A Short Rhapsody on Artificial Meat
Jason Kuznicki on Apr 18th 2008
None of the experts were sure if there is a large market of early adopters who want to eat test tube meat for environmental, health or ethical reasons.
For all the talk of high-tech meat production, attendees of the first In-Vitro Meat Symposium didn’t put their stomachs where their mouths were. Instead of sampling early versions of in vitro meat, they stuck to local fare.
I’ll be an early adopter because it would just be really cool. Besides, I could tell my grandkids “You bet I ate it! I ate it the first day I could. I wasn’t afraid at all!” And then they would smile over plates of cultured filet mignon with truffles, and they’d wonder at the strange, primitive world I grew up in, and at how very progressive I still was, even despite being 132 years old.
I’d light a bioengineered cigar — cancer having been cured half a century ago — and tell them a story about how gross it was to drive by an animal processing plant back in the old days, and how uneasy we all felt about the fate of the poor animals. The great-great-grandkids would ask to see our digital photos of one of the first same-sex marriages ever performed, and Scott and I would tell all the old stories again, about how we wondered if the world had been suddenly populated by lunatics when dozens of people were seen talking to themselves on the first “hands-free” cell phones. (The great-great-grands meanwhile passing one another retrieved video clips of the old days via telepathy.)
I may not believe in the singularity. I don’t have much religion at all. But the future is going to be one very cool place.
Filed in The Biosphere, The Bistro
This is probably the sickest thing I think I’ve ever heard of (though not the first I’ve heard of it)… albeit just slightly ahead of how meat is procured these days. It is just another false barrier of sanitization that blurs the distinction between food and life, which ultimately works to devalue the latter. This is, unfortunately, the way our society is heading… I’ve seen it myself, watching as a family cries during Charlotte’s Web and the next moment heads out for a sausage-covered pizza.
While you’re compiling those pictures Jason, you should make sure you keep some good ones of cows around too, because once we perfect this process they will go the way of the once-proud buffalo. Reduced to a few token herds tucked away for kitschy tourism; emasculated husks of their previous glory.
‘Tis a brave new world indeed.
I’m not sure why you think “test tube meat” devalues life, Greyson. If you have an ethical objection to slaughtering animals for food, wouldn’t the ability to eat meat without killing be a positive development? I’d think good quality artificial meat would eliminate a major barrier to animal rights, since people could then oppose factory farming without having to become vegan which, for better or worse, most people will never do.
And yeah, the future is going to be awesome. It already is.
I’m with Mr. Windmills on this one. If it’s more environmentally friendly, raises none of the ethical issues that meat now has, AND tastes just as good, then there seems no reason not to embrace it as a simple improvement over the status quo.
I’m a little confused on how reducing the entire cow population down to say, a couple hundred or thousand is a BAD thing. We wouldn’t have to feed them so much grain - thus freed to feed people, animal antiobiotics companies may even start going out of business, pastures could be turned over to farmers or remain pastures for milk cows to actually have room to roam around isntead of being in stalls their whole lives - purely organic milk would be cheaper and more plentiful, making organic cheese more available as well.
Agreed on all counts. Reducing the number of cows would also help solve the greenhouse gas problem we’ve been having, since they excrete so much methane.
Alright, unfortunately I’ve only had a few spare moments last night and tonight, so I’m not going to be able to get to this tonight… (which may actually be fortunate for you afterall)… I promise I’ll expand on my comments in the next couple days though, so don’t forget to check back.
Okay, I’m gonna give this my best shot, but I kind of have the feeling that its not something I can express in one go… And forgive me the length and somewhat clumsy blocking, I’ve tried to keep each topic within one paragraph, and to expand on it as much as necessary.
First, Mr. Quixote: It appears you have misinterpretated my objection. I don’t object to the slaughtering of animals, per se, what I object to is a denatured approach to sustaining life. Today’s meat industry certainly has a denatured approach, animals are encaged, generally mistreated, and the killing itself is performed by undesirables hidden away from view while the presentation is sanitized as much as possible. This still isn’t anywhere near as unnatural as the sort of processes that are being explored in this article. This scenario stems from the school of thought that humans could and should become “self-sufficient,” totally unreliant on any other creature for our own survival. An idea that begs this sort of question: “Why do we need any other sort of life, or at least any life that doesn’t bow to our command and yield some immediate benefit for humanity?” Of course in reality we will never be self-sufficient, as we’re always one catastrophic plague or disaster away from a reduction to destitution, and how woefully unprepared for such an existence we would be in this scenario.
Society’s progress cannot become, as it has always threatened to be, humanity’s pursuit to overcome nature or bend it to our will, but must be an attempt to understand our place within it (rest-assured it is a place of importance and honor.) Only then can we truly hope to escape the fate of so many other once-dominant, but ultimately failed species, our predecessors.
Further, Kimberly raises an interesting point, which I admit I hadn’t thought about before. Milk and dairy products would be much harder to replicate in this sort of fashion. Now I’m not an expert agricultural economist, nor agro-scientist, but I can imagine what would happen to the price of milk if suddenly there was no real market for the offspring that are a by-product of the dairy industry (lactation of course necessitates pregnancy, though I would imagine that a mix of hormones could imitate pregnancy to alleviate the need to actually reproduce, or alternatively large-scale late-term abortions could be performed, but I don’t think that would increase the availability of organic milk or cheese, or increase the quality of life of the animals involved as Kimberly suggests.) Again I’m not an expert, but I’m relatively certain that the cows that spend most of their lives in stalls are of the milking variety and the ones that spend more time grazing are beef cattle (otherwise the beef would be too fatty, and the milk cows would have complications due to over-extended utters.) Of course if there was no benefit to raising average quality meat and no need to reproduce regularly then it wouldn’t matter if the cows were entirely reduced to living in stalls…
It is true that the meat and dairy industries today produce enormous amounts of methane emissions and require a good deal of feed (albeit feed that Americans wouldn’t consider food fit for themselves,) but this sort of meat production would inherently come with a litany of costs and by-products as well… you can’t just produce biomass without any biological input, and there would certainly be an increase in power usage as well. But I’ll let those arguments aside.
Now I suppose it falls to me to propose a counter-suggestion. I certainly understand, as our friend Don Q. asserts, that the vast majority of people will not become vegans. I’m even one of them, being woefully dependent on an occassional ice cream binge. However, it is imperative that humanity reduce the proportion of meat in its diet, irregardless of where the meat comes from: factory farming, factory meat rendering, family farming, or hunting. Americans’ diets are not only ethically questionable, but unquestionably unsustainable. Of course as a lover of liberty I’m not proposing meat rations, re-education or any sort of top-down controls. However, I do hope and believe that an informed and virtuous populace living within a free market will ultimately correct the abuses that we are currently experiencing… Does this mean there is a place for this sort of meat rendering? Sure, it is clearly better than Soylent Green, but it certainly is not the panacea that its proponents imagine… and if it does turn out to be the end-game of the future, I promise the future will be awesome, but not in the Ninja Turtles sense, more along the lines of the biblical fire and brimstone variety.
I’ll leave you with a great quote that epitomizes the failed line of reasoning I spoke of above:
“Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she’s losing. Well I say, hard cheese.” — Mr. Burns
Jason, will you also attempt to impress your descendants with how you were an early-adopter of simulated human meat?
Nope.
Now, I think that there would be no moral reason against it, provided that you weren’t manufacturing brain tissue, but I wouldn’t personally find it all that appetizing. I suspect that no one else would either, and that no one would bother trying to bring the stuff to market. Meanwhile I look forward to the day when, beset by heart disease, I can donate a cheek swab and have it grown into a fully functional new heart. (Don’t you?)
I know it sounds like a dodge of the tricky ethical issues, but it’s not that much of one. This just isn’t going to be an important issue, much as the general repugnance for cannibalism today — and not the law — keeps the practice to a minimum.
(Oh, and a question for you in return: Will you embarrass your descendants by being a late adopter of humane and environmentally friendly synthetic beef — even after it tastes as good as the real thing? How many cows are you going to torture and how much greenhouse gas are you going to emit to keep yourself from feeling yucky?)
From initial comment, Greyson appears to subscribe to the Leon Kass school of ethics: if something is “unnatural” and makes you feel yucky, it must be morally suspect. Do I really need to point out the flaws in this sentiment? Can such objections even be called arguments?
Chuck, I’ll admit I don’t have any real experience with Leon Kass, so I can’t answer that claim directly… I would tend to guess that you’ve oversimplified his arguments, but I’d also guess that his arguments have little to nothing to do with mine, so I won’t give them much attention.
However, I’m not all too certain that I’m making a moral argument, at least not a moral argument against the process itself… though perhaps morality questions enter once I extend the discussion from the process to its results. I’m more struck by your use of quotes around unnatural, though perhaps they’re directed to Mr. Kass’ and not my use of the term. I’ll admit I’ve often had a tough time grasping the concept of natural vs. unnatural, but this case seems much more clear-cut than most. Can anyone make some attempt to show how this sort of meat rendering could possibly be considered harmonious with nature? Now if you want to argue that the logic I’ve described above, that is the “progress of society must come at the expense of, or with a domination of nature,” isn’t flawed as I’ve suggested then we have an interesting discussion on our hands, but unless you prescribe to that school of thought you simply must admit that this process is an unnatural one.
I’ll end with another quote, this one from perhaps the finest argument against vegetarianism I’ve heard in the last 20 years:
“This IS necessary, this IS necessary, LIFE feeds on LIFE feeds on LIFE feeds on LIIIIIIFE” -Tool
Greyson,
I’ve given your longer comment a good bit of thought, which (obviously) it deserved. I’m not sure I quite agree with you, though.
I don’t object to the slaughtering of animals, per se, what I object to is a denatured approach to sustaining life.
What precisely is denatured? I’m not clear on this. Vaccines that save millions of lives are crafted by innoculating chicken eggs with viruses, and then extracting the essential principle from them. We make ultra-sharp and sterilized needles, fill them up with this stuff, and stick them into children.
You can’t tell me that that is natural. And we could add to this airplanes, computers, cell phones, and nearly everything human beings have ever done aside from eating, sleeping, and procreating.
Indeed, the unnatural extends even into the animal kingdom, an insight I owe to my friend Timothy Sandefur, who notes that the humble hermit crab commonly violates nature all the time by taking the discarded shells of crustaceans for its own.
If artificial meat had even one of the benefits that it seems likely to have — be it fewer greenhouse emissions, or cheaper cost, or greater manufacturing efficiency, or less cruelty to animals — it would be just that much better than the meat we have now. It doesn’t even have to be vastly more efficient; even if it were slightly more efficient, that would still have a large effect, just owing to the huge size of modern agribusiness.
Yes, artificial meat is weird, but the first vaccinations were very weird as well, and I am glad we got over that initial shock and learned to stay with it. I hope this technology can deliver even half of what it promises — if it did, that would be a huge breakthrough.
I look forward to the day when we can purchase cultured meat that has very little fat, no cholesterol, and a high dose of vitamins and minerals. Then I would start eating at McDonald’s EVERY DAY.
Jason has already addressed Greyson’s “unnaturalness” issue. Please look up “naturalistic fallacy” and the “is-ought problem” on Wikipedia.
Regarding milk, surely if we can produce cultured meat, cultured bovine mammary glands are around the corner. Why not? We can similarly bioengineer these pseudo-udders to produce chocolate milk if we wanted to, and pack it with vitamins. I mean, why not? Methane problem = gone.
All the ethical problems and environmental problems center on the cows themselves, so if they are eliminated, we can pump resources directly into meat and milk production. All that land currently used to pasture cattle? Turn it over to crop production to feed the world’s hungry. All that hay that cows eat and human’s can’t? Biodiesel. More corn for food means we don’t have to feel guilty about growing corn for biofuel, which takes food out of the mouths of millions of hungry people. No more guilt. There really is no down side to this.
See? Cows are the instrument of evil. Take them out of the equation and we have more and better quality food, no ethical quandaries about animal torture, a better and healthier atmosphere, etc., etc.
And McDonald’s would be good for you. But oh, I’m sorry… that wouldn’t be natural.
Again I’m feeling that my opinions here are not being fully understood, so I must apoligize for my inadequacies. My argument is not an easy one to quickly mold into brief snippets, but the blog format demands both, and I worry this might be the biggest obstacle to conveying my point, so forgive me again if I go long. Now, my apologies to the good Dr. Kuznicki, but I’m going to address Kris’ comments first. Simply because his response epitomizes a chief element of my response to Jason’s more substantive contribution.
Kris: First off, anytime you actually write “There really is no down side to this,” you should realize you’re starting to get too far off-base. You may argue that the positives outweigh the negatives, but stating that there are no negatives at all, about any matter at hand, is absolute lunacy. Very briefly, this process would still require biological fuel (we still can’t grow biomass from nothing,) and it would require much more industrial power. Your description of the cows as “instruments of evil” also should bring up red flags. Simply put, the evil that you’re speaking of derives not from bovinity, but from humanity’s adopting of the same sort of myopic and self-serving rationality that you are here supporting. The “methane problem” doesn’t derive from cows, but from gluttonous humans who have industrialized beef production, and idealized a culture and a diet that revolves around meat. Bovines lived harmoniously on this Earth for a very long time before they were denatured into the chattel we have today. Additionally, I’d wager that there wouldn’t even be a “methane problem” if humans weren’t so busy driving around creating a “carbon problem.” I’m very glad you added this though, because you’ve provided an excellent example of the slippery slope that the sort of reasoning I’ve warned against resides upon. Meat rendering may have some merit, some place in the future, but it would be folly to rely as heavily on it as you’re suggesting, and completely foresake the gifts of nature. Finally, as for your naturallistic fallacy or is-ought problem diagnoses I hope I’ve cleared it up by now, but I’d stress once more that I’m not making a moral appeal here but a pragmatic one. It is simply arrogant and wrong-headed to believe that humanity can somehow transcend nature, for more than a moment.
Now on to Jason, which of course will require a more formidable response. As I said I’ve always thought humans, myself included, have a problem understanding the difference between “natural” and “unnatural,” and this alone should serve as a warning not to discard something we don’t yet fully understand. For instance, I completely disagree with Sandefur’s dichotomy, which I can guarantee is not our first difference, nor our last, though I appreciate his work immensely. A hermit crab utilizing a piece of its environment is absolutely natural, I’m not even sure how one would begin to see it otherwise, just like a bird building a nest of twigs, or a mammal taking residence in a hollowed out log. Further, I don’t see anything unnatural in clothing (albeit there are more natural and less natural forms of clothing,) eating to celebrate, running for competition, having sex to express love, or kissing (which absolutely has a biological justification.)
Now, you have certainly identified a number of things that I think we can safely categorize amongst the “less natural,” and your use of vaccination is certainly the most salient (airplanes, computers and cell phones not being in a category quite as fundamental or comparable to what we’re talking about here: the sustenance for life.) First, I must admit that I have a less rosy opinion of modern medicine than you, at least from what I’ve gathered from your past writings. No one can argue that modern medicine hasn’t increased the duration of individual lives, and decreased the susceptibility of any particular person to a long litany of maladies. However, I do believe there is a strong argument that these are not necessarilly a net positive for humanity as a whole, and our legacy in particular, now bare with me here. While inoculation and medication have generally tended to provide for a better temporal life to each individual, or at least to those that are able to access it properly, they have also tended, conversely, to weaken the overall gene pool of humanity while at the same time strengthening the genetics of the very maladies they had hoped to address. Meat rendering would likely have a similar sort of calculus, possibly with cheaper, higher-quality food produced in a more environmentally and ethical manner in the plus column, and a decrease in biodiversity, increased susceptibility to epidemic, increased reliance on industrial power and methods for food provision, and a further detachment from traditional food production methods amongst other things in the negative column.
The pursuits that stem from the mindset that I’ve been trying to describe in my contributions here can generally be compared to an addiction. Just like the addict, without these pursuits (the addict’s drug,) society progresses on a baseline. Once this sort of meat rendering, or factory farming before it, is introduced, society appears to benefit greatly at first, but with this benefit comes a dependency. Human ingenuity is very impressive, for sure, but from my experience I think it is safe to say that we are ultimately no match for the power of nature. If we continue to follow our ego and ignore the immense dependencies that we are developing we are setting ourselves up for failure. Nature will self-correct for the mistakes we have fostered, and humanity will be the casualty.
I hope I’ve cleared things up a bit with this submission, and I’m certainly willing to expand on, or clarify anything should it be necessary. I’d like to thank everyone for an enlightening discussion and especially Jason for continuing to provide one of the more thought-provoking blogs around.
I was being facetious with the “evil cow” remark. But I would like to address some of Greyson’s points.
Why would it involve more power usage? Even if it did, don’t the benefits outweigh the costs by a large margin?
This sounds like a moralistic argument to me, not a pragmatic one. It doesn’t matter why the problem exists. Humans eat and behave as their nature dictates, and there is nothing unnatural about that. Why is it such a bad thing to defy nature once in awhile if it reduces the impact of our gluttony on the environment and on ourselves?
That may be true. But there wouldn’t be a carbon problem if we all used biofuels to power our vehicles. The exhaust of the cars of the future will be water vapor. To have enough biofuel to power the vehicles of the world will require land mass to grow the appropriate grains. That will be made easier and cheaper if mass production of cow products is removed from the equation.
When you say it is “simply arrogant and wrong-headed to believe that humanity can somehow transcend nature,” I ask “why?” We do it all the time, and life improves. You said you’re not making a moral appeal but rather a pragmatic one, but your comments about fire, brimstone, arrogance, etc. speak otherwise. Twinkies arguably are not harmonious with nature, but biblical fire and brimstone have not rained down on us for creating and eating them (yet). What, precisely, would be the pragmatic costs of switching from our current system to one involving cultured meat? You say, “Meat rendering would likely have … a decrease in biodiversity, increased susceptibility to epidemic, increased reliance on industrial power and methods for food provision, and a further detachment from traditional food production methods amongst other things in the negative column.” So let’s make plus and minus columns:
Plus
no more animal antibiotics
greater manufacturing efficiency
cheaper than raising/slaughtering real cows
more land turned over to grain
-> feed the hungry
-> more biofuel
-> environmentally friendly
-> reduce greenhouse gases
-> slow/reverse global warming
no ethical objections
tastes as good as, or better than, the real thing
good for us if cultured to contain vitamins
milk cows now free-range
Minus
it isn’t natural
decrease in biodiversity
increased susceptibility to epidemic
increased reliance on industrial power and food provision
further detachment from traditional food production methods
I think I disagree with every entry under the “minus” column.
1. Humans are part of “nature,” so anything we do is just as natural as anything a finch does, or a hermit crab, or a rhesus monkey. Bioengineering is simply an elaboration of tool use. It is fundamentally unclear to me why “unnatural” is a minus.
2. Why would there be a decrease in biodiversity? Mass-produced cattle are surely less biodiverse than their wild ancestors; I don’t understand this objection.
3. I would think with the decrease in animal antibiotics in our water supply, that susceptibility to epidemic would decrease.
4. I don’t think our reliance on industrial power and food provision would change at all. If you want a steak now, you have to rely on industrial power and food provision unless you raise your own cows. It would be the same after moving to a cultured-meat society.
5. Why is further detachment from traditional food production methods a bad thing? I certainly have no desire to witness a cow being slaughtered. Are you advocating that it is better to slaughter a cow for its meat than to collect it from Petri dishes because the former brings us closer to what nature intended?
Wow, quick reply, I don’t want to leave Jason or any others behind, but I’ve got the time this afternoon, and not tonight, to respond, so here it goes…
Kris: The evil cow comment may have been facetious, but I don’t believe the sentiment of your entire post was, and that was summed up well in that remark. Now let me address your comments in order:
Obviously we’re arguing a hypothetical here, so there are going to be some areas where you place the benefit of the doubt in a different place than I do, but with the limited data we have now I think it is safe to say that meat rendering would be a more industrial energy-intense process. Slaughterhouses and ranches today use much less light and electricity than their new lab counterparts would. The biomass that would be needed to feed the vats would certainly have to be cleaner than the grass and feed we now use to feed herds again increasing industrial energy costs, or there would be contamination problems. I’m also not as sure as you that there would be no antibiotic needs, there certainly would be less due to the energy-intensive process of keeping the lab environment clean, but with such large sums of defenseless concentrated meat you wouldn’t want to risk any infection entering and ruining the entire vat’s production, so some chemical safeguards would be necessary. Also, keep in mind that milk production would likely necessitate hormonal inputs. There would also be increased refrigeration costs as well, but this is really all a superfluous side of the discussion so I think we can at least agree that we don’t yet have the information needed to make a relative comparison and leave it at that. I’ll also grant that even if it were proven to be more energy intensive there might be countervailing factors that do more than make up for the extra expenditures, but you must grant the reverse.
I’m not sure where you see a moralistic argument in the methane problem comment. I may have included a moralistic judgment, but the comment itself is simply an expression of facts. Bovines did not create the situation we have today, there is simply no argument to be had there.
Your next comment is particularly confusing to me. First you say our behavior is natural, committing the very fallacy you thought you identified in my previous entry, but then you go on to question whether to “defy nature once in awhile” is a bad thing. I have probably erred in not illustrating enough my use of the term “natural.” My use of this term here would better be described not as “resulting from nature,” but as “harmonious with nature.” We have departed, more or less, from nature in many ways throughout our history with mixed results, but this idea would certainly be one of the most egregious departures, and I worry it would yield the worst results. You can certainly argue that bioengineering is natural seeing as it is an extension of biology itself, but if we use that label you must see that it would be subject to the laws of nature: survival of the fittest. Obviously a vat of immobile meat is not going to be fit for survival, without the intense commitment of humanity to provide for it. This is essentially my main point: through this process we are becoming wholly dependent on a process that is not only entirely reliant on human activity, but exceedingly susceptible to natural disaster.
Again, I may have used language that has been connected with moral arguments before, but the argument itself is not reliant on any moral justification. Personally, I do believe that following a path that makes humanity more vulnerable to the whims of disaster is immoral, and ultimately I believe consumption in extreme excess regardless of whether it comes from the suffering of animals or from the expense of real life itself is immoral, but I admitted long ago that I don’t expect to convert the world to this opinion, just yet. Thus, I don’t believe my argument has relied on any moral justification, but on the pragmatic notion that to follow this path commits humanity to a dependency that we simply cannot expect to feed forever, unless it is at the absolute expense of nature. Again, if you wish to follow the argument that humanity would be better off to completely subvert nature to our own understanding and reason then we have an argument… Unfortunately, I don’t believe humanity has the capacity to manage this task, and I believe with our current level of understanding, or better put misunderstanding, of nature it would be premature to argue we can do without it.
The plus-minus dichotomy again delves too deeply in hypotheticals for me to address, but I should point out that the ideal position that I am defending would not be to maintain exactly what we’re doing now. The initial problem that led to this meat rendering proposal was a need to feed a growing population, for which there are numerous other remedies that I won’t spend time delving into here. Therefore, not only would there be the pluses and minuses of pursuing your ideal path, but the opportunity costs for not pursuing mine, which briefly put would be developing a sustainable future that works in harmony with the benefits of nature. (Since my aim is not to adopt mine, but to keep from quickly and wholly adopting this proposed plan I don’t believe it is quite necessary for me to elucidate every aspect of mine, especially since this one is still so couched in hypotheticals and conjecture at this point.)
I can, however, address some of your specific objections:
1 & 4) I believe I answered earlier.
2) Biodiversity would unquestionably be decreased, just as you are right to suggest that it has been greatly, and unfortunately, decreased by our current methods. Now again, if you’re supporting the mindset that humanity can do better without nature then this isn’t a problem, but if we ever plan to work in harmony with nature the more diverse of a biological pool we have to work within, the better the results will be.
3) Again we’re into hypotheticals when trying to imagine the calculus with this one, but what I was referring to was having a diet that depends significantly on a monoculture product. If any sort of virus were to work its way into the vats it could easily lead to a widespread epidemic. Our direct food supply would also likely be much more dependent on our energy grid and communications network.
5) My argument here is that once removed from traditional methods we would be much less adaptable were any such catastrophe to occur. Just imagine in a post-apocalyptic future: would you rather be living with wealthy, high-powered New York lawyers, or with the Kalahari Bushmen? Of course it may not have to be such a catastrophic event, substitute being stranded on a deserted island, or more importantly being the first colonizers on a distant planet.
Finally, it appears more likely that our differences in opinions stem from what I have been describing: you ascribe to a school of thought that believes humanity would do better to escape nature, and bend it to our will. From my experiences, however, we lack the capacity to manage the world on our own. The world is simply too complex for our mere minds to understand it, yet those that follow this mindset cavalierly tinker with it everyday, and I worry that any short-sighted solution could bring serious long-term complications. If you are 100% right, then imagine what little we would lose by following a more measured pace? If I am 100% right, imagine what we great risks we would open ourselves to by proceeding blindly into a future we simply cannot control?
Let’s all keep in mind that any good morality must be based on practical outcomes. Thou shalt not kill, because you wouldn’t like to be killed. And there on into the entirely of human ethical thinking. A restatement of the moral philosophy Kris and Jason are following is that if we want to do it, and it doesn’t hurt any other people, then we should be allowed to do it; this is a practical statement of morality possibly older than any of the major organized world religions (and Wiccans have resurrected it!). So is Grayson’s stance that people are too simple in themselves to understand the entire environment and its workings, and therefore should mistrust any new concept that departs significantly from the state of Nature in which mankind evolved; this practice, too, interestingly, is often prescribed by neo-pagans. Both noble sentiments, as far as I’m concerned. But I would sprinkle any application of either one with some of the other. Neither can be an absolute principal, since there are moral dilemmas which resolve best with the first and others that resolve best with the second.
1. It is unnatural, and unpredictable, to infect eggs with human viruses, and it might result eventually in an untenable technological problem. This holds little water, though, against the millions of people whose lives are not only saved but also vastly improved by avoiding physical hardships they might otherwise live with until they do finally die of preventable disease.
2. It is extremely impressive to have a genuine tiger skin rug adorning my home, and since it hurts no one to kill the tigers, I should be able to buy one. The practical truth of big game hunting, though, is that it wipes out big game populations at a rate far higher than the sale rate, and the elimination of the top of any food chain is often disastrous in ways we never see until it’s too late. Hence, the CITES treaty (a good thing to understand, if you’re not familiar with it and endangered species regulation)
So, when two worthy moral principles are at odds in a question, such as this one, you really need to get down to the nitty-gritty details. Grayson thought it wasn’t worth going into, but I think the hypothetical examples are precisely where we have to go for answers. It is hypothetical situations that often give us the most valuable insight into how moral principles must be weighed against each other. They aren’t always dispositive, but they often lead to the ability to state a new principle that helps sway understanding one way or the other.
I started writing this intending to get into the issues specifically, but I find I’ve run out of time! I’ll have to come back to it, but I heartily encourage the conversation in that direction in my absence.
Scott –
On your point 1, 18th-century anti-vaccination authors indeed raised something like this objection, just with a lot of (sometimes literal) genuflecting toward God, who would punish us for interrupting His ordained plagues.
This brought two reasonable responses: First, if God really wants a plague, a trifling vaccine isn’t going to get in His way. Second, any God who would want a plague obviously isn’t all that good to begin with. What exactly were we worshiping, anyway?
Still, although point 1 lost bigtime in the 18th century, this isn’t to say that it will always be wrong. The bargain struck with nuclear weapons, for example, is rather different than the one with vaccines, and it may yet prove our undoing.
As to point 2, you’ve known me long enough to know that I’ll see your endangered species treaty and raise you… tiger farming!
That’s right: There would certainly not be a shortage of tigers if it were legal to farm them, and if the regimes governing tigers’ natural habitat had anything like a decent respect for private property. Tigers are a renewable resource that is highly in demand, and there is no reason to think that a free market would fail to provide this sort of good.
Tigers are a really, really big industry — it’s just that because they can’t legally be property, no one bothers to treat them with the respect that one gives their own future investments.
By treating tigers as this near-mystical common resource belonging to all of humanity, or to the Earth Mother, or whatever, we have perpetuated a tragedy of the commons. (Economic historians will tell you that the “commons” tends to be tragic above all when it can’t be fenced in. Otherwise, it tends to be rather productive, but it also tends to turn private.)
Note that the same applies to saltwater fish, but for technical rather than legal reasons: Although many fishing countries (United States and Japan for example) generally respect private property rights, it remains difficult to “brand” fish and set them off as belonging to one firm or another. The result is overfishing.
By contrast, absolutely none of this applies to cattle in rights-respecting states. Because both the law and technology allow us to demarcate private property in cattle, they are profitable to raise and sell. Where possible, markets renew resources.
And finally, I think Kris and I are getting at something greater than just the law of equal freedom, although that is certainly at play. (Law of equal freedom: Each person is entitled to the maximal liberty that is compatible with a like liberty in other people. Wiccan rede: An there be no harm in it, do what thou wilt. Differences not important at the moment. Similarities remain salient.)
Besides the law of equal freedom, we are also presuming that there will be a Pareto improvement in the offing: That artificial meat will make at least one person (or animal) better off, and that it will not leave anyone worse off. Greyson is clearly not presuming this, but if he is right, then vat-grown meat will be a non-starter in the market, since it won’t be able to compete on price with the old-fashioned stuff. If that’s the case, then the ethical qualms are temporary at best.
Still, it seems very likely to me that artificial meat will produce fewer externalities like pollution, that it will consume fewer resources, and that — even if the other two improvements are minimal — it will vastly reduce the scope of animal cruelty.
It’s possible that artificial meat will not represent a Pareto improvement, but only a tradeoff. So what exactly is the downside? It’s still hard for me to see this, I admit.
If I switch from old-fashioned to vat-grown meat, it may upset some people, but “upset” is very difficult to quantify. How can I compare the upset of the anti-artificial-meat people with the upset of the anti-real-meat people? Although one or the other will be upset regardless of my choice, it is difficult for me to see who has the stronger sense of outrage. (The temptation arises, I admit, to ask the cows, but I think I know whose side they are on.)
Kris, I absolutely have to respond to this:
This sounds like a moralistic argument to me, not a pragmatic one. It doesn’t matter why the problem exists. Humans eat and behave as their nature dictates, and there is nothing unnatural about that. Why is it such a bad thing to defy nature once in awhile if it reduces the impact of our gluttony on the environment and on ourselves? -
Do you really believe that it doesn’t matter why a problem exists? really? seriously? wow.
70% ish of all Americans are obese or overweight. They eat as they choose and ruin or seriously hurt their health eating this way. Just because you CAN eat a box of twinkies every day of your life doesn’t mean you should or that it’s a good idea. Part of the reason people get overweight is actually because they IGNORE what they should be doing, which is paying attention to their bodies and only eating when hungry, until full and making good food choices.
To get back on tract, why justify our gluttony? Why not encourage people to cut back on gluttony, become more aware of their environment and live better with it, not in spite of it?
Kimberly,
In general, no, that would be insane. I think that the ultimate cause (human gluttony) of this constellation of problems, in the specific context of this particular hypothetical situation, does not matter when we have the option to fix all of the negative consequences with a scientific advance. We can moralize about the consequences of human gluttony… or we can remove the ethical, health-related, and environmental consequences of said gluttony and continue to eat sirloins. This is a no-brainer in my book. Sirloins are good!
I will grant that many problems are best solved by addressing the root cause of the problem. But that is not the only way to solve a problem. Yes, we *could* spend trillions in a futile attempt to alter fundamental human nature and train people to avoid fat and carbohydrates in their diet, OR we could simply remove the negative consequences.
That way you can have your steak and eat it too.
An there be no harm in it, do what thou wilt.