  Some form of nonperturbative regularization is necessary if effective field
theory treatments of the NN interaction are to yield finite answers. We discuss
various regularization schemes used in the literature. Two of these methods
involve formally iterating the divergent interaction and then regularizing and
renormalizing the resultant amplitude. Either a (sharp or smooth) cutoff can be
introduced, or dimensional regularization can be applied. We show that these
two methods yield different results after renormalization. Furthermore, if a
cutoff is used, the NN phase shift data cannot be reproduced if the cutoff is
taken to infinity. We also argue that the assumptions which allow the use of
dimensional regularization in perturbative EFT calculations are violated in
this problem. Another possibility is to introduce a regulator into the
potential before iteration and then keep the cutoff parameter finite. We argue
that this does not lead to a systematically-improvable NN interaction.
