Rick Monteverde wrote:
Sure it's propagated from a clean tested starter batch, etc. The problem is that what you don't know can kill you, and there's so much that is unknown, and so much that can kill you.
If this is a comment about any kind of cultured meat -- beef, pork or human -- then it is well taken. I agree that we should test this carefully before making it available to consumers.
If this comment pertains to cultured human flesh only, then I disagree. It seems unlikely to me that a diet of human flesh could be toxic or give rise to long term problems. It would if you ate too much, of course, but so does any meat. First, human flesh is genetically similar to pork and other meats. (Similar enough that organs from pigs are used in human hearts.) Second, we are inside human flesh already, and it does not cause any problems. Third, the only edible product of the human body widely used today, mother's milk, is extremely good for people. It is the best diet for infants.
Human cannibals have seldom eaten much meat. Most cannibalism has been ceremonial, either at a funeral of a friend, or after a battle when you eat a vanquished enemy the way chimpanzees do. This is because people are difficult to catch and cultivate, and it takes a great deal of energy to catch them. It is easier to catch deer or fish. However, there is evidence that some Central and South American cultures did eat enough human meat to make up a significant fraction of their diet. The evidence is fragmentary, but there is no sign that this diet hurt them. They thrived, and their descendents are alive today. (Most are unaware of their ancestors' proclivities.)
Do you know how much of the human genome is of recent (and ancient) viral and bacterial origin?
Probably no more than any other mammal such as a cow, pig or deer, and there is no harm in eating them. We are evolved to thrive on them. BUT only when they are cooked, by the way. See the book "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" by R. Wrangham. Highly recommended!
The same factors in less similar meat, or the GMO's that the food hippies are so terrified of, might not be as risky or familiar to human tissue as the stuff in 'close' meat. Familiarity breeds danger. So there's that and the damaged proteins and their coding, prions, unknown triggers for cancers and other diseases, mutations, etc.
I doubt it. Most of these things are destroyed by cooking, and I think we can test a starting sample and be sure there are no prions. I would be very wary of eating raw human flesh, however.
I am wary of eating most raw foods, for the reasons described by Wrangham. - Jed
