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Underground > Laboratory >

A Soggy (see Long) Form of Pork

22:57 / 03.12.09

Playing on a sideproject, I found an interesting article about an attempt to grow human flesh for culinary purposes. In the US, there's already a growing fashion for cloning domestic meat. And to further illustrate how enthusiastically the world of business is finding our scientific advancement, on an NPR article about cloned meat, there was a side story of supposedly allergy free cat cloning.

Designer world, here we come. Makes me want to watch Repo! again. Except, in this world, I don't think Giles will be singing.

Can we take a quick poll? Would you eat cloned human?

Could we bridge from the Temple? Theoretically, (and I know there's no way to prove anything here), what are people's ideas about clones, metaphysically? Do they share the same soul? Does the 'soul' imprint in any way on DNA? Would clones share a consciousness, however minute?

And if we ever get there, what would be the implications of a giant clone-cow industry, where the meat is produced from a handful of stock individuals? Would all their pain and fear be united? If it's a possible future, is there any way to tap that energy?

Or we could just stick with the 'human temptation' survey.

08:16 / 04.12.09

Would you eat cloned human?

I don't personally see any ethical issue with eating "vat-grown" tissue, the article isn't talking about growing whole human clones expressly for the purpose of consumption.

Of course there are certain health issues that come with cannibalism. Cloned human meat is more likely to contain diseases which could affect the consumer as both are from the same species.

I think there is an old Lab thread kicking around somewhere about this topic (I'll post a link if I find it).

In theory cloning meat in general might be more environmentally sound assuming it proved to require less resources than current methods of meat production but it would require a level of technology that not everyone has access to at the moment.

Could we bridge from the Temple? Theoretically, (and I know there's no way to prove anything here), what are people's ideas about clones, metaphysically? Do they share the same soul? Does the 'soul' imprint in any way on DNA? Would clones share a consciousness, however minute?

I don't personally believe in souls. However, a pair of clones would effectively be twins. Raise them separately and you would have two entirely different people. Clones would no more share conciousness than twins do (ie, they don't).

Would all their pain and fear be united? If it's a possible future, is there any way to tap that energy?

Unlike regular cows?

Pain and fear are not forms of energy, they are emotional states.

Cultivating meat in vito for human consumption is not quite the same thing as cloning animals. What would be produced would not be a whole animal, it would most likely not even have a functioning central nervous system.

14:52 / 07.12.09

From a Templey perspective, the zip from cannibalism is that you kill a person to get it - you're consuming part of some other self.

Growing it in a lab means no self, no zip. It's just a processed food... a bit like guacamole that isn't made from avocadoes (which, yes, was already marketed by Kraft).

Probably more nutritious than that.

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:50 / 07.12.09

Don't worry too much, old chaps! This isn't an article about an attempt to cultivate human meat for human consumption - it's an article about an attempt to cultivate something like pork without an animal being attached in the conventional sense of the term, for human consumption, which the writer then takes as a springboard to imagine that, once it's technologically possible to create edible human meat without eating people, it will be done. Not currently in process - and if they can't get something which can be specifically likened to pork without qualification, I imagine that it will take a long time before there is even the technological base to clone something resembling the rich blend of tastes of human meat (especially given the greater risk of meat-borne disease) - human flesh for skin grafts, sure, but not as part of the food production industry, I'd imagine. I mean, who'd want that public relations nightmare? given how fashed people get about stem cells and embryos, which food producer would have the resources to culture industrial quantities of human-like meat and any desire to do so?

08:49 / 08.12.09

which food producer would have the resources to culture industrial quantities of human-like meat and any desire to do so?

Well I've always had my suspicions about Quorn but...

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

23:52 / 08.12.09

given how fashed people get about stem cells and embryos, which food producer would have the resources to culture industrial quantities of human-like meat and any desire to do so?

Maybe not in truly industrial quantities, but what about celebrities marketing their own cloned tissue for consumption? I can see that being popular (although perhaps only briefly).