Subject:
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Re: Flesh eaters stole my brain (was Re: Why is cockfighting bad?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 24 Jul 2000 11:44:59 GMT
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Viewed:
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1647 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
> > In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
> not that I'd ever take drinks from my friends, oh no, not me)
What friends? ;-)
> > > > In addition, if we breed animals with no brains or pain receptors, are we
> > > > then free to slay them for food, since they won't feel pain or know • anything
> > > > about their environments?
> > >
> > > Yes. Absolutely.
> >
> > Whoa! I didn't expect you to say that. I'll have to think about
> > where to go from there...
>
> Here's one place... I agree with Chris that I'd rather not have to be in the
> biz of raising animals to eat them. He'd rather we didn't eat meat, I'd rather
> we got our meat from vats (the tissue cultures are, in a sense, animals with
> no brains).
I don't mind if you eat meat from vats. As I said, I might even do so a bit to
try it out. I find myself very rarely wanting sausage or bacon.
> Stangl got it right, shrewd farmers have nothing to fear from vats... and the
> non shrewd ones ought to have the props knocked out from under them... a high
> rate of bankruptcies in farm country, while personally painful for the
> bankruptees, is a good thing at the macro level, as I see it... We need to fix
> 70 years or more of distortions
Yup.
> How do we get from here to there correctly?
Let the technology and the market worry about it. All things will become clear
in time.
> Leaving aside the morality of the genetic manipulation aspects of things, to
> me there is a bit of a question I haven't satisfactorily analysed about
> animals contributing stuff. If it's not OK to eat them (to me an open
> question, at best, remember, I say it is) is it OK to slice them up and get
> stuff out of them?
Under certain circumstances. Foremost, if an animal dies anyway, why not? If
you need the genes, they're there. If you need living tissue, the tissue is
there and alive for a while after the beast is gone.
What if it can be removed surgically and the beast put back together? That
would be better than killing it, if not exactly moral. I'd do it (I mean have
it done to me).
We could appoint animal rights activists as their guardians, and then bargain
with them for the right to do so. For instance, if the desireable steers could
live a life of luxury in exchange for tissue samples, that might be worth it.
Otherwise, dunno.
> Or under the needle to lose an embyro
> to be transmogrified into the tissue through developmental and growth stage
> (see, there's my cousin and her fruit flies again) manipulation.
Cool. That seems doable.
> I'm thoroughly OK with that. (Animals don't have rights the way we do) But is
> Chris?
I wouldn't say thoroughly. But I think improvement is improvement. And I
think they do and don't have rights the way we do depending on the context. In
some contexts, rights are a fabrication. In others, they are a legalism. In
others, they go only to those who assert them. They are not actually handed
down by God. It just depends on what you mean.
> And where is Dave going to get his new kidney?
Himself. Is insurance provider included sample banking, and he bought the
extra premium that keeps extra clones of his organs on ice and ready to go.
Additionally, he belongs to the kidney coop where others of his boodtype (or
whatever) periodically donate tissue, so that there is a constant supply of
fresh tissue from which to grow replacements. No problem there.
> Some convict?
This would be a good approach for modern society. Not forced, but as an
option. I'd consider buying insurance that was willing to pony up the bucks to
buy organs from prisoners if I found myself in need.
> If it's not his own tissue, do we need a waiver on file from the donor?
If our lawyers determine that that is necessary for liability management, then
yes.
> Again, to me, no problem, organs are sellable as are tissue samples,
> but clear title must be established to avoid problems. Something that
> includes a test of "sound mind" will be good. Once we ...get the organ
> market opened a bit wider so the free market can reduce the waiting lists
> for organs, I can forsee a new market for something like title insurance to
> help organ recepients clear their conscience and avoid lawsuits.
Yup. And roll in quality assurance too, so you know your new liver isn't
coming from that drunk who froze in the alley behind the local grade school the
other night.
> Another tangential point...
>
> I guess I'd be mentally OK with ritualistic consumption of human flesh, if the
> flesh was given up voluntarily by the human in question because the human
> WANTED me to eat it (c.f. _Stranger in a Strange Land_, where Michael
> Valentine Smith relates how the Martians all eat their dead to honor them...).
Does this statement imply "but not in other cases" or something? What about
war dead to feed the nations during restoration? What if you kill an intruder?
And others?
> But I'd have a hard time choking it down.
What if it was vat grown?
I'd try it in a second. I'm imagining a big cylinder of meat like you see at
those gyros places, slurping out of the assemply vat on a skewer, and served
from kiosks and trailers at festivals. Who cares what species the genes are,
if it's good? (ALERT, ALERT, Double standard in progress -- I just realized
that I'd still be squeamish about eating a big tube of earthworm meat ;-)
Oh well,
Chris
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