Cannibalism

[Pyrrho]

I think we tend to treat beings better when we don't consider them food.Banning Human meat helps keep people from killing other Humans to eat them.
...

I think this is as close to a moral reason to not eat dead people as you are likely to find.

(I state "moral reason" to distinguish it from the practical reasons mentioned before about diseases. Of course, the practical reasons are enough to stop smart people from doing it, at least most of the time, but it does not address the issue asked by the OP.)

Even so, this is what might be called a "practical moral reason," and not a reason to object to cannibalism per se. Certainly, it is a good reason to make it illegal, because however much it might seem otherwise at times, the law needs to be concerned with practicalities. If it were acceptable to be eating people, then people would be murdered in order to be eaten, and eating them would, in fact, help hide the evidence that the person had been murdered. So cannibalism is something that is good to have prohibited, even if it isn't wrong in itself.

Of course, there might be specific instances of it being wrong, without it necessarily being always wrong, as suggested by robvalue's post above (#7). After all, if the body is the possession of someone else (e.g., next of kin? the medical school to which it is donated?), then you don't have a right to do anything with it, which would include not having the right to eat it. That would be wrong in the same way it would be wrong for me to eat your food at your picnic to which I was not invited. It is yours, not mine, and so I have no right to it.

[Aisha]

It is probably the idea of eating your gran for dinner that holds people back. :p

[Whateverist]

I tend to eat younger girls.

[vorlon13]

Brett Favre I'd wait for the lab work to come back, Howie Long I'd nibble with alacrity.

[Mudhammam]

The reason I asked is because at the end of Book I in The Histories, Herodotus writes: "...The Greeks say it is the Scythians that do this, but it is not the Scythians that do so but the Massagetae... There is no definite limit to life other than this: when a man grows very old, all his relatives come together and kill him, and sheep and goats along with him, and stew all the meat together and have a banquet of it. That is regarded as the happiest lot; any man who dies of disease they do not eat but bury him in the ground, lamenting that he did not come to be eaten..."

Granted, it appears murder was a part of their custom, but let's just pretend it wasn't or that Herodotus is simply speaking about euthanasia. Now, we can't argue that it's not smart because of disease because they bury those and besides, if you cook meat thoroughly enough don't you pretty much get rid of anything that could be alive? I mean, it couldn't be different from the "sheep and goats" minus perhaps the tenderness...

So when I read this I was repulsed. But when I couldn't actually think of why I thought the Massagetae were wrong, I began thinking...



Or leg in this case.

[Pyrrho]

... Now, we can't argue that it's not smart because of disease because they bury those and besides, if you cook meat thoroughly enough don't you pretty much get rid of anything that could be alive? ...

CJD (Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease) and similar diseases are caused by prions. Prions are proteins, not life forms. You cannot destroy them from even using routine surgical sterilization processes. In other words, ordinary extreme heat is not enough. So, cooking it thoroughly isn't going to matter at all for this. If you get it, it will kill you unless you die from something else first. If you die from this, after you are dead, if they do an autopsy on you, your brain will look a bit like a sponge, with lots of holes. You do not want this, and to avoid it, you should avoid eating anyone infected with this. There is no preparation of the dead body that will make it safe to eat.

If someone has this, in the early stages, there are no symptoms, so you ordinarily will not know if someone is infected or not, if they die of something else first.

You can do an online search for these things to verify everything I have stated in this post.

Now, none of this is a moral reason to not eat people. This is a practical one.

I would recommend avoiding eating other primates as well. Basically, the more something is like you, the more likely it is that you might get some nasty disease from it. Vegans are probably the safest as far as contracting diseases from food is concerned, though since even vegetables are sometimes contaminated with animal products, there are no guarantees of safety.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

You should only eat another human being if you wish to possess his or her power. This is a time-honoured tradition with a long and glorious history.

If you eat people for any other reason, you're a sick fuck. Unless you're really hungry. Or the soufflé is taking too long. Or you want Thomas Harris to write a book about you.

Boru

[bennyboy]

Cannibalism's a slippery slope. It could lead to people eating animals. Yech!

[Mudhammam]

So, since it boils down to practical judgement and not any great violation of an important, sensible, and humanistic code of ethic, would you go befriend a cannibal? Go over his house for dinner? Double date? Or is the stigma against such a person and/or the act, assuming no one gets hurt, still justified on some ground?

[vorlon13]

BTW, nice thread to have during the lead up to Hannibal coming back on TV.