Academics Say It’s Morally Obligatory To Bioengineer Ticks To Stop You Eating Meat

A stupid man will make stupid mistakes. He will show up on TV being escorted into the back of a police cruiser. An intelligent man will make intelligent mistakes. He will show up in documentaries and history books.

A midwit will make midwit mistakes. He will show up in the pages of peer-reviewed journals.

Our paper is “Beneficial Bloodsucking” from Messers Parker Crutchfield and Blake Hereth, in the august pages of Bioethics.

Their Abstract (with my emphasis):

The bite of the lone star tick spreads alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a condition whose only effect is the creation of a severe but nonfatal red meat allergy. Public health departments warn against lone star ticks and AGS, and scientists are working to develop an inoculation to AGS. Herein, we argue that if eating meat is morally impermissible, then efforts to prevent the spread of tickborne AGS are also morally impermissible. After explaining the symptoms of AGS and how they are transmitted via ticks, we argue that tickborne AGS is a moral bioenhancer if and when it motivates people to stop eating meat...It is presently feasible to genetically edit the disease-carrying capacity of ticks. If this practice can be applied to ticks carrying AGS, then promoting the proliferation of tickborne AGS is morally obligatory.

You will say, if you are in a jocular mood, that this is an example of stupid men making stupid errors. It isn’t, though. After all, they use most of their words correctly and are employed at a well known university teaching your kids that eating meat is bad. For which you pay them a lot of money.

This is equally obviously not intelligent men making intelligent mistakes. This paper will be forgotten almost by the time it takes you to read this article.

How is it a creature can develop an allergy to eating red meat? A creature can only develop a food allergy to a food that it ordinarily could eat. We know via untold thousands of years of observations that the creature man eats red meat. So man is a red meat eater.

News of this has not reached academia.

The authors open their paper, “Among the best and most widely accepted arguments in applied ethics are those concluding that eating meat is morally wrong.” Widely accepted? Only by, we presume, other academics.

Among whomever, this is going to be hard news for lions, tigers, and bears, to name just three species of meat eaters. What academics propose to feed these beasts instead of meat is, so far as I know, never discussed. Perhaps teams of graduate students could be led out into the woods to “raise awareness” against the immorality of eating meat. That some will themselves become eaten meat is a risk I’m willing to take.

At any rate, our authors “stipulate that eating meat is wrong.” It is a premise with them.

This is not in their paper, but one argument that eating meat is bad if the meat-eating species is more cognitively advanced than the meat-providing species. That means, for instance, eagles eating mice is bad. Yet crabs, less advanced than eagles, will eat an eagle that has fallen onto a beach. So it goes both ways. Somewhere around a quarter to a third or so of known animals eat meat, not to mention bacteria and plants which take the leftovers. If we’re going to fix this Holocaust of meat eating, we’re going to need a lot more than ticks.

Here they are on those ticks (my emphasis):

Our main conclusion is that we should promote a particular tickborne syndrome: alpha-gal syndrome (AGS). AGS is caused by the allergen alpha-gal, which in humans causes an allergic reaction to eating mammalian meat and mammalian organs.

People who have the allergy may have a variety of symptoms, including hives, gastrointestinal upset (e.g., vomiting and diarrhea, or anaphylaxis in severe cases. Often, these symptoms present 2-6h after ingestion of mammalian meat.

Anaphylaxis, you will recall, is shock. Which kills some people. Which, to our authors, is morally permissible because the tick that causes this is eating the person’s blood, which I guess isn’t considered meat. Which means blood sausage is back on the menu.

The tick bite is thus a punishment for the afflicted whenever they eat red meat. The authors are in favor of this corporal and, sometimes, capital punishment. This is an oddity because usually anti-meat eaters are against punishment. Well, we always guessed they were lying.

Our authors do seem to be squeamish, though. Not all meat eaters will be bitten by the tick, even if the wildest hopes of these academics are fulfilled. The unbitten will continue feasting on meats unpunished. But if meat eating is wrong, and punishing those who eat it is to be promoted or at least not discouraged, there is no good reason to leave punishment to an unreliable insect. Why not beat and execute unbitten meat eaters in the same magnitude and proportion as they would suffer as if they had been bit? This punishment “helps them satisfy their obligation not to eat meat, an obligation they would otherwise be disinclined to satisfy”.

More from these logic-mad vegetarians (again my emphasis):

We aim to establish the main claim that we should promote the proliferation of AGS by promoting the ticks that transmit it. To be clear, we do not argue that, today, we are morally obligated to promote the spread of tickborne AGS, because presently it is not possible to do so. But it is feasible to genetically edit the disease-carrying capacity of ticks. If we are right, then today we have the obligation to research and develop the capacity to proliferate tickborne AGS and, tomorrow, carry out that proliferation...

…the necessary advancements are not too far off, if not already enacted.

I suppose this lets conspiracy theorists carve another notch on their belts. They have so many they’re going to have to start wearing suspenders.

Here is the second premise in their main argument:

2. Promoting tickborne AGS (A) prevents the world from becoming a significantly worse place, (B) doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, and (C) promotes virtuous action or character.

My only comment on that is Western Michigan University, from which both authors score paychecks, charges about \$15 thousand a year for in-state tuition. I believe they take checks. Maybe their football team makes it worth the money. Go team.

Incidentally, though ticks favor deer, deer don’t eat meat, so perhaps the genetic engineering they favor will allow ticks to go after bears and other meat-eating creatures.

Funniest part of their article are the anticipated objections. They sat together and thought to themselves “What is the worst people could say of our quality thinking?” They came up with this (emphasis theirs):

The Sanctity-of-Life Objection: Editing the genes of the lone star tick and other ticks that transmit AGS is morally wrong because it violates the sanctity of life.

No, not your sanctity. The sanctity of the bugs. Now that is funny.

(Readers will recall my plea to help universities lose prestige. These authors heard my call.)

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