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Lab-Grown Long Pig?
The latest episode of The Remnant features Jonah Goldberg answering questions from listeners, including one about Jonah’s views on veganism and animal rights. In the answer to that question, they talk about lab-grown meat. As an aside, they note that scientists are close to growing lab-grown human meat.
Say wha..? Now, I haven’t investigated this at all, but the science of it is utterly irrelevant to what I’m about to ask: How would you react to lab-grown human meat produced for human consumption?
Would you try it?
Would you consider eating it to be cannibalism?
If so, is it the kind of cannibalism that is morally abhorrent? Or, is it an okay kind of cannibalism because no humans were killed?
In all honesty, I have no idea what my own answers to these questions are. This is a problem that I’ve never thought about before. But I figured it would make a great Ricochet discussion topic.
Published in General
This will sound like a flippant remark, but this really is a case of ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. Of course it’s morally wrong, and of course it is cannibalism. Like cannibalism, it’s only acceptable in rare, emergency situations.
Cannibalism isn’t just wrong because of concerns about murder, or health. It’s wrong because it disrespects the human creature, which is created in God’s image.
“Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked?”
– Ecclesiastes 7:13
“I not only think we will tamper with Mother Nature. I think Mother wants us to.”
– Willard Gaylin
I think this idea is abhorrent, not just because of the cannibalism, but because of the really truly great opportunity that is being missed.
If you can grow meats in a petri dish then why not organs? what a great break though would it be to grow replacement kidneys, livers, and hearts! No more waiting for motorcyclists to be careless on a dark lane…
Forget feeding people, have an endless supply of spare parts…
I think the people who founded this company:
https://www.soylent.com/
Havent seen the end of that movie?
I was in the same place. Spare parts with zero rejection rates, without an anti-rejection drug regime. @ejhill mentioned muscle tissue for traumatic injuries, but also new skin for burn victims, new eyes for trauma induced blindness, etc.
Thinking about eating human flesh, or even vat-grown beef, is silly when you have those kinds of opportunities in front of you.
No, I just think that’s their idea of wit.
I’m not really sure that’s the way I’d try to sell the future.
“Enjoy our tubs of flavorless nutrient-rich goo!”
I can do both.
Also, per the terms of the post, there’s very little discussion to be had there, I should think.
I guess there’s the ever-present “if you put your DNA on file for potential new organs can it be hacked/used against your will”.
See Larry Niven’s short story, Assimilating Our Culture, That’s What They’re Doing.
The original post (and Jonah’s comments that inspired it) is missing quite a bit of context.
If lab-grown meat ever becomes a reality, it will only be as a side use of technology which was primarily designed to grow human organs artificially.
Aside from a very small number of academic researchers with too much time and grant money on their hands, nobody at the moment would bother with trying to grow artificial meat when there is such a cheap and plentiful source already available. Meanwhile, thousands of researchers are already trying to develop organs de novo in the lab (as opposed to growing human organs in carrier mammals). The most successful advances so far have been with artificial skin.
So the real topic of this post should actually be: will you buy that couch made of lab-grown human leather?
Per earlier comments, how does it match up on price?
Nah, probably not. I’m not a huge fan of leather.
It does remind me of a bit of dialogue from a book I read where the main characters are trying to gather information:
“What’s the problem?”
“The scroll is made of human skin.”
“That’s disgusting!”
“It’s not that, it’s just that human skin doesn’t hold ink very well.”
One word: Kuru
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)
Some more science (?):
http://www.medicaldaily.com/side-effects-eating-human-flesh-cannibalism-increases-risk-prion-disease-and-417622
Ditto. If you expected people to take your question seriously, you should pose it to a bunch of liberals on Facebook. I bet you would get a lot of takers.
Most likely not, although it would depend to some extent on a) how clean the facilities are, and b) what tissues are being generated. a) If the facilities were as clean as those currently used to harvest human cell cultures (for the pharmaceutical industry), the human meat would probably be much safer from an infectious disease perspective than current animal meat. b) The pathogens which are dangerous in cannibalism are very tissue-type specific; and very few are muscle-specific (and indeed, many are completely harmless without a complete human body available).
However, when it comes to traditional cannibalism, FJ/JG’s point is spot on.
Most likely a non-issue. Prion diseases (like kuru) are typically acquired from a brain which is already afflicted. If we were creating humans brains from scratch for consumption (mmm…..brains), by definition the chain of communicability would be broken.
Prions are somewhat strange, though, so this wouldn’t guarantee safety. However, prion diseases are also known to be highly dependent on genetics, and we have a pretty good understanding of which genetic signatures are less susceptible. If we had the techonology to create human brains in the factory to eat (mmm…..brains), we would also certainly be able to genetically manipulate their DNA before synthesizing those delicious, savory brains.
Again: big issue for natural cannibalism, probably not so much for synthetic cannibalism.
Fun side story:
It is absolutely true that most pathogens (especially viruses) are very species-specific. This is indeed a huge reason why cannibalism is more dangerous than eating the meat of other animals, even fairly closely related ones – and probably why most other species also seem hard-wired to avoid it.
However, the issue also pops up even without cannibalism simply by bringing large numbers of animals from the same species together at a density and homogeneity not found in nature. In other words, livestock.
It’s believed that most of the dangerous human viruses that we have known for millenia (smallpox, measles, many others) did not emerge as threats until we started herding/corralling animals. The theory is that bringing so many animals so unnaturally close together formed a perfect breeding ground for otherwise rare animal viruses to reproduce and spread very rapidly among livestock. Once a critical mass of that animal virus was reached, the natural tendency of viruses to mutate + random chance + huge number of viral particles = a new variant that was infectious in humans. Add in the fact that animal husbandry was also accompanied by higher densities of humans than in previous eras, and the conditions were ripe for new types of pathogens to emerge.
This exact phenomenon can still be observed today with the influenza virus and its passage (and genetic mutations) from migratory water fowl to chicken farms to other farm animals and, eventually, to humans.
Yeah. That is also being worked on. It’s not an either/or thing.
I hasten to add that there would be no shortage in human organs if we had a free market in them. However that’s a discussion for a whole other thread
You mean like Planned Parenthood?
Just when you think the SJW’s have won and will finally be appeased, someone orders dark meat.
No. Organs harvested from aborted fetuses aren’t used in transplantation. That is not at all what I was talking about.
Maybe the free market in organs like they have in China? Criminals killed to order for body parts if there is a tissue match. Kind of like picking the fish you want for your dinner fillet from the koi pond at some Chinese restaurants. (Adds a whole new meaning to the saying “smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.”)
Seawriter
Organleggers everywhere
The expression “it cost me an arm and a leg” will take on a whole new meaning.
Back to the OP, it seems unlikely that this will ever be an issue. Most people have an instinctive “ick” reaction, and thinking about it leads to religious and other ethical objections. Given that inherently it’s not going to taste particularly good, and that the steps taken to make it taste better could be applied to any lab grown meat, I suspect that this will be one of those rare instances where we don’t do something just “because we could.”
That has nothing to do with a free market in organs.
Why? There is no moral reason to not consume animals for food. Any claim of morality is just another way of stating human beings and animals are equivalent. You know, a rat is a pig, is a cow, is a child.
FIFY
What else are they selling? It’s not like they are selling chuck roasts. They are selling organs, not organ meat. It is certainly a free exchange between buyer and seller. Kind of like goods at an asset forfeiture sale.
Seawriter
Seawriter
Right. That’s not what they do in China.
There are Catholic religious orders, such as the Carthusians and Cistercians (including Trappists), who are vegetarian or pescatarian (sometimes eat fish). And in Oriental (like Coptic) and Orthodox Christianity, vegetarianism among monks and nuns is reputedly common.
Vegetarianism can be a form of asceticism (why many Christians temporarily practice it during Lent, for example), but can also be about showing kindness to creatures, without considering those creatures our equals. Or living a “simpler”, “humbler” life by eating lower down on the food chain.
Still not an argument that disputes the point that treating animals and humans as the same thing creates a moral equivalency between the two.