Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Let's take this a step farther.
Would you eat human meat that was grown in a lab, if you could know for certain that the cells that were used to form the cultures were harvested from a consenting adult that was duly compensated? What if that person not only had consented, but wanted to be eaten, because they had a vore fetish, and enjoyed the thought of people eating pieces of them?
No, but the reason for it is one of safety, not morality:
Every bacteria, virus, fungus or other germ that can contaminate that lab and that meat is already adapted to hurt me, there is no species barrier. Nature generally abhors cannibalism because of this.
Now if you grow it in a lab, that might not be too much of a risk, but once you enter capitalist industrial production there are numerous incentives to cut corners and increase the risk of contamination.
Contamination also exists in factory farming, but at least there, there's a species barrier and the impact of that cannot be overstated.
Alternatively, you'll create a swamp of human meat factory farms that use huge amounts of antiviral, antifungal and antibiotic agents and just get soooooo much more effective in training multi-resistant germs, already adapted to human tissue.
Typically the major threats from canniblism are bacteria, viruses, fungus, parasites and prions. The bacteria, viruses, fungus and parasites shouldn't exist under properly maintained lab conditions. But prions are just misfolded proteins. They happen rarely and typically they are quarantined in the cell they were produced in. A number of things have to go very, very wrong for them to get out into your body from your own cells. However, eating and digesting cells can let out the prions they contain. Once they get out they'll start triggering other proteins to misfold but only if the right materials are present and if the prion came from human tissue you can be sure they are.
The human immune system is incredible, it has impressive countermeasures for almost anything you could think of. Heck it'll even attack solid objects that get stuck inside you. If you get shot by a bullet and don't get it removed (not recommended) your body will layer by layer eat that bullet. Slowly dissolving it and passing it into your blood so your kidneys can filter it and you can piss out that bullet over the course of decades. (Though having a bunch more metal in your blood causes its own problems). Your body has a response to just about everything including cancer which to get anywhere has to have some mutations to deceive your immune system.
Your body has no answer to prions whatsoever. Your body puts up no fight. If you are infected by a prion disease you are going to die. There is no vaccine, no cure, no treatment.
Once symptoms appear you'll have at most a few years if your very lucky but more likely a few months. Most prion diseases attack the brain. (side note; don't eat the brains of any animal regardless of circumstances)
Will perfectly sterile lab conditions eliminate prions as a concern? No If anything it might be possible that growing the meat artificially might result in more misfolded proteins. I'd still happily eat lab-grown animal meat. But lab-grown human meat? No thank you