Even if you ignore the ethical aspects of eating meat based on human cells(being vague here because whether you call it human meat is another debate), the risks of prion diseases is in my opinion...
Even if you ignore the ethical aspects of eating meat based on human cells(being vague here because whether you call it human meat is another debate), the risks of prion diseases is in my opinion enough to ban it. Or at the very least, strongly regulate it to make it only a matter of research.
Besides the concern about prions, I'm pretty sure that cannibalism, much like blood transfusions, carries significant additional health risks because there is no need for cross-species...
Besides the concern about prions, I'm pretty sure that cannibalism, much like blood transfusions, carries significant additional health risks because there is no need for cross-species transmission in order for pathogens to spread. Lab grown animal meat would presumably be reasonably safe for us to consume, but when it comes to lab grown human meat they can't screen for everything. So even putting aside the ethical/moral/taboo issues, I still wouldn't eat lab grown meat created from human cells purely because of that potential additional health risk.
It's reasonably straightforward to eliminate pathogens at the early stages in tissue culture - it's part of the whole lab process of isolating a pure cell line. Whether that care in technique can...
It's reasonably straightforward to eliminate pathogens at the early stages in tissue culture - it's part of the whole lab process of isolating a pure cell line. Whether that care in technique can persist as an industrially scaled food manufacturing process is another matter, but we do get pure medicines and materials from pharmacological cultures on a routine basis.
Would I eat cultures of my own cells? Certainly - no ethical issues about consent there, it's no different from an autologous stem cell transplant. Someone else's? Probably not, and the morass of issues around the HeLa culture line is a good example of why it should be avoided.
Think of it less like trying to remove things that you identify as unwanted, and more a case of removing everything that’s not the pure isolated version of what you want. I don’t have a good...
Think of it less like trying to remove things that you identify as unwanted, and more a case of removing everything that’s not the pure isolated version of what you want.
I don’t have a good analogy, but here goes:
If you were panning for gold, you don’t want to identify and remove everything that isn’t gold… you just identify and isolate the gold and you don’t care about trying to identify what’s left.
There will be gravel and clay and quartz and mud and dirt and a whole lot of other stuff, but you don’t care about that, you just care about the gold.
So you find a way to isolate the gold (it’s more dense than most other rocks, so if you slosh it around, it will sink to the bottom of the pan and everything else will end up floating on top of it!) and chuck out the rest because it’s not relevant to you.
It's been a long time since I've worked with tissue culture techniques, so I'm going to have to defer to someone with more recent experience for anything beyond generalities. At the start, you...
It's been a long time since I've worked with tissue culture techniques, so I'm going to have to defer to someone with more recent experience for anything beyond generalities.
At the start, you take your selected tissue (e.g. a muscle sample), macerate it, and centrifuge the heck out of the preparation to get rid of non-cellular debris and serum (which is usually where viruses and bacteria separate). The liquid serum layer gets discarded, then there are a few more steps of prep to wash away everything that isn't the cells you want to culture.
When you start a new pure cell line, it's usually obvious if there are any pathogens since a tissue culture doesn't have an immune system. Anything that could colonize the cells, will. There are also antibiotics and other additives in the culture medium to discourage anything that might have been present in the original tissue or that snuck in during processing.
Thank you~ That's a really good explanation for what goes on to get cell lines "clean". And thank you to @ThrowdoBaggins for the Gold panning analogy as well. :)
Thank you~ That's a really good explanation for what goes on to get cell lines "clean". And thank you to @ThrowdoBaggins for the Gold panning analogy as well. :)
It's more of a thought exercise and matter of curiosity than wild enthusiasm for autophagy. On the other hand, I'd imagine that I'm a good source of nutrition for myself? Cannibalism taboos have...
It's more of a thought exercise and matter of curiosity than wild enthusiasm for autophagy. On the other hand, I'd imagine that I'm a good source of nutrition for myself?
Cannibalism taboos have historically existed for very good reasons, both hygienic and for the maintenance of stable societies where we aren't all eyeing each other and wondering who'd be good with ketchup. But if you can overcome the hygiene concerns, and be certain that what you're eating never had a human consciousness, then I'm in the "why not try it" camp.
Going down the biotechnological rabbit hole, if we're really going to pursue engineered meats, it seems to me the safest thing would be to knock out the PrP gene altogether, for any species we...
Going down the biotechnological rabbit hole, if we're really going to pursue engineered meats, it seems to me the safest thing would be to knock out the PrP gene altogether, for any species we choose to tissue culture. No PrP, no malformed PrP to cause spongiform encephalopathies.
Knocking out the PrP gene shouldn't have any impacts on nutrition or muscle cell growth.
I mean...we have trouble with salmonella in peanut butter on a fairly frequent basis. I'm not gonna roll the dice that human meat factory knocked out the PrP genes properly. Wouldn't this whole...
I mean...we have trouble with salmonella in peanut butter on a fairly frequent basis. I'm not gonna roll the dice that human meat factory knocked out the PrP genes properly.
Wouldn't this whole problem be completely avoided by just using a cow or pig?
Get the process right, source one final cow, name it Jesus, and bring all those "flesh and blood" metaphors to life.
Body and Blood of Christ Steaks - Taking Communion to the Higher Power.
The salmonella comes from contamination of the peanuts themselves, it's not like it spontaneously forms. Beyond that, knocking out a gene is quite a lot easier than preventing contamination. Now,...
Now, unlike bacteria, prions can spontaneously form in lab conditions, it's just astronomically unlikely. The issue is that we're really splitting hairs with risk factors if we "just" use other mammalian DNA with similar knockouts to guard against the encephalopiform prions. It could be 1,000 times less likely to lead to a human-compatible prion forming, and it'd only represent some 0.00001% absolute difference in risk. And in these cases, the people suffering from the meteor strike won't have their own bodies turned into food, which is the situation that the significant numbers of nonhereditary prion disorders have been found in.
It also comes from external sources, like bird droppings being carried into the production facility by roof runoff improperly directed to ground through the building, among so many other sources
The salmonella comes from contamination of the peanuts themselves,
I'm a molecular biologist, and I know that human cell lines harbor endogenous retroviruses that may differ from those that a given person has. There are pigs--for use as a source of organs for...
I'm a molecular biologist, and I know that human cell lines harbor endogenous retroviruses that may differ from those that a given person has. There are pigs--for use as a source of organs for transplant--where they've removed a number of the retroviruses.
Also, last time I checked, all of the lab grown meats use FBS (fetal bovine serum) as a protein source, so we aren't any closer to "meatless" meat
There’s an old folklore story from the early days at Google. I think around 2006 either a DVI cable or DVI port on someone’s laptop broke - we’ll never know which. But the chain of events...
There’s an old folklore story from the early days at Google. I think around 2006 either a DVI cable or DVI port on someone’s laptop broke - we’ll never know which. But the chain of events afterwards is the same regardless. A DVI cable in a conference room ended up with this deformity in such a way that it would break any laptop it was hooked up to in a matching fashion. Likewise, those damaged laptops would break any DVI cables in the same way as in the “patient zero” conference room. Before long there was an epidemic of broken DVI connectors and cables.
I think it’s a nice macro-world explanation for how prion diseases work.
I have no particular instinctive or visceral response to the idea of eating human meat. I am curious if there's a reason some do vs don't. However I think it's a waste of time and resources, laden...
I have no particular instinctive or visceral response to the idea of eating human meat. I am curious if there's a reason some do vs don't. However I think it's a waste of time and resources, laden with ethical issues, and if we're fucking around with human tissue I'd rather it be for medical reasons not culinary.
Some of it might be a predisposition, like "sanctity" of moral foundations theory. It's always interesting to see the split in school when people swab various surfaces and see what bacteria was...
Some of it might be a predisposition, like "sanctity" of moral foundations theory.
It's always interesting to see the split in school when people swab various surfaces and see what bacteria was there. Some get disgusted because fecal particles are everywhere, and change/doors/fountains are breeding grounds. Others come to the conclusion that they've been living in a world with thresholds for how much bug or mouse can accidentally make its way into their Cheerios and they haven't been harmed by it, so it must not be that bad.
Culturally I think people who've had more of an analytical education might have less of a response, having encountered enough misfirings of instinct to gradually place less importance on it. Do you think that's changed as you've grown older?
Views on abortion might also be relevant, since people who are pro-choice have made a conceptual distinction between human cells and human life, in a way cultures that eat animal meat have made a distinction between humans and animals.
One last thing is the possibility of canabilism seems very far removed from modern life. I don't care if someone jinxes me or gives me the evil eye because I don't believe in them, or that it could have some bad outcome for me.
Do you have a visceral reaction to something like, say, sex dolls that are made to look more like children or have been treated violently? There's an intuition there that someone who does that may be either developing some abusive tendencies or revealing themselves to have them in a way that would directly translate to a real fear of harm.
Am I weird for thinking abortion is killing a person - but that people shouldn’t be held hostage by biology and are free to separate themselves from developing children at will regardless of the...
Am I weird for thinking abortion is killing a person - but that people shouldn’t be held hostage by biology and are free to separate themselves from developing children at will regardless of the consequences to the fetus?
I like the analogy of someone being used (against their will) as a blood bag to keep a sick person alive. If they disconnect the line connecting them to the patient they’re deemed a murderer. But otherwise they’re being forced to use their body in a way they don’t want.
I don't think it's weird in that we have lots of people that believe that, but I think many people make a separation between personhood and biology. Is killing someone with complete brain death...
I don't think it's weird in that we have lots of people that believe that, but I think many people make a separation between personhood and biology. Is killing someone with complete brain death killing a person? Is it ending a life? Opinions split on that.
Same thing with where along the spectrum of zygote to infant something "human" comes about. Or maybe sperm, if you're Catholic, or contraceptives as preventing potential life. No one saying life begins at conception is giving time off for bereavement for the huge percent of spontaneous abortions, and no matter how many letters I write I can't take out a life insurance policy for... nevermind.
The blood bag argument is a tricky one. Some people say, well, your organs/blood could save X lives if we harvested them right now. Should society be allowed to take them?
The other side of that argument may be that child neglect is possible because a [prospective] parent has some obligations like someone who opted to give first aid. You can't leave your child in a hot car because you were responsible for it, and someone killing a pregnant woman may be punished more harshly. Is it wrong for someone to drink while pregnant if they're planning to not carry the child?
I'm strongly pro-choice but it can be a messy topic.
I do believe abortion is ending a life. I also think because that life completely depends on another person sacrificing their body, that said person has the right to choose to not sacrifice their...
I do believe abortion is ending a life. I also think because that life completely depends on another person sacrificing their body, that said person has the right to choose to not sacrifice their body. I believe no one is obligated to sacrifice themselves to keep another person alive, and no one has the right to use another person to keep themselves alive.
A theory I’ve had bouncing around on abortion politics: a large chunk of opposition to abortion from religious/conservative Americans could be about losing a memetic battle against families that...
A theory I’ve had bouncing around on abortion politics: a large chunk of opposition to abortion from religious/conservative Americans could be about losing a memetic battle against families that aren’t interested in abstinence. I thoroughly believe that without contraceptives practicing abstinence until some stability is reached (and marriage is an arbitrary marker of that) is memetically successful. Of course, the rationalizations are all made up - God’s will, right and wrong etc. etc. But that’s one of the corner stones of religious beliefs. Big Lies that get you to do something the collective wants you to do.
So what happens when abstinence is no longer required to ensure people don’t have children when they aren’t financially ready? What happens when condoms, birth control pills, and abortions exist? It means you’re no longer getting the advantage from your abstinence meme you used to. But because the lie holding this antiquated strategy together told you that it was a matter of morality it’s hard to change in the face of a new reality without feeling your moral system’s foundation collapse. If you admit abstinence was not God’s will, what else about God might be phony?
Of course it’s such a large issue that this could only explain some people’s beliefs. Any complex debate will have many voices on each side.
I don't recall ever having a visceral reaction to the idea but I have zero recollection of thinking about it (ADHD plays hell on the memory) I think I have a reaction to the childlike dolls but...
I don't recall ever having a visceral reaction to the idea but I have zero recollection of thinking about it (ADHD plays hell on the memory)
I think I have a reaction to the childlike dolls but not sex dolls with bruises, mostly because that doesn't even register for me..I've worked with children who were victims of CSA (and juvenile offenders) before though so it could be related to that.
It's still more intellectual than otherwise.
In part because of my work I compartmentalize very well and I'm in fact trained not to judge or have even a visible reaction to what people say (every therapists style is different and it's not like I'm a stone.) I have to be able to provide support for the person I'm working with and it's so very not about me in the moment.
I'm hard to shock, and I'm more likely than not going to try to understand where someone is coming from. I've worked with people who've committed murder, violence, drug crimes, have addictions, etc. and it's just sort of part of the job. Maybe that's why.
My sibling is a therapist and had a messy childhood, definitely get the compartmentalization. Stories have been shared, like: Sad spoilers A patient who failed an attempt at suicide with a drill...
My sibling is a therapist and had a messy childhood, definitely get the compartmentalization. Stories have been shared, like:
Sad spoilers
A patient who failed an attempt at suicide with a drill to the skull. Or a woman with connective tissue issues who would dislocate joints taking a shower and had to sing "you are my sunshine" to herself to cope.
If they weren't able to compartmentalize they just couldn't be a therapist. So maybe part training, part survivorship bias at play. Same deal with the gallows humor of medical professions.
I would say I value "sanctity" quite a bit, and that has probably increased with age. The thing is, I've always viewed grossness through the lens of pathogens and likelihood of getting sick, as...
I would say I value "sanctity" quite a bit, and that has probably increased with age. The thing is, I've always viewed grossness through the lens of pathogens and likelihood of getting sick, as opposed to a digust-based view of "contamination". Basically, I cognitively value sanctity, it's not mainly a gut response.
I dunno, I'm a mental health professional/do social work/have high empathy and it doesn't hit that mark for me at all. I also don't have a visceral response to the Luke and Leia kiss for example,...
I dunno, I'm a mental health professional/do social work/have high empathy and it doesn't hit that mark for me at all. I also don't have a visceral response to the Luke and Leia kiss for example, they didn't know they were siblings* and weren't raised together and like, eh? I'm not like "incest is fine" or anything but I don't have that response.
I just am interested in the research aspect and I definitely don't fall into the ASPD bucket.
*George Lucas clearly didn't know either, no matter what he says.
I have ADHD and I've been pretty open about that here. Not sure there's any correlation between ADHD and cannibalism. I also have depression and relatively mild anxiety. Ya know like a lot of...
I have ADHD and I've been pretty open about that here. Not sure there's any correlation between ADHD and cannibalism. I also have depression and relatively mild anxiety. Ya know like a lot of people.
But that's the problem here isn't it. I tell you I'm not viscerally disgusted by a concept that I have zero intellectual interest in partaking in, and you decide that people with my diagnosis are likely to eat people. Even jokingly. Pretty rude as another person put it.
Fun tip, even people with "dark triad" diagnoses aren't necessarily gonna eat people. And stigma is part of what keeps people with those diagnoses from getting help.
I would agree. I think it's not inherently immoral, unlike torturing animals—an excellent indicator of antisocial behavior!—but I think having the ability to override one's (possibly biological?)...
I would agree. I think it's not inherently immoral, unlike torturing animals—an excellent indicator of antisocial behavior!—but I think having the ability to override one's (possibly biological?) programming to avoid cannibalism is alarming.
I don't think it's biological, as noted elsewhere there are cultures that engage in, for example, ritual cannibalism as part of funerary practices. If there's a practice there's probably a culture...
I don't think it's biological, as noted elsewhere there are cultures that engage in, for example, ritual cannibalism as part of funerary practices. If there's a practice there's probably a culture that engaged in it.
It seems like there should be a strong motivation to be more cautious about eating human meat than animal meat. Any infectious diseases present in the food are, by definition, human infectious...
It seems like there should be a strong motivation to be more cautious about eating human meat than animal meat. Any infectious diseases present in the food are, by definition, human infectious diseases.
I never cook meat at home (flexitarian). While food safety is easy to maintain if you’re paying attention to what you’re doing it’s nice to know I never need to worry about it beyond food spoilage. Because any bacteria decomposing beef or pork in your fridge is by definition flesh-eating bacteria.
I'd challenge your food safety beliefs a bit there - a lot of food borne illness comes from unwashed hands - whether by the people picking your produce or by the person preparing it. I also think...
I'd challenge your food safety beliefs a bit there - a lot of food borne illness comes from unwashed hands - whether by the people picking your produce or by the person preparing it.
I also think "flesh eating bacteria" means a specific thing in the science world and conflating it with the things that cause food spoilage is a bit silly.
However I agree that pathogens would be a real issue.
Your body is covered with bacteria, both inside and out, that would be quite happy to eat your flesh if given the chance. The only ones that bug me are mold on meat.
Your body is covered with bacteria, both inside and out, that would be quite happy to eat your flesh if given the chance. The only ones that bug me are mold on meat.
I’m curious to see what people think of the idea of eating cultured human meat. Apparently it’s well past the theoretical stage, and obviously rife with controversy. I think this might be NSFW...
I’m curious to see what people think of the idea of eating cultured human meat. Apparently it’s well past the theoretical stage, and obviously rife with controversy.
I think this might be NSFW based on some reactions I’ve seen in the topic, but I’m unsure. I’m also not totally sure this belongs in food, but where else?
I don't really care morally but its also one of those things that just sounds like rich people wasting money on stupid stuff. I love the lab grown meat idea, if we can ethically and economically...
I don't really care morally but its also one of those things that just sounds like rich people wasting money on stupid stuff.
I love the lab grown meat idea, if we can ethically and economically source meat without having to torture animals to get it, that's a huge step forward both on an environmental front and a logistical one. This just seems like a waste of the idea, but maybe the research can help somehow.
I don't think anything constructive to this ethical debate, but there is something that seems awfully ironic to me. I've read several discussions & articles in the past few years, arguing if lab...
I don't think anything constructive to this ethical debate, but there is something that seems awfully ironic to me. I've read several discussions & articles in the past few years, arguing if lab grown meat should be named "meat" or not.
IMO the whole ethics angle to this human-cultured protein debate hinges on agreeing that it is in fact meat, which makes it gain the quality of being disgusting/unethical/taboo. But it strikes me as "having your cake and eating it too" - on one hand, we can't agree that lab cultured meat is in fact meat, but on the other, it's taboo to eat protein grown from human cells because it is meat with a taboo origin.
This is what strikes me as ironic. I am curious what the overlap is between the groups of people that don't want to call lab grown meat "meat", and those who think human cultured protein is taboo to eat.
I'll probably not find an answer to my curiosity though.
To me, the ethics come down to suffering. If nobody is suffering, then where do ethics play a role? Maybe in some variety of consent? I can see some donors of tissue having constraints on...
To me, the ethics come down to suffering. If nobody is suffering, then where do ethics play a role? Maybe in some variety of consent? I can see some donors of tissue having constraints on acceptable uses, like they would only want their cells to be used for medical purposes.
However, if the cells were sourced from me personally, I can’t see any conceivable ethical issue.
I personally find the thought consuming it disgusting. No, I can't explain why without delving into soft arguments that are exceptionally subjective. However ... I kind of find it funny that a lot...
I personally find the thought consuming it disgusting. No, I can't explain why without delving into soft arguments that are exceptionally subjective.
However ... I kind of find it funny that a lot of people, on the subject of animal lab-cultured meat, often trot out the "nothing was hurt/killed/butchered" argument as a main reason why they want it. Following that logic, no human was hurt/killed/butchered to provide the lab-cultured human meat.
Just strikes me as a dichotomy that I suspect more than a few of those in that camp haven't considered, and will probably get very upset about when it's pointed out.
I suppose the answer is that morals are not absolute, and what morals we do have are both a product of biology and society, both with high degrees of variability. I just don’t see an issue with...
I suppose the answer is that morals are not absolute, and what morals we do have are both a product of biology and society, both with high degrees of variability. I just don’t see an issue with it, similar I suspect to how some people are thoroughly disgusted by the idea of eating bugs while some people consider them a delicacy.
It's the flip side to me, I don't understand framing the revulsion as a moral issue. If it's lab grown and ethically sourced, there's less suffering involved compared to something like a steak....
It's the flip side to me, I don't understand framing the revulsion as a moral issue. If it's lab grown and ethically sourced, there's less suffering involved compared to something like a steak. Being wary of prion diseases, sure, but that's more of a safety thing.
Human meat might seem gross or unusual to me, sure, but that doesn't make something unethical beyond just being taboo. It's like the wide spectrum of kinks out there. I might be put off by them, but that's not to say they're wrong in any way.
Very interesting question, on a broader philosophical level. One possible answer that I think gets dismissed too quickly, is "because I don't want to live in a universe where this happens". Eg,...
if nobody is suffering, then where do ethics play a role?
Very interesting question, on a broader philosophical level.
One possible answer that I think gets dismissed too quickly, is "because I don't want to live in a universe where this happens". Eg, because someone being hurt or something not giving consent isn't the be all end all of what humanity finds acceptable.
We bristle at religion these days and auto reject everything with a whiff of God. But take this example:
"Do not boil a suckling goat in its mother's milk.
This piece of culinary "advice" was reiterated not once nor twice, but thrice within the law: Exodus 23:19 Exodus 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21.
The Jewish laws already mandated the animals be killed and drained of blood. By the time a kid has been cleaned and prepped for boiling, it no longer feels anything at all. So why is it prohibited to boil it in its mother's milk? Note it does not prohibit another goat's milk or other kinds of animal milk. Its mother's milk.
Because beyond consent, huma beings living in a certain context, doing certain actions, have consequences for our own psyche and well being. Whoever gave this law three times thought it was very important to have a society where things meant for nurturing the young are not used for the destruction of that young, even when no further pain could be inflicted upon it and the young has already been killed for human nourishment.
There's a concept of "moral harm" that, I think, modern "consent as ethics" society neglects. eg firing squad instead of one executioner.
An another extreme example, 介子推 Jie Zhi Tui(English wiki) literally serving parts of himself to his lord. The story demonstratss great loyalty, and no one is ... hurt ... without their consent, but even then it's a story that regards the action as extreme and not to be encouraged or repeated or emulated.
Today, we live extremely individualistic lives...we don't want to be told what to do and we all want to define what we find acceptable. But for much of human history across every culture, what everyone finds acceptable and not acceptable was more important. There are some really truly excellent improvements when we left "but what would the neighbors think" behind. But at what point has the pendulum swung too far towards "every one did what was right in their own eyes"?
I don't think that "I don't want X to exist" is a sound framework for determining what's ethical, especially in situations where harm is minimized. Imposing the will of another over someone who...
I don't think that "I don't want X to exist" is a sound framework for determining what's ethical, especially in situations where harm is minimized. Imposing the will of another over someone who doesn't conform, when not conforming does not cause harm, is not moral. Even if that restriction is formed by majority consensus, why are those opinions valued above the individual?
To counter the boiled goat example, we brush roast chicken with egg all the time. It seems like an arbitrary distinction to make one anathema but not the other.
In the parable you mentioned, there's objectively self-harm from cutting pieces off yourself whereas lab-grown meat does not originate from a sapient source that experiences pain and discomfort.
I am not actually sure if this is possible, if this still falls within the bounds of nobody being hurt or not giving consent. I personally fall pretty deep into the “An it harm none do what ye...
But at what point has the pendulum swung too far towards "every one did what was right in their own eyes"?
I am not actually sure if this is possible, if this still falls within the bounds of nobody being hurt or not giving consent. I personally fall pretty deep into the “An it harm none do what ye will” camp. I would actually say that the metaphor of a pendulum is incorrect — the restriction of non-harmful (to actual people, not intangible morals) freedoms doesn’t have a beneficial range, it’s a scale purely of negatives.
My immediate emotion trying to imagine it was revulsion. Because human, not because lab-grown. Even if I knew the meat didn't come directly from human, even if I knew it were perfectly safe (see...
My immediate emotion trying to imagine it was revulsion. Because human, not because lab-grown.
Even if I knew the meat didn't come directly from human, even if I knew it were perfectly safe (see prion/disease comments...), and even as someone who's pretty curious about new-to-me foods, human-derived tissue feels too taboo for me.
It feels like one of those cases of taboo where there's probably good reason to be suspicious of it being true. Like visiting a new village and everyone tells you not to drink the pond water...
It feels like one of those cases of taboo where there's probably good reason to be suspicious of it being true.
Like visiting a new village and everyone tells you not to drink the pond water that's perfectly crystal clear with no grass around the edges, because it's taboo.
I guess my question is, who wanted this? Lab grown is presumably much more expensive than analog meat, and apparently people don't taste very good as meat goes, so I suppose the taboo is the...
I guess my question is, who wanted this? Lab grown is presumably much more expensive than analog meat, and apparently people don't taste very good as meat goes, so I suppose the taboo is the appeal? Beyond a once-off taste for curiosity's sake I can't see most people stomaching this for long.
From the article: the artist who wants to raise awareness and spark discussion, folks who want a kit to eat themselves, and money hungry venture capitalists. On a gross and tangential note: one's...
From the article: the artist who wants to raise awareness and spark discussion, folks who want a kit to eat themselves, and money hungry venture capitalists.
On a gross and tangential note: one's own hair and finger/tow nails and callouses are a re-newable resource. Hang up on meat alone is just not being imaginative enough.
I mean we probably don’t have excellent data on whether people taste good. I doubt any of the reported data involved trained chefs with access to ingredients — information I have found generally...
apparently people don't taste very good as meat goes
I mean we probably don’t have excellent data on whether people taste good. I doubt any of the reported data involved trained chefs with access to ingredients — information I have found generally involved primitive ritual sacrifice or stranded starving people.
I've read an article about someone with culinary experience trying it, but cursory googling isn't turning it up. Most people compare it to pork or veal - as I recall the food taster also said veal.
I've read an article about someone with culinary experience trying it, but cursory googling isn't turning it up. Most people compare it to pork or veal - as I recall the food taster also said veal.
My first concern is safety. Prions like some mentioned above and also "we don't know what we don't know" type of thoughts. My second concern is "why do we want to consume ourselves?" I don't think...
My first concern is safety. Prions like some mentioned above and also "we don't know what we don't know" type of thoughts.
My second concern is "why do we want to consume ourselves?"
I don't think I'd try it. I don't see a point, and it seems morally wrong to me in some way. I wouldn't judge others who would try it, because I understand the curiosity. I would ask them what it tastes like, ha.
I think there's something to be said about some things being sacred (in a secular sense), and that we lose our humanity when we violate the sacredness of those things.
I think there's something to be said about some things being sacred (in a secular sense), and that we lose our humanity when we violate the sacredness of those things.
I think if nobody is being hurt, then it's fine. People said that about gay marriage too, and it really wasn't a big deal, the fabric of humanity remained whole.
I think if nobody is being hurt, then it's fine. People said that about gay marriage too, and it really wasn't a big deal, the fabric of humanity remained whole.
My point is distilling what makes an aspect of the human experience an example of "humanness" itself is highly subjective. What is an example of "humanness"? What's taboo enough to deny someone's...
My point is distilling what makes an aspect of the human experience an example of "humanness" itself is highly subjective. What is an example of "humanness"? What's taboo enough to deny someone's humanity? Are cannibalistic societies of the past inhuman?
Any element of the physical or metaphysical (ex. consciousness) essence of a human is part of "humanness". Tbh, it's not that subjective as far as subjective things go. *Inhumane. Yes.
Any element of the physical or metaphysical (ex. consciousness) essence of a human is part of "humanness". Tbh, it's not that subjective as far as subjective things go.
Does that hold if the reason for the cannibalism is in fact their humanity? Such as funerary rites? That was a holding of humanity as so sacred it required consumption of the person. (Christianity...
Does that hold if the reason for the cannibalism is in fact their humanity? Such as funerary rites? That was a holding of humanity as so sacred it required consumption of the person. (Christianity does this symbolically (or transubstantially) but the practice has existed in reality)
I think it's hard not to transplant our concept of sacredness, holiness, and just our values onto other societies. And maybe there's an absolute moral line and maybe there isn't. But everything seems to be in a shade of grey imo.
I meant to refer to cannibalism merely for the sake of eating or novelty. Cannibalism that was explicitly for honoring the sacredness of human essence I wouldn't consider a threat to a society's...
I meant to refer to cannibalism merely for the sake of eating or novelty. Cannibalism that was explicitly for honoring the sacredness of human essence I wouldn't consider a threat to a society's humanity.
Even if you ignore the ethical aspects of eating meat based on human cells(being vague here because whether you call it human meat is another debate), the risks of prion diseases is in my opinion enough to ban it. Or at the very least, strongly regulate it to make it only a matter of research.
For those who don't know, long story short Prions are misfolded proteins that cause the same proteins to also misfold in the same way, causing a domino effect that damages tissue. The mad cow disease being a famous of example of how bad things can go. Prions have very long incubation time so if things go wrong it can take years to find out that we're going to have dozens of deaths soon. If the people are lucky, because surviving with so much brain damage is a fate worse than death.
Besides the concern about prions, I'm pretty sure that cannibalism, much like blood transfusions, carries significant additional health risks because there is no need for cross-species transmission in order for pathogens to spread. Lab grown animal meat would presumably be reasonably safe for us to consume, but when it comes to lab grown human meat they can't screen for everything. So even putting aside the ethical/moral/taboo issues, I still wouldn't eat lab grown meat created from human cells purely because of that potential additional health risk.
It's reasonably straightforward to eliminate pathogens at the early stages in tissue culture - it's part of the whole lab process of isolating a pure cell line. Whether that care in technique can persist as an industrially scaled food manufacturing process is another matter, but we do get pure medicines and materials from pharmacological cultures on a routine basis.
Would I eat cultures of my own cells? Certainly - no ethical issues about consent there, it's no different from an autologous stem cell transplant. Someone else's? Probably not, and the morass of issues around the HeLa culture line is a good example of why it should be avoided.
Layperson question: how do they screen for pathogens that we don't know about yet?
Think of it less like trying to remove things that you identify as unwanted, and more a case of removing everything that’s not the pure isolated version of what you want.
I don’t have a good analogy, but here goes:
If you were panning for gold, you don’t want to identify and remove everything that isn’t gold… you just identify and isolate the gold and you don’t care about trying to identify what’s left.
There will be gravel and clay and quartz and mud and dirt and a whole lot of other stuff, but you don’t care about that, you just care about the gold.
So you find a way to isolate the gold (it’s more dense than most other rocks, so if you slosh it around, it will sink to the bottom of the pan and everything else will end up floating on top of it!) and chuck out the rest because it’s not relevant to you.
It's been a long time since I've worked with tissue culture techniques, so I'm going to have to defer to someone with more recent experience for anything beyond generalities.
At the start, you take your selected tissue (e.g. a muscle sample), macerate it, and centrifuge the heck out of the preparation to get rid of non-cellular debris and serum (which is usually where viruses and bacteria separate). The liquid serum layer gets discarded, then there are a few more steps of prep to wash away everything that isn't the cells you want to culture.
When you start a new pure cell line, it's usually obvious if there are any pathogens since a tissue culture doesn't have an immune system. Anything that could colonize the cells, will. There are also antibiotics and other additives in the culture medium to discourage anything that might have been present in the original tissue or that snuck in during processing.
Thank you~ That's a really good explanation for what goes on to get cell lines "clean". And thank you to @ThrowdoBaggins for the Gold panning analogy as well. :)
Not the person you replied to but I’d do it for the novelty. Why not?
Curiosity for sure... do people really taste like pork?
There is one issue to consider... what if you like it. 😱
https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/05/human-meat-taste-cannibal
Oh good, sounds like pork is a leader. I'm not a fan of pork, unless it's smothered in spices, so I shouldn't have to worry about liking it now.
Just ask this guy! He made tacos with his amputated foot, and wow, writing that makes me feel a little woozy.
Interesting that he says it was like beef rather than pork.
It's more of a thought exercise and matter of curiosity than wild enthusiasm for autophagy. On the other hand, I'd imagine that I'm a good source of nutrition for myself?
Cannibalism taboos have historically existed for very good reasons, both hygienic and for the maintenance of stable societies where we aren't all eyeing each other and wondering who'd be good with ketchup. But if you can overcome the hygiene concerns, and be certain that what you're eating never had a human consciousness, then I'm in the "why not try it" camp.
Going down the biotechnological rabbit hole, if we're really going to pursue engineered meats, it seems to me the safest thing would be to knock out the PrP gene altogether, for any species we choose to tissue culture. No PrP, no malformed PrP to cause spongiform encephalopathies.
Knocking out the PrP gene shouldn't have any impacts on nutrition or muscle cell growth.
I mean...we have trouble with salmonella in peanut butter on a fairly frequent basis. I'm not gonna roll the dice that human meat factory knocked out the PrP genes properly.
Wouldn't this whole problem be completely avoided by just using a cow or pig?
Get the process right, source one final cow, name it Jesus, and bring all those "flesh and blood" metaphors to life.
Body and Blood of Christ Steaks - Taking Communion to the Higher Power.
The salmonella comes from contamination of the peanuts themselves, it's not like it spontaneously forms. Beyond that, knocking out a gene is quite a lot easier than preventing contamination.
Now, unlike bacteria, prions can spontaneously form in lab conditions, it's just astronomically unlikely. The issue is that we're really splitting hairs with risk factors if we "just" use other mammalian DNA with similar knockouts to guard against the encephalopiform prions. It could be 1,000 times less likely to lead to a human-compatible prion forming, and it'd only represent some 0.00001% absolute difference in risk. And in these cases, the people suffering from the meteor strike won't have their own bodies turned into food, which is the situation that the significant numbers of nonhereditary prion disorders have been found in.
It also comes from external sources, like bird droppings being carried into the production facility by roof runoff improperly directed to ground through the building, among so many other sources
I'm a molecular biologist, and I know that human cell lines harbor endogenous retroviruses that may differ from those that a given person has. There are pigs--for use as a source of organs for transplant--where they've removed a number of the retroviruses.
Also, last time I checked, all of the lab grown meats use FBS (fetal bovine serum) as a protein source, so we aren't any closer to "meatless" meat
There’s an old folklore story from the early days at Google. I think around 2006 either a DVI cable or DVI port on someone’s laptop broke - we’ll never know which. But the chain of events afterwards is the same regardless. A DVI cable in a conference room ended up with this deformity in such a way that it would break any laptop it was hooked up to in a matching fashion. Likewise, those damaged laptops would break any DVI cables in the same way as in the “patient zero” conference room. Before long there was an epidemic of broken DVI connectors and cables.
I think it’s a nice macro-world explanation for how prion diseases work.
I have no particular instinctive or visceral response to the idea of eating human meat. I am curious if there's a reason some do vs don't. However I think it's a waste of time and resources, laden with ethical issues, and if we're fucking around with human tissue I'd rather it be for medical reasons not culinary.
Some of it might be a predisposition, like "sanctity" of moral foundations theory.
It's always interesting to see the split in school when people swab various surfaces and see what bacteria was there. Some get disgusted because fecal particles are everywhere, and change/doors/fountains are breeding grounds. Others come to the conclusion that they've been living in a world with thresholds for how much bug or mouse can accidentally make its way into their Cheerios and they haven't been harmed by it, so it must not be that bad.
Culturally I think people who've had more of an analytical education might have less of a response, having encountered enough misfirings of instinct to gradually place less importance on it. Do you think that's changed as you've grown older?
Views on abortion might also be relevant, since people who are pro-choice have made a conceptual distinction between human cells and human life, in a way cultures that eat animal meat have made a distinction between humans and animals.
One last thing is the possibility of canabilism seems very far removed from modern life. I don't care if someone jinxes me or gives me the evil eye because I don't believe in them, or that it could have some bad outcome for me.
Do you have a visceral reaction to something like, say, sex dolls that are made to look more like children or have been treated violently? There's an intuition there that someone who does that may be either developing some abusive tendencies or revealing themselves to have them in a way that would directly translate to a real fear of harm.
Am I weird for thinking abortion is killing a person - but that people shouldn’t be held hostage by biology and are free to separate themselves from developing children at will regardless of the consequences to the fetus?
I like the analogy of someone being used (against their will) as a blood bag to keep a sick person alive. If they disconnect the line connecting them to the patient they’re deemed a murderer. But otherwise they’re being forced to use their body in a way they don’t want.
I don't think it's weird in that we have lots of people that believe that, but I think many people make a separation between personhood and biology. Is killing someone with complete brain death killing a person? Is it ending a life? Opinions split on that.
Same thing with where along the spectrum of zygote to infant something "human" comes about. Or maybe sperm, if you're Catholic, or contraceptives as preventing potential life. No one saying life begins at conception is giving time off for bereavement for the huge percent of spontaneous abortions, and no matter how many letters I write I can't take out a life insurance policy for... nevermind.
The blood bag argument is a tricky one. Some people say, well, your organs/blood could save X lives if we harvested them right now. Should society be allowed to take them?
The other side of that argument may be that child neglect is possible because a [prospective] parent has some obligations like someone who opted to give first aid. You can't leave your child in a hot car because you were responsible for it, and someone killing a pregnant woman may be punished more harshly. Is it wrong for someone to drink while pregnant if they're planning to not carry the child?
I'm strongly pro-choice but it can be a messy topic.
I do believe abortion is ending a life. I also think because that life completely depends on another person sacrificing their body, that said person has the right to choose to not sacrifice their body. I believe no one is obligated to sacrifice themselves to keep another person alive, and no one has the right to use another person to keep themselves alive.
A theory I’ve had bouncing around on abortion politics: a large chunk of opposition to abortion from religious/conservative Americans could be about losing a memetic battle against families that aren’t interested in abstinence. I thoroughly believe that without contraceptives practicing abstinence until some stability is reached (and marriage is an arbitrary marker of that) is memetically successful. Of course, the rationalizations are all made up - God’s will, right and wrong etc. etc. But that’s one of the corner stones of religious beliefs. Big Lies that get you to do something the collective wants you to do.
So what happens when abstinence is no longer required to ensure people don’t have children when they aren’t financially ready? What happens when condoms, birth control pills, and abortions exist? It means you’re no longer getting the advantage from your abstinence meme you used to. But because the lie holding this antiquated strategy together told you that it was a matter of morality it’s hard to change in the face of a new reality without feeling your moral system’s foundation collapse. If you admit abstinence was not God’s will, what else about God might be phony?
Of course it’s such a large issue that this could only explain some people’s beliefs. Any complex debate will have many voices on each side.
I don't recall ever having a visceral reaction to the idea but I have zero recollection of thinking about it (ADHD plays hell on the memory)
I think I have a reaction to the childlike dolls but not sex dolls with bruises, mostly because that doesn't even register for me..I've worked with children who were victims of CSA (and juvenile offenders) before though so it could be related to that.
It's still more intellectual than otherwise.
In part because of my work I compartmentalize very well and I'm in fact trained not to judge or have even a visible reaction to what people say (every therapists style is different and it's not like I'm a stone.) I have to be able to provide support for the person I'm working with and it's so very not about me in the moment.
I'm hard to shock, and I'm more likely than not going to try to understand where someone is coming from. I've worked with people who've committed murder, violence, drug crimes, have addictions, etc. and it's just sort of part of the job. Maybe that's why.
But I'm not sure if it's been studied
My sibling is a therapist and had a messy childhood, definitely get the compartmentalization. Stories have been shared, like:
Sad spoilers
A patient who failed an attempt at suicide with a drill to the skull. Or a woman with connective tissue issues who would dislocate joints taking a shower and had to sing "you are my sunshine" to herself to cope.
If they weren't able to compartmentalize they just couldn't be a therapist. So maybe part training, part survivorship bias at play. Same deal with the gallows humor of medical professions.
Very likely. I don't have a personal trauma history but you do have to deal with a lot of other people's trauma in the process.
I would say I value "sanctity" quite a bit, and that has probably increased with age. The thing is, I've always viewed grossness through the lens of pathogens and likelihood of getting sick, as opposed to a digust-based view of "contamination". Basically, I cognitively value sanctity, it's not mainly a gut response.
I dunno, I'm a mental health professional/do social work/have high empathy and it doesn't hit that mark for me at all. I also don't have a visceral response to the Luke and Leia kiss for example, they didn't know they were siblings* and weren't raised together and like, eh? I'm not like "incest is fine" or anything but I don't have that response.
I just am interested in the research aspect and I definitely don't fall into the ASPD bucket.
*George Lucas clearly didn't know either, no matter what he says.
Implying someone has dark triad traits and should be avoided is kinda rude.
I have ADHD and I've been pretty open about that here. Not sure there's any correlation between ADHD and cannibalism. I also have depression and relatively mild anxiety. Ya know like a lot of people.
But that's the problem here isn't it. I tell you I'm not viscerally disgusted by a concept that I have zero intellectual interest in partaking in, and you decide that people with my diagnosis are likely to eat people. Even jokingly. Pretty rude as another person put it.
Fun tip, even people with "dark triad" diagnoses aren't necessarily gonna eat people. And stigma is part of what keeps people with those diagnoses from getting help.
I would agree. I think it's not inherently immoral, unlike torturing animals—an excellent indicator of antisocial behavior!—but I think having the ability to override one's (possibly biological?) programming to avoid cannibalism is alarming.
I don't think it's biological, as noted elsewhere there are cultures that engage in, for example, ritual cannibalism as part of funerary practices. If there's a practice there's probably a culture that engaged in it.
It seems like there should be a strong motivation to be more cautious about eating human meat than animal meat. Any infectious diseases present in the food are, by definition, human infectious diseases.
I never cook meat at home (flexitarian). While food safety is easy to maintain if you’re paying attention to what you’re doing it’s nice to know I never need to worry about it beyond food spoilage. Because any bacteria decomposing beef or pork in your fridge is by definition flesh-eating bacteria.
I'd challenge your food safety beliefs a bit there - a lot of food borne illness comes from unwashed hands - whether by the people picking your produce or by the person preparing it.
I also think "flesh eating bacteria" means a specific thing in the science world and conflating it with the things that cause food spoilage is a bit silly.
However I agree that pathogens would be a real issue.
Your body is covered with bacteria, both inside and out, that would be quite happy to eat your flesh if given the chance. The only ones that bug me are mold on meat.
I’m curious to see what people think of the idea of eating cultured human meat. Apparently it’s well past the theoretical stage, and obviously rife with controversy.
I think this might be NSFW based on some reactions I’ve seen in the topic, but I’m unsure. I’m also not totally sure this belongs in food, but where else?
I don't really care morally but its also one of those things that just sounds like rich people wasting money on stupid stuff.
I love the lab grown meat idea, if we can ethically and economically source meat without having to torture animals to get it, that's a huge step forward both on an environmental front and a logistical one. This just seems like a waste of the idea, but maybe the research can help somehow.
I don't think anything constructive to this ethical debate, but there is something that seems awfully ironic to me. I've read several discussions & articles in the past few years, arguing if lab grown meat should be named "meat" or not.
IMO the whole ethics angle to this human-cultured protein debate hinges on agreeing that it is in fact meat, which makes it gain the quality of being disgusting/unethical/taboo. But it strikes me as "having your cake and eating it too" - on one hand, we can't agree that lab cultured meat is in fact meat, but on the other, it's taboo to eat protein grown from human cells because it is meat with a taboo origin.
This is what strikes me as ironic. I am curious what the overlap is between the groups of people that don't want to call lab grown meat "meat", and those who think human cultured protein is taboo to eat.
I'll probably not find an answer to my curiosity though.
To me, the ethics come down to suffering. If nobody is suffering, then where do ethics play a role? Maybe in some variety of consent? I can see some donors of tissue having constraints on acceptable uses, like they would only want their cells to be used for medical purposes.
However, if the cells were sourced from me personally, I can’t see any conceivable ethical issue.
I personally find the thought consuming it disgusting. No, I can't explain why without delving into soft arguments that are exceptionally subjective.
However ... I kind of find it funny that a lot of people, on the subject of animal lab-cultured meat, often trot out the "nothing was hurt/killed/butchered" argument as a main reason why they want it. Following that logic, no human was hurt/killed/butchered to provide the lab-cultured human meat.
Just strikes me as a dichotomy that I suspect more than a few of those in that camp haven't considered, and will probably get very upset about when it's pointed out.
I suppose the answer is that morals are not absolute, and what morals we do have are both a product of biology and society, both with high degrees of variability. I just don’t see an issue with it, similar I suspect to how some people are thoroughly disgusted by the idea of eating bugs while some people consider them a delicacy.
It's the flip side to me, I don't understand framing the revulsion as a moral issue. If it's lab grown and ethically sourced, there's less suffering involved compared to something like a steak. Being wary of prion diseases, sure, but that's more of a safety thing.
Human meat might seem gross or unusual to me, sure, but that doesn't make something unethical beyond just being taboo. It's like the wide spectrum of kinks out there. I might be put off by them, but that's not to say they're wrong in any way.
Very interesting question, on a broader philosophical level.
One possible answer that I think gets dismissed too quickly, is "because I don't want to live in a universe where this happens". Eg, because someone being hurt or something not giving consent isn't the be all end all of what humanity finds acceptable.
We bristle at religion these days and auto reject everything with a whiff of God. But take this example:
This piece of culinary "advice" was reiterated not once nor twice, but thrice within the law: Exodus 23:19 Exodus 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21.
The Jewish laws already mandated the animals be killed and drained of blood. By the time a kid has been cleaned and prepped for boiling, it no longer feels anything at all. So why is it prohibited to boil it in its mother's milk? Note it does not prohibit another goat's milk or other kinds of animal milk. Its mother's milk.
Because beyond consent, huma beings living in a certain context, doing certain actions, have consequences for our own psyche and well being. Whoever gave this law three times thought it was very important to have a society where things meant for nurturing the young are not used for the destruction of that young, even when no further pain could be inflicted upon it and the young has already been killed for human nourishment.
There's a concept of "moral harm" that, I think, modern "consent as ethics" society neglects. eg firing squad instead of one executioner.
An another extreme example, 介子推 Jie Zhi Tui(English wiki) literally serving parts of himself to his lord. The story demonstratss great loyalty, and no one is ... hurt ... without their consent, but even then it's a story that regards the action as extreme and not to be encouraged or repeated or emulated.
Today, we live extremely individualistic lives...we don't want to be told what to do and we all want to define what we find acceptable. But for much of human history across every culture, what everyone finds acceptable and not acceptable was more important. There are some really truly excellent improvements when we left "but what would the neighbors think" behind. But at what point has the pendulum swung too far towards "every one did what was right in their own eyes"?
I don't think that "I don't want X to exist" is a sound framework for determining what's ethical, especially in situations where harm is minimized. Imposing the will of another over someone who doesn't conform, when not conforming does not cause harm, is not moral. Even if that restriction is formed by majority consensus, why are those opinions valued above the individual?
To counter the boiled goat example, we brush roast chicken with egg all the time. It seems like an arbitrary distinction to make one anathema but not the other.
In the parable you mentioned, there's objectively self-harm from cutting pieces off yourself whereas lab-grown meat does not originate from a sapient source that experiences pain and discomfort.
I am not actually sure if this is possible, if this still falls within the bounds of nobody being hurt or not giving consent. I personally fall pretty deep into the “An it harm none do what ye will” camp. I would actually say that the metaphor of a pendulum is incorrect — the restriction of non-harmful (to actual people, not intangible morals) freedoms doesn’t have a beneficial range, it’s a scale purely of negatives.
My immediate emotion trying to imagine it was revulsion. Because human, not because lab-grown.
Even if I knew the meat didn't come directly from human, even if I knew it were perfectly safe (see prion/disease comments...), and even as someone who's pretty curious about new-to-me foods, human-derived tissue feels too taboo for me.
It feels like one of those cases of taboo where there's probably good reason to be suspicious of it being true.
Like visiting a new village and everyone tells you not to drink the pond water that's perfectly crystal clear with no grass around the edges, because it's taboo.
I guess my question is, who wanted this? Lab grown is presumably much more expensive than analog meat, and apparently people don't taste very good as meat goes, so I suppose the taboo is the appeal? Beyond a once-off taste for curiosity's sake I can't see most people stomaching this for long.
From the article: the artist who wants to raise awareness and spark discussion, folks who want a kit to eat themselves, and money hungry venture capitalists.
On a gross and tangential note: one's own hair and finger/tow nails and callouses are a re-newable resource. Hang up on meat alone is just not being imaginative enough.
I mean we probably don’t have excellent data on whether people taste good. I doubt any of the reported data involved trained chefs with access to ingredients — information I have found generally involved primitive ritual sacrifice or stranded starving people.
I've read an article about someone with culinary experience trying it, but cursory googling isn't turning it up. Most people compare it to pork or veal - as I recall the food taster also said veal.
My first concern is safety. Prions like some mentioned above and also "we don't know what we don't know" type of thoughts.
My second concern is "why do we want to consume ourselves?"
I don't think I'd try it. I don't see a point, and it seems morally wrong to me in some way. I wouldn't judge others who would try it, because I understand the curiosity. I would ask them what it tastes like, ha.
I think there's something to be said about some things being sacred (in a secular sense), and that we lose our humanity when we violate the sacredness of those things.
I think if nobody is being hurt, then it's fine. People said that about gay marriage too, and it really wasn't a big deal, the fabric of humanity remained whole.
I think the argument there is whether heterosexuality is sacred. "Humanness" is something that is and always should be viewed as sacred.
My point is distilling what makes an aspect of the human experience an example of "humanness" itself is highly subjective. What is an example of "humanness"? What's taboo enough to deny someone's humanity? Are cannibalistic societies of the past inhuman?
Any element of the physical or metaphysical (ex. consciousness) essence of a human is part of "humanness". Tbh, it's not that subjective as far as subjective things go.
*Inhumane. Yes.
Does that hold if the reason for the cannibalism is in fact their humanity? Such as funerary rites? That was a holding of humanity as so sacred it required consumption of the person. (Christianity does this symbolically (or transubstantially) but the practice has existed in reality)
I think it's hard not to transplant our concept of sacredness, holiness, and just our values onto other societies. And maybe there's an absolute moral line and maybe there isn't. But everything seems to be in a shade of grey imo.
I meant to refer to cannibalism merely for the sake of eating or novelty. Cannibalism that was explicitly for honoring the sacredness of human essence I wouldn't consider a threat to a society's humanity.
That reminds me of the short story I always loved - "The Food of the Gods" by Arthur C. Clarke, published in "The Wind from the Sun" collection.