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Learning Outside the Box

"PHILOSOPHICALLY SPEAKING...":

6/3/2018

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This entertaining and thoughtful post from Oxford University's Practical Ethics blog considers "vegetarian Thanos" as a prelude to combining ethics, biomedical advances, and mandated behavioral change. 

"Vegetarian Thanos, we might imagine, is hellbent on reducing the suffering of farm animals. The suffering inflicted on the 60 billion or so farm animals reared on planet Earth each year – or at least the suffering inflicted on the increasing proportion of them that are factory farmed – strikes an increasing number of people as plainly unjustifiable. The pleasure we get out of eating them can in no way outweigh the suffering entailed by intensive meat and dairy production. This has pushed some ethicists to argue for genetically modifying livestock so they feel less or no pain.... But I imagine Vegetarian Thanos, with his more heavy-handed approach to matters of justice, would take things in a different direction and look at modifying the humans instead. One way he could do that is by releasing upon humanity an army of ticks. Specifically, the lone star tick. The lone star tick is fairly common in the eastern United States and Mexico. It does not carry the bacteria associated with Lyme disease; instead, one bite from it leads its human victim to develop a troubled relationship with animal flesh. Within 3 to 8 hours of eating meat, those previously bitten by this tick will start to feel quite unwell, with a bad stomach ache and ferocious itching. Which is to say, a bite from a lone star tick leaves humans with a nasty, long-term allergy to meat. Could Vegetarian Thanos be the good guy here? And, Thanos aside, if you are a vegan/vegetarian for ethical reasons, should you be gathering these ticks and dispersing them among friends, family and passers-by?"
blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2018/05/utilitarian-supervillains-moral-enhancement-and-enforced-vegetarianism

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