Take Away Their Titles 🤬

 

Saw something on Twitter recently that I assumed HAD to be a deepfake video edited beyond recognition.  In it, a "bioethics" speaker actually promotes the spread of Alpha-Gal Syndrome as a moral obligation to prevent people from eating meat.  If you're unfamiliar, AGS is the new tick-borne disease that renders a person not just allergic to meat but unable to be anywhere near livestock or around the scent of recently prepared meat.  Those affected describe being unable to walk into a gas station where meat products were recently prepared lest their throats close; others get drowsy and pass out behind the wheel when driving past a cattle truck. This isn't merely a disease that forces you to give up EATING meat, it forces you to become a shut-in and carry an Epi-Pen at all times since cattle, pigs, meat, dairy products and byproducts are literally everywhere.  Farmers and ranchers affected with the condition have had to get rid of their entire stock or switch to chickens because even breathing the dust from these animals triggers anaphylaxis.  

The video was not edited or fake.  Here's an abstract from the original paper, entitled "Beneficial Bloodsucking":

"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. We then defend what we call the Convergence Argument: If x-ing prevents the world from becoming a significantly worse place, doesn't violate anyone's rights, and promotes virtuous action or character, then x-ing is strongly pro tanto obligatory; promoting tickborne AGS satisfies each of these conditions. Therefore, promoting tickborne AGS is strongly pro tanto obligatory. 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."




One sentence in & already the paper is dangerously wrong.

First the fuck off, a 2-second Google search tells you that Alpha-Gal CAN be fatal and has already claimed the life of a 47-year-old New Jersey man.  But aside from that, infecting the population with a chronic illness that limits their ability to move freely in the world is the exact opposite of "bioethics".  Unless you plan to kill/quarantine all cattle, sheep & pigs and make meat a Schedule I controlled substance, this would only lead to millions of people unable to work or function in the world.  Livestock transport on highways would have to be banned, lest an affected person pass out at the wheel & kill everyone.  And judging by Oprah's uphill battle against the beef industry way back in '96, I'm guessing you're not gonna have much luck getting those kinds of laws passed, Pardner.

If it's such a great idea, let me suggest starting with yourselves, Mr. Blake Hereth & Parker Crutchfield.  Go ahead and infect yourselves with this life-ruining disease and report back.  Be like the guy who ingested a petri dish of H. pylori to prove it was the cause of gastric ulcers.  But don't you dare suggest infecting OTHERS with this or any other infectious disease under the guise of morality or ethics.  It's this exact type of behavior that makes people buy into dangerous conspiracy theories when new diseases arise and distrust health experts about important things like vaccines.  You should be not only ashamed but professionally penalized for spreading such an abhorrent idea.  

If that sounds extreme, just remember:  I'm not the one suggesting killing and crippling people to spread my fanatical beliefs and calling it a moral imperative.