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I wonder if there will ever be a legalized market for synthetic human meat.
by Andrex 2y ago
I wonder if there will ever be a legalized market for synthetic human meat.
- owenpalmer 2y agoMeat for eating? Hopefully not. Meat for organ and tissue replacement? Hopefully so.
- Hammershaft 2y agoWhy hopefully not? As long as it's safe I don't see any ethical grounds for criminalization. Lab grown meats might open the door to all kinds of chimeric meats flavors we can't even dream of right now, all without animal suffering, deforestation, or the ingestion of bioaccumulated toxins.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoIt would be a little unsettling to run across somebody who was successfully creating foods which resembled meat who had chosen "resembles human" as the direction that they'd like to pursue.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoIf there's a demand (or it can be induced), it's called "entrepreneurship".
- ben_w 2y agoOnly when everyone else isn't so disgusted by the idea that they dismiss it out of hand. I could give four examples that are already available synthetically but not acceptable to payment processors due to widespread disgust, but I suspect it's unwise to knowingly suggest here things that trigger most people's disgust reflexes.
- iwontberude 2y agoHey I stick to organic payment processors, like maple syrup. Decent inflation, can be prone to blight or other natural disaster but none of that synthetic stuff.
- ben_w 2y agoGreat, but I have yet to meet a landlord which accepts maple syrup as rent for the space in which to put a commercial food-grade bioreactor lab.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoGo deep enough into the woods on some remote place on Earth, and I bet you'll find them. Bring your own electricity though, they likely don't have any.
- ben_w 2y ago"If you go down in the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise." etc.?
- TeMPOraL 2y agoMore like "find some local village leader from a society a step above the Sentinelese on the development ladder", but I was struggling to find a way to phrase it in a way that wouldn't be accidentally offensive to someone. Point being, such a "landlord" will happily take your maple syrup and let you do approximately whatever on the land you lease from their tribe. They won't mind a "commercial food-grade bioreactor lab" because they have neither a reference point for it, nor a use for one, but because of that you'll also need to provide your own infrastructure and supplies somehow. (Also first time around, I read it as "food-grade bioreactor" without the "lab" bit, so I imagined setting up a shed with some fancy biotech equipment; now I see you probably meant a manufacturing plant.)
- 2y ago
- hackernewds 2y agoWe could sustainably eat dog meat as well, but we don't. Same for humans.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoAFAIK in some countries people do eat dogs just fine. In the western sphere, people don't, but that's a combination of an ick factor and there being plenty of alternatives far more efficient/sustainable (and I guess, tastier) than dogs. And then, if you paid the right person enough (which may be very little, if you choose your supplier right), you could still get dog meat if you really wanted. Much like life, and for the same reasons, the market finds a way.
- Zigurd 2y agoSome prominent people assert they do.
- teddyh 2y ago<https://angryflower.com/602.html https://angryflower.com/602.html>
- Hammershaft 2y agoImagine! You could upload a genetic sample and order a tenderloin of yourself!
- hackernewds 2y agoYou seem to have an intense curiosity about this topic. Any reasons?
- Hammershaft 2y agoIn this case the behavior we're discussing (eating ethically sourced lab grown human meat) doesn't infringe on consent, cause suffering, create negative externalities, or anything of the like. unqualified emotional reactions don't pass muster as a basis for criminalizing victimless behaviors.
- owenpalmer 2y agoGetting lots of people to acquire a taste for human flesh is a bad idea. Also, my monkey brain says "Ew".
- dredmorbius 2y ago<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41682379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41682379> amongst others. There's value in not being too closely related to your food supply.
- Zigurd 2y agoThe Kardashians will license their DNA under the brand Eat the Rich.
- jajko 2y agoNow who would eat that garbage junk food, I hope people have higher moral standards... oh wait
- amelius 2y agoProbably a bad idea. Research tells us that prion diseases existed more among cannibal groups.
- jajko 2y agoAren't prions nerve cells + something something? Muscle cells are not that different from muscle cells of animals we eat regularly.
- wizzwizz4 2y agoPrions are misfolded proteins that act as enzymes to turn healthy proteins into more of themselves. The scary ones destroy the nervous system, but that's not an inherent part of being a prion.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> prion diseases existed more among cannibal groups Presumably one would exclude protein classes prone to prionic misfolding from the synthetic meat. Personally, I have no moral qualms with someone sampling lab-grown human flesh, though I’d probably pass.
- dredmorbius 2y agoLarge-scale meat synthesis is a bacteriological outbreak nightmare even falling far short of that, but yeah.
- qwertox 2y agoHuge market for influencers. "Be like me."