Richard Dawkins claims we should eat lab-grown human meat

[Jackalope]

In all fairness, "lab-grown human meat" wouldn't be human meat.

Wouldn't it sell better if we just called it longpig?

[The Grand Nudger]

In fairness, he couched it in the context of consequentialist morality vs what he called "yuck" absolutism, not any fetish of his.  That is kind of interesting, particular in the case of folks who are all like "yay lab grown meat!". You know the whole genies making a wish come horribly true thing. Lab grown meat, wish granted..but it's human meat..now how awesome is it? We got some indication of how that changed things when people immediately started imagining all of the dire side effects of cannibalism that don't exist.

The thread title is wildly misleading, lol.

[Jackalope]

In fairness, he couched it in the context of consequentialist morality vs what he called "yuck" absolutism, not any fetish of his.  That is kind of interesting, particular in the case of folks who are all like "yay lab grown meat!".  Yoyu know the whole genies making a wish come horribly true thing.  Lab grown meat, wish granted..but it's human meat..now how awesome is it?  

The thread title is wildly misleading, lol.

Clearly you have taken my reply far, far more seriously than what was intended.

How dare you, sir!

[The Grand Nudger]

Can't get lazy when a creature named catholoo enters a discussion about eating people. Best to take the fucker dead serious.

[Jackalope]

Also if you think I read any more than the thread title, well, that's your mistake I suppose.

[emjay]

Yeah it's kuru.  It's the only known consequence of cannibalism on record..it was limited to a small group of people who had..wait for it...kuru...and even though they stopped eating people with kuru a ways back..they keep getting kuru.  Leading researchers to posit that kuru may have an abnormally long incubation period..or there may be more ways to get kuru from a person with kuru (or from wherever the hell they're getting kuru now).

The bloodism thing was a joke.  There is no such effect of cannibalism, lol.

There's no known inbuilt safeguard to cannibalism, either, not in that sense anyway. More interestingly, why would you think it would make sense that there would be?

Thanks for the info Don't worry, I didn't understand what you were saying anyway... just thought you were having a dig at the vagueness of my comment about the disease... so I guess I got a bit defensive.

Anyway, it's just speculation and not well thought out... not based on anything in particular just that it would make sense to me from an evolutionary point of view (maybe... as I said, not well thought out) that eating one's own kind wouldn't be good for the species... and given the curious fact that all meat tastes different... which implies to me that they each have their own sort of chemical signature, it didn't seem much of a leap to think animals could have an aversion to certain signatures. But as I said this just a rough thought, and it could be a load of bollocks, but it's not exactly important to me... just a rough and throwaway thought.

[Catholic_Lady]

...Yeah I was about to say the same. Eating human meat can do some weird shit to your blood and be dangerous. You figure a biologist would know that. Let's keep cannibalism taboo please.

Tell me again about transubstantiation.

Ok. What would you like to know about it?

[The Grand Nudger]

Thanks for the info Don't worry, I didn't understand what you were saying anyway... just thought you were having a dig at the vagueness of my comment about the disease... so I guess I got a bit defensive.

LOL, not yours, no, lol.  

Anyway, it's just speculation and not well thought out... not based on anything in particular just that it would make sense to me from an evolutionary point of view (maybe... as I said, not well thought out) that eating one's own kind wouldn't be good for the species... and given the curious fact that all meat tastes different... which implies to me that they each have their own sort of chemical signature, it didn't seem much of a leap to think animals could have an aversion to certain signatures. But as I said this just a rough thought, and it could be a load of bollocks, but it's not exactly important to me... just a rough and throwaway thought.

Well that's why I think it's interesting.  It's a rough throwaway thought that seems to make sense.  Cannibalism is part of the mating ritual of some species.  It's the fuckers who get eaten that have all the bay-bees.  The idea that a species might have an aversion to a specific taste is well thought out, though, well developed.  We do.  We're naturally averse to bitterness because bitterness indicates toxin.   

However, what does "human-ness" indicate..what are we supposed to be averse to.

[emjay]

Thanks for the info Don't worry, I didn't understand what you were saying anyway... just thought you were having a dig at the vagueness of my comment about the disease... so I guess I got a bit defensive.

LOL, not yours, no, lol.  

Anyway, it's just speculation and not well thought out... not based on anything in particular just that it would make sense to me from an evolutionary point of view (maybe... as I said, not well thought out) that eating one's own kind wouldn't be good for the species... and given the curious fact that all meat tastes different... which implies to me that they each have their own sort of chemical signature, it didn't seem much of a leap to think animals could have an aversion to certain signatures. But as I said this just a rough thought, and it could be a load of bollocks, but it's not exactly important to me... just a rough and throwaway thought.

Well that's why I think it's interesting.  It's a rough throwaway thought that seems to make sense.  Cannibalism is part of the mating ritual of some species.  It's the fuckers who get eaten that have all the bay-bees.  The idea that a species might have an aversion to a specific taste is well thought out, though, well developed.  We do.  We're naturally averse to bitterness because bitterness indicates toxin.   

However, what does "human-ness" indicate..what are we supposed to be averse to.

Fair point... there are some species that engage in cannibalism... Praying Mantis' and maybe some types of spiders come to mind... but for them, though I've not got the slightest clue why they do that, it seems to be part of their lifecycle... not just individually but as a group... ie their reproductive goals are met... so in the balance of the whatever counts as their 'society'/collective, especially where there are many males to one female or whatever (ie like a hive, where some are expendible in service to the queen), it just doesn't seem to be detrimental at all to their success as a species. In other words it just seems that that's a finely balanced part of their ecosystem. But in the human case it would not be like that... not part of our nature but rather a deviation from it, and thus something that could upset that equivalent balance. If that makes sense? You're making me think more than I was planning to in this thread... I was just dipping in the middle of watching a programme

[paulpablo]

I personally would rather keep the taboo and...you know, not eat dead people.

Not only that, but as I understood it from various documentaries I've seen in the past, cannibalism also causes some sort of disease characterised by shaking... so it looks like it's not just a cultural taboo but also a biological one.

I think the circumstances are a million miles apart, reading about kuru it was tribes eating rotting corpses and having the maggots from the corpse as a side dish and focused a lot on eating brain parts.
This is eating meat from stem cells grown in a lab which has no brain and probably free of any disease anyway.

I do wonder how any meat would taste when it's made in a lab. I always wanted to taste bear meat, but I heard the reason why bear meat can be tasty is because they sometimes eat lots of blueberries.  If the meat is grown in a lab the meat you're eating isn't from an animal that had a diet. I also wonder if it would save on all the land usage and greenhouse gases which farm animals generate.