On Mon, 09 October 2000, Paul Kirby wrote:
> More generally, where is it written that cannibalism is wrong?
There are some things that are so wrong that they do not need to be written down as instructions for the simple and naive. Permitting cannibalism would be disastrous for the species. Imagine herding, tending people so they can be harvested latter and packaged and sold in cans or freezer packs?
Cannibalism was practiced by some neolithic societies as a ritual to honour the dead. However the act of killing ones' own is - well - wrong from the word go and gone.
I used to bite my finger nails a bit. Don't do that anymore. Is that cannibalism?
john foster
Fish are
> quite prone to it, (Trout and Pike being good examples). There are
> degenerative brain diseases that human cannibalism transmits but this is a
> practical rather than ethical problem. When lost in the Andes after a
> plane crash the evidence suggests that we might make changes to our customs
> and it would be difficult therefore to argue that cannibalism is a
> universal wrong. How we judge the primate eaters may depend upon how we
> assess the criticality of their need.
>
> (I hope I do not need to convince anybody that I am not a cannibal and that
> I do mourn extinctions)
>
> Regards Paul K
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