If I Ate Lab-Grown Human Tissue or Organs, Would I Be Considered a Cannibal?

i want to eat man flesh

I prefer mine alive and wriggling.

Fava beans anyone?

What if instead of growing "human" body parts to eat, they grew a slab of meat using the genes of a cow...?

Would it be more cost effective [and maybe better for the environment] to grow animal meat in a lab vs the "traditional" method?

@rosen380,
While it is possible, and its been debated before, the scale and cost are two big portions. In theory the mean could be tailored to be perfect Choice, Grade A beef, or pork, with the perfect mix of marbling and taste. But, the texture might be different since the muscles won't be toned from use. That might not be a bad thing considering how much people like veal. But its also expensive since you are delivering pur proteins and nutrients. it is much much much more efficient. However, just like people shy away from irradiated food cause of the perception that its "unnatural" or "radioactive" they get squeemish thinking about meat being grown in a petri dish. Also there are several hundred thousand jobs associated with the growing, transporting, and processing of live meat. its difficult to take that away.

I am so tired of choosing things to eat.

Most of the food in stores are bad for you (even the stuff that is supposed to be good for you is bad for you).

I want to just take a pill for my food and be done with it.

I also want everyone to wear a silver jumpsuit for clothing, but that won't happen for at least ten years. ;)

Oooh I'd like to contribute instead of slaughtering and having cows and chickens who can't even walk from their tiny little dark holes where they are grown and cows thigh deep in their own feces why not grow them instead? Imagine growing the breasts of a chicken or the ribs of a cow etc... why talk about eating humans?

Understand my comment up there is my response to watching foodinc while it would appear extremely cruel, you gotta think that it is necessary to feed such a massive nation. We can't just be like "hey lets hunt for our food" domestication is where it's at.

Technically and morally, I think that eating vat-grown human meat would still be cannibalism because the tissue is derived from our own species. There is even some resistance (in most societies) to consuming near relatives such as monkeys, but of course this happens as well.

Happily, there would be no reason for normal folk to try this as meat grown from a whole lot of other animals would be available to us using the same technology. Siberian tiger burgers and polar bear meatloaf may one day be sold in gourmet stores, all without harming the tissue donor. We might one day eat guilt-free Bluefin Tuna again. I look forward to designer meats that have no well-defined link to any particular animal, but highly engineered for texture, flavor, and aroma, all with the blessings of Mario Batali or Bobby Flay.

Vat-grown human tissue will probably be available through back channels, and I wouldn't put it past the extreme cuisine fanatic to try "celebrity" meats, grown from surreptitiously acquired DNA. I can see the lawsuits now, and the angry interviews on E!

This may all sound like bad science fiction now, but SF has the tendency to come true, in some form or another.

Yes, I think it would be. Lab grown or otherwise you are still consuming human tissue.

Lou
www.privacy-online.eu.tc

Of course it would be cannibalism...
Dictionary.com defines it as "the eating of human flesh by another human being."

Even though it is vat grown, it's still human flesh.

And really, of all the twenty types that are being grown, do you want to be eating "erectile tissue"??? I think not.

I like what MarcusM suggests...give me my Siberian tiger burgers and polar bear meatloaf...Just cut me off a piece from that extruded slab over there...

Well, the offcuts from the lab could be immediately reprocessed as hospital cafeteria food (ideal for 'mystery meat'). Gotta recycle, you know.

It's still cannibalism no matter what. The original tissue came from a live human. It was kept alive and grown artificially. It is a part of whoever it came from. The experts said themselves that it is identical to the original donor tissue. Eating it is just a good or bad as eating part of that person.

Soylent Green. It's made from people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Aaarrrghh!

Let's see, would Hannibal the Cannibal eat lab growned meat or would he go to market and harvest it the old fashioned way? By drugging his victims and tying them up and slicing them up while they're still alive.

Still human cells - still cannibalism. Let us recall that beyond moral and nausea, anything a human can have you can have, making the diesease vector prime. If I am eating a cow, even raw, I am only succeptible to the very few diseases that can cross between the species. Poulty? Fish? Even better. That is also why eating monkey is so very dangerous - HIV anyone?

Now growing meat of other animals seems fine, except that it has to be "fed" purified "pre-digested" nutrients - the same nutrients that it would get "in the wild." Why go through the cost to craft a "growing medium" for this artifical meat, when it will never be as efficient as the biological engine (the digestive system) that the animal already has? How could lab grown meat ever be cheaper than an animal that I can feed grain, grass, and weeds?

Not to mention, you have not done anything moral for animal kind. If lab meat underpriced cows, do you think they would be set free to run wild. No, they would be whole-sale slaughtered and would quickly aproach extinctions (note the case of "heritage" non-comercial sheep, horses, chickens, etc - raised only by hobby breeders and eternially near extinction of the breed).

If you want truely moral meat, raise and slaughter it yourself. I raise, kill, clean, butcher, cook, and eat about 15% of my yearly meat myself - and I'm always looking to increase that amount. That is moral. I am responsible for the animal's treatment and I must look it in the eye as it dies for my table. Thus, I enjoy it and appreciate it - and, the animal had a relitively pain free life (because I didn't want it to die before I could eat it).

Growing meat to further seperate man from the natural act of killing and eating flesh is far from morality, but very close to hypocracy.