  We discuss the confining and chiral-symmetry breaking properties of QCD with
a large number of flavors $N_f$. In a Monte Carlo simulation of QCD with $N_f
=16$ staggered fermions, we find clear evidence of a first order bulk phase
transition which separates phases with broken and unbroken chiral symmetry.
This is consistent with extrapolations of earlier studies with smaller $N_f$,
and is also as expected from general arguments. Thus, even when the
perturbative renormalization group flow has a new infrared stable fixed point
near the origin, lattice artifacts induce chiral symmetry breaking, and
presumably confinement, at sufficiently strong coupling.
