Was the Uppsala team right to conclude that their study fell outside the jurisdiction of the Philippines’ health research regulatory framework? Some people seem to think so. In a letter of support to the researchers, an attorney with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts — the Philippines group that supported the study — affirmed that the nature of the Uppsala project was “exclusively cultural” and fell under NCAA’s jurisdiction, rather than that of the National Ethics Committee or the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples. Hank Greely, a professor of law at Stanford University who specializes in biosciences, including bioethics, said that the study published in PNAS didn’t appear to be health related and suggested it’s reasonable to argue that health research guidelines shouldn’t apply in this case, although that wouldn’t mean that no ethical standards should apply.