seek input from sociologists, ethicists, and the public. Zhang said: 'We want to understand how people relate to the technology, how it can be beneficial, and what concerns or hopes they might have.' Wellcome's head of research programmes, Dr Tom Collins, acknowledged the risks but defended the organisation's decision to fund the work. Speaking to BBC, Collins said: 'We asked ourselves what was the cost of inaction… This technology is going to be developed one day, so by doing it now we are at least trying to do it in as responsible a way as possible and confront the ethical and moral questions upfront.' (With inputs from BBC)
Saudi Gazette
2 days ago
- Health
- Saudi Gazette
Work begins to create artificial human DNA from scratch
LONDON — Work has begun on a controversial project to create the building blocks of human life from scratch, in what is believed to be a world first. The research has been taboo until now because of concerns it could lead to designer babies or unforeseen changes for future generations. But now the world's largest medical charity, the Wellcome Trust, has given an initial £10m to start the project and says it has the potential to do more good than harm by accelerating treatments for many incurable diseases. Dr Julian Sale, of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, who is part of the project, told BBC News the research was the next giant leap in biology. "The sky is the limit. We are looking at therapies that will improve people's lives as they age, that will lead to healthier aging with less disease as they get older. "We are looking to use this approach to generate disease-resistant cells we can use to repopulate damaged organs, for example in the liver and the heart, even the immune system," he said. But critics fear the research opens the way for unscrupulous researchers seeking to create enhanced or modified humans. Dr Pat Thomas, director of the campaign group Beyond GM, said: "We like to think that all scientists are there to do good, but the science can be repurposed to do harm and for warfare". Details of the project were given to BBC News on the 25th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project, which mapped the molecules in human DNA and was also largely funded by Wellcome. Every cell in our body contains a molecule called DNA which carries the genetic information it needs. DNA is built from just four much smaller blocks referred to as A, G, C and T, which are repeated over and over again in various combinations. Amazingly it contains all the genetic information that physically makes us who we are. The Human Genome Project enabled scientists to read all human genes like a bar code. The new work that is getting under way, called the Synthetic Human Genome Project, potentially takes this a giant leap forward – it will allow researchers not just to read a molecule of DNA, but to create parts of it – maybe one day all of it — molecule by molecule from scratch. The scientists' first aim is to develop ways of building ever larger blocks of human DNA, up to the point when they have synthetically constructed a human chromosome. These contain the genes that govern our development, repair and maintenance. These can then be studied and experimented on to learn more about how genes and DNA regulate our bodies. Many diseases occur when these genes go wrong so the studies could lead to better treatments, according to Prof Matthew Hurles, director of the Wellcome Sanger Insititute which sequenced the largest proportion of the Human Genome. "Building DNA from scratch allows us to test out how DNA really works and test out new theories, because currently we can only really do that by tweaking DNA in DNA that already exists in living systems". The project's work will be confined to test tubes and dishes and there will be no attempt to create synthetic life. But the technology will give researchers unprecedented control over human living systems. And although the project is hunting for medical benefits, there is nothing to stop unscrupulous scientists misusing the technology. They could, for example, attempt to create biological weapons, enhanced humans or even creatures that have human DNA, according to Prof Bill Earnshaw, a highly respected genetic scientist at Edinburgh University who designed a method for creating artificial human chromosomes. "The genie is out of the bottle," he told BBC News. "We could have a set of restrictions now, but if an organisation who has access to appropriate machinery decided to start synthesising anything, I don't think we could stop them" Ms Thomas is concerned about how the technology will be commercialised by healthcare companies developing treatments emerging from the research. "If we manage to create synthetic body parts or even synthetic people, then who owns them. And who owns the data from these creations? " Given the potential misuse of the technology, the question for Wellcome is why they chose to fund it. The decision was not made lightly, according to Dr Tom Collins, who gave the funding go-ahead. "We asked ourselves what was the cost of inaction," he told BBC News. "This technology is going to be developed one day, so by doing it now we are at least trying to do it in as responsible a way as possible and to confront the ethical and moral questions in an upfront way as possible". A dedicated social science program will run in tandem with the project's scientific development and will be led by Prof Joy Zhang, a sociologist, at the University of Kent. "We want to get the views of experts, social scientists and especially the public about how they relate to the technology and how it can be beneficial to them and, importantly, what questions and concerns they have," she said. — BBC
Vox
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Vox
This veteran health official watched Americans lose trust in science. How do we get it back?
is the host and senior producer of Unexplainable , Vox's science podcast about everything we don't know. He co-created the show and also composes the music. 'We often had to change recommendations because we learned more about the virus, and people began to wonder, do these guys know what they're talking about?' Former NIH director Francis Collins on people losing trust in science. Sarah Silbiger/POOL/AFP via Getty Images Francis Collins has overseen some of the most revolutionary science of the last few decades. He led the Human Genome Project that sequenced the entire human genome by 2003, and then in 2009, he became director of the National Institutes of Health, where he served under three presidents and led the agency's research on a Covid-19 vaccine. But nothing in his years leading biomedical research for the US government could have prepared him for the disruption at NIH over the past few months. Over 1,000 employees at the NIH were suddenly fired at the beginning of April. (Those firings are still being challenged in the courts, but as of now, the employees remain out of work.) Trump administration officials have barred researchers from studying certain topics like vaccine hesitancy or the health effects of wildfires. 'I had experienced transitions before, and those were bumpy sometimes,' Collins told me in a recent interview. 'But I didn't expect science to be under this kind of full-bore attack, which is really what happened almost immediately after inauguration day.' In the past few months, Collins saw scientists placed under communications gag orders, restrained from speaking freely even when no media were present. 'You were effectively muzzled,' he says. Collins, who had stepped down as NIH director in 2021 and had taken over a lab studying diabetes, soon felt he could no longer do his job as a scientist should. He started to worry he might be pushed out. 'So I pulled my folks together in a conference room. They didn't know what was coming. And I told them, 'By tomorrow night, I'm no longer gonna be here.' And we all cried. I never thought it would end this way. My wife came to pick me up on that last Friday, and I just walked out of the building and got in the car and said, 'I guess this is it. That's how it ends?'' Just four years ago, Collins was President Donald Trump's NIH director. Now, in Trump's second term, he's resigning under pressure. How did we get from a world where the NIH was universally recognized as a jewel of scientific research to a world where the government is essentially tearing it down from the inside? I spoke to Collins on Vox's Unexplainable podcast about how so many Americans lost trust in science and how we might be able to get it back. Our interview has been edited for clarity and length. I'm constantly hearing that Americans have lost trust in science. Is that fair to say? I think it's totally fair. You can look at all the surveys about trust. Americans have lost trust in almost every institution. But I think it was more than that. I think Covid did a lot of harm to people's trust in science because, first of all, it was a huge, disastrous experience for the world. There were days where thousands of Americans were dying. As one of those people who was communicating with the public about what we knew about the virus and what they might do to protect themselves, we were doing the best we could with the information we had, but the information was incomplete. So we often had to change recommendations over time because we learned more about the virus and about the pandemic, and people began to wonder, do these guys know what they're talking about? So suddenly this has become such a target for an attack: whether science is something that's good for our country or not. Your most recent book, The Road to Wisdom, is all about trust. If you were telling the story of the loss of trust and everything going on in the science agencies today, how far back would you start? It depends on the particular demographic you're talking about. I'm a person of faith, and certainly people of faith have tended to be among the most skeptical of science, and that goes back 150 years or more — the sense that maybe science is trying to do damage to our Christian faith. That was there certainly well before Covid. But what group was most resistant to accepting the vaccines? It was white evangelical Christians. I'm a white evangelical Christian, so those are my people, but it broke my heart to see how that happened. And I think Covid did something, took what had been a tendency for science to be political and turned it into a really big deal. If you were a Democrat, you're much more likely to get vaccinated than if you were a Republican. Does that make sense? Not in the slightest, but that's how it was. When it's becoming clear that more than 50 million Americans aren't getting the vaccine, one of the most remarkable scientific achievements in human history, did that tell you anything about the pursuit of science and how it works? It certainly woke me up to the fact that we apparently had not done a very good job in explaining to people that when science is tackling some really hard problems and occasionally gets the wrong answer, it's going to get self-corrected because science is about truth. Science is not just a bunch of people who are coming up with answers that they like. These are answers that aren't gonna be sustainable unless they're actually true. And maybe here's also where I began to realize That's another problem that society has that I was unaware of in terms of its severity: the importance of truth, the fact that there is such a thing as objective truth. Not everybody shared that: 'That might be true for you, but it's not true for me.' I would hear people say that about things that were established facts, and that's a road to destruction of a society if it becomes widespread. Unfortunately, it seems to be doing so right now. It seems like you believed that all you had to do was develop the vaccine, get to the thing that worked, and then people would take it? Then there's this whole other piece of convincing people that you and the scientific community at large didn't do. Yep. I was naive about science communication and how it works. And I was, without knowing to call it this, an adherent to the knowledge deficit model. What does that mean? That means that if you're trying to communicate science to get somebody to make a decision, it's because they're missing knowledge, and you're gonna provide that. You're gonna fill their deficit, and then everything will be fine. You just tell them: Here's a fact. And now they believe the fact? I'm an expert, here's the fact, and then they'll make the right decision. But no, it doesn't work that way, especially when there's already skepticism and distrust. You're seen as an elitist who maybe has an ax to grind or something you're trying to put over on them, and you may even do more harm than good by going after somebody's misunderstandings head-on. They're just gonna dig their heels in more thoroughly. I guess what I've learned is we need to do a lot more listening and really understand where people are coming from, and also be prepared to tell stories instead of going down the road with statistics. But that's challenging: For a scientist, that sounds like an anecdote and I would never get away with that in the seminar room. But this is not the seminar room, people. We need to actually find better ways to help people understand what we do. You were in charge of the NIH during Covid. You were often the one communicating to the public. Are there things that you would do differently if you could do it over again? I wish every time that myself or anybody who was putting forward a public health message would have started off saying, 'Look, this is an evolving situation. We still don't know answers to a lot of things we need to know about this pandemic. So what I'm gonna tell you today is the data we've got, but we might have to change that later when we get more information.' We almost never said that. The other thing is our one-size-fits-all approach just didn't feel like it made any sense to the public. People in rural communities, who were far away from the carnage that was happening in New York City or Washington, DC, as the virus was running wild, were left wondering: 'Why do I have to close my business? I haven't even seen any cases here yet.' I think we lost a lot of people in states that didn't necessarily have heavy academic research centers, who couldn't quite imagine how they should believe us because we didn't seem like we understood what life was like on a small farm in Nebraska. During Covid, my number one goal was to save lives. I'm a physician. I took the Hippocratic Oath. I assumed there were other people worrying about the economic effects of this and the effects on children's learning when they were kept out of school. It didn't feel like that was my thing. My thing was to try to keep people from dying. But it became clear to me that that may have been something I was a little bit wearing blinders about. Maybe those other factors about economic harms and harms to children's learning should have been a bit more front and center to the conversations that I was part of. So I understand looking back on it and saying, 'Okay, it would've been more accurate to communicate the level of uncertainty.' To say to people, 'This is evolving. We don't know.' Do you think that would've led to a different outcome? I don't know. I wish we could do the experiment, and maybe we could figure out a way to do it in some controlled space. But I would say 20 percent of the problem was the less-than-perfect communication of the science, and 80 percent of it was the deluge of misinformation and disinformation that contaminated the conversation to the point where a lot of people stopped listening to the actual facts. There didn't seem to be any penalty for stating something that's absolutely false, though, and I haven't heard anybody apologize for that. When I think about your willingness to have difficult conversations, to accept responsibility for mistakes, it seems like this is something that most people are not doing. I've heard you mention maybe we could have something like a truth and reconciliation commission. Or a pandemic amnesty on a larger level, where people could really be open about their mistakes. Do you think that could have any effect? You know, I proposed the idea of amnesty at an event and the audience blew up. They were not there. People are too angry. On both sides? On both sides. They're feeling too hurt, too much harm has been done to them. So amnesty, I don't think we're there. Truth and reconciliation, people were okay with that. Because they can imagine that other people are gonna have to ask for forgiveness for what they did. But right now, we're so dug in. I hope that this truth and reconciliation option is out there right now. It doesn't quite feel like people are ready to go there. It seems to me like what we need is more people embracing uncertainty, more people talking about their mistakes. Whether it's people with their friends who they disagree with, or whether it's the highest scientists in our scientific agencies. How do we get there? We're a long way from there. When you're in this circumstance where there seems to be a real pitch battle between the various tribes, it makes it hard for anybody to say, 'I might be wrong.' The fact that I've been willing to say that has resulted in a lot of attacks, even from people who I thought were my friends. They said, 'Oh no, you can't show weakness like that.' Well, yeah, we really do need to do that, but we need to all do it and not just expect a few people who are then gonna get whacked for it. It's hard right now, and you don't see a lot of that in our country. If I were a young scientist and I wasn't sure whether I should stay in the field, what would you say to me? I would say you're at a really paradoxical time because this is the most incredibly exciting moment for biomedical research. So many things are becoming possible that I would not have dreamed would happen in my lifetime. We're on this exponential curve of gathering insights. So if that's your dream to be part of, don't give it up. Now, the paradox is right at the moment, there's a lot of negative things happening in the United States that seem to be threats. But the case here is so compelling that I don't believe those facts can be suppressed for very long. You can already look at polls in which the American public says, 'I don't think they should be harming medical research.' That's right there. Seventy-seven percent of Americans raise that point in one poll.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Federal R&D funding boosts productivity for the whole economy − making big cuts to such government spending unwise
Large cuts to government-funded research and development can endanger American innovation – and the vital productivity gains it supports. The Trump administration has already canceled at least US$1.8 billion in research grants previously awarded by the National Institutes of Health, which supports biomedical and health research. Its preliminary budget request for the 2026 fiscal year proposed slashing federal funding for scientific and health research, cutting the NIH budget by another $18 billion – nearly a 40% reduction. The National Science Foundation, which funds much of the basic scientific research conducted at universities, would see its budget slashed by $5 billion – cutting it by more than half. Research and development spending might strike you as an unnecessary expense for the government. Perhaps you see it as something universities or private companies should instead be paying for themselves. But as research I've conducted shows, if the government were to abandon its long-standing practice of investing in R&D, it would significantly slow the pace of U.S. innovation and economic growth. I'm an economist at Texas A&M University. For the past five years, I've been studying the long-term economic benefits of government-funded R&D with Karel Mertens, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. We have found that government R&D spending on everything from the Apollo space program to the Human Genome Project has fueled innovation. We also found that federal R&D spending has played a significant role in boosting U.S. productivity and spurring economic growth over the past 75 years. Productivity rises when economic growth is caused by technological progress and know-how, rather than workers putting in more hours or employers using more equipment and machinery. Economists believe that higher productivity fuels economic growth and raises living standards over the long run. U.S. productivity growth fell by half, from an average of roughly 2% a year in the 1950s and 1960s to about 1%, starting in the early 1970s. This deceleration eerily coincides with a big decline in government R&D spending, which peaked at over 1.8% of gross domestic product in the mid-1960s. Government R&D spending has declined since then and has fallen by half – to below 0.9% of GDP – today. Government R&D spending encompasses all innovative work the government directly pays for, regardless of who does it. Private companies and universities conduct a lot of this work, as do national labs and federal agencies, like the NIH. Correlation is not causation. But in a Dallas Fed working paper released in November 2024, my co-author and I identified a strong causal link between government R&D spending and U.S. productivity growth. We estimated that government R&D spending consistently accounted for more than 20% of all U.S. productivity growth since World War II. And a decline in that spending after the 1960s can account for nearly one-fourth of the deceleration in productivity since then. These significant productivity gains came from R&D investments by federal agencies that are not focused on national defense. Examples include the NIH's support for biomedical research, the Department of Energy's funding for physics and energy research, and NASA's spending on aeronautics and space exploration technologies. Not all productivity growth is driven by government R&D. Economists think public investment in physical infrastructure, such as construction of the interstate highway system starting in the Eisenhower administration, also spurred productivity growth. And U.S. productivity growth briefly accelerated during the information technology boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which we do not attribute to government R&D investment. We have found that government R&D investment is more effective than private R&D spending at driving productivity, likely because the private sector tends to spend much more on the development side of R&D, while the public sector tends to emphasize research. Economists believe the private sector will naturally underinvest in more fundamental research because it is harder to patent and profit from this work. We think our higher estimated returns on nondefense R&D reflect greater productivity benefits from fundamental research, which generates more widely shared knowledge, than from private sector spending on development. Like the private sector, the Department of Defense spends much more on development – of weapons and military technology – than on fundamental research. We found only inconclusive evidence on the returns on military R&D. R&D work funded by the Defense Department also tends to initially be classified and kept secret from geopolitical rivals, such as the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. As a result, gains for the whole economy from that source of innovation could take longer to materialize than the 15-year time frame we have studied. The high returns on nondefense R&D that we estimated suggest that Congress has historically underinvested in these areas. For instance, the productivity gains from nondefense R&D are at least 10 times higher than those from government investments in highways, bridges and other kinds of physical infrastructure. The government has also invested far more in physical infrastructure than R&D over the past 75 years. Increasing R&D investment would take advantage of these higher returns and gradually reduce them because of diminishing marginal returns to additional investment. So why is the government not spending substantially more on R&D? One argument sometimes heard against federal R&D spending is that it displaces, or 'crowds out,' R&D spending the private sector would otherwise undertake. For instance, the administration's budget request proposed reducing or eliminating NASA space technology programs it deemed 'better suited to private sector research and development.' But my colleague and I have found that government spending on R&D complements private investment. An additional dollar of government nondefense R&D spending causes the private sector to increase its R&D spending by an additional 20 cents. So we expect budget cuts to the NIH, NSF and NASA to actually reduce R&D spending by companies, which is also bad for economic growth. Federal R&D spending is also often on the chopping block whenever Congress focuses on deficit reduction. In part, that likely reflects the gradual nature of the economic benefits from government-funded R&D, which are at odds with the country's four-year electoral cycles. Similarly, the benefits from NIH spending on biomedical research are usually less visible than government spending on Medicare or Medicaid, which are health insurance programs for those 65 years and older and those with low incomes or disabilities. But Medicare or Medicaid help Americans buy prescription drugs and medical devices that were invented with the help of NIH-funded research. Even if the benefits of government R&D are slow to materialize or are harder to see than those from other government programs, our research suggests that the U.S. economy will be less innovative and productive – and Americans will be worse off for it – if Congress agrees to deep cuts to science and research funding. The views expressed in the Dallas Fed working paper are the views of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System. Andrew Fieldhouse does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
