h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Knowing Elentari, I'm sure she'll be OK if you go and suggest her to update her entry, Pin.

toy box: I think it's called BSE when animals get the disease, but CJD if it's humans who get it. Not too sure, though.

nv is new variant.

A49373210 - Cannibalism: A Diet of the Future - pageturner

<> not Stretcher at all, until it's declared so at the submissions thread * poised*

Ms GB

Kuru is the prototype for a range of prion diseases, including

scrapie (in sheep), bovine spongiform encephalopathy [BSE in cattle). In humans, kuru is thought to have been transmitted by cannibals eating the brains of people afflicted by Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). Another similar condition is Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome.

vCJD (or nv CJD) is (New)Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), which is thought to be due to the spreading of the BSE prion to humans. (By eating the nervous tissue of afflicted cattle.


A

I thought GSS came from eating monkey brains Al ?

Or at least they thought it came from that.

Not to my knowledge. It's a familial condition nherited in an autosomal dominant manner due to a mutant prion gene on chromosome 20.

Also, I believe it's more common in the UK than elsewhere, and we tend not to eat a lot of monkey brain.

Beef and sheep's brain are delicacies in France (although many people won't touch the stuff). Indeed they say it is not extremely safe to eat these, for BSE reasons.

SWL (him again!) had a very good Entry on Monkey Brains, which in my view was meeting all the h2g2 Entry requirements of fairness, balance, etc. (And he wasn't defiending the practise ) Maybe we should launch a petition to get it un-yikesed.

When and why did it get d

I don't remember quite when it was; I guess the reason why is that it is a distateful subject, and maybe it included some description.

Definitely a case of thinking the unthinkable, Tib.

There's some overlap between your piece and the one I've been working on.

Mind you, mine doesn't really fit the Stretcher requirements anyway. I just felt I had to write it. I'll post it as soon as possible and, if it's out of order, I might have time to cobble together something else.

You could try defending the Spice Girls instead

Oh, now, that really would be the indefensible.

Like this one? A467750

Thank you for all the helpful comments and info folks. I've removed the superfluous 'd' and 'disease', added a footnote to the nvCJD, changed double quotes to single, italicised films, added a new section headed "The good, the bad and the hungry", mentioning the horrible Sawney Bean and his dreadful family. And I'm still working on it.

Re all the questions about the various prion disease (don't get me started - it's a major fascination...) but I put in a link to the "prion diseases" Entry because I thought readers would be bound to want further info and that Entry's full of it.

Off to follow those links Trout and Pin have recommended (resisting the Spice Girls with considerable ease Bel)

Wouldn't it be a laugh if we've all done cannibalism, mVpoet

I didn't do cannibalism. I abandoned hope for the human race.


Mine's at A49517120, if you fancy a depressing read.

Ms GB

Well, I for one would refuse to eat a perfect stranger

Eating family members who are just infinitely annoying - well, that's different on account of you'd be solving two problems.


The get well card industry would suffer a great blow, I think.


But, onto legitimate PR - This is well written and yet I think that it falls short of a proper defense for the simple reason that it falls short of a proper ending. You need one last paragraph, imo - one to rally the troops. That is to say, the last heading is 'Overcoming our natural aversion' and you really ought to wrap up with a 'putting it into action' kind of section. Just a thought.


(autophage)

TB:

My favourite fiction on the subject was 'The Man who Japed'. Great satire, that.

However, on the subject of the necessity or usefulness of cannibalism, we may now be past that point.

If you are only eating those who died, it won't do much for the population dilemma, and (as state) carries some not so minor dangers.

There is an obscure group called PETA, that has offered a large sum of money to the first person or group that can develop a commercially viable cultured meat product. That is, meat cultured in a petri dish, and then fed nutrients to grow the muscle fibre until it can be harvested and sold.

Apparently, they believe that the meat will be safer (no ebola virus, no mad cow, no tapeworms), and will not require large grazing areas; although their main concern is stopping the current methods of slaughtering livestock.

I have to wonder if they realise what this will also mean? If you can culture pig, lamb, cow, and foul meat, you can also culture people meat. This would make a form of cannibalism possible without the moral dilemma of the meat coming from dead friends, family, and strangers.

I hate to even type it, but it could bring a whole new meaning to baby-back ribs.

Wow. What an idea. Not so surprising that it might come from PETA.

A second vote for people reading 'The Man Who Japed'. One of Philip K Dick's gems.

Thanks pailaway. Good thinking! I'll try to get the troop rallying action bit done this evening or tomorrow if I get time

And thanks FordsTowel. I'll look out for 'The Man Who Japed'. The only PKD book I've read is 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'. That was good (nothing like Blade Runner) and it took ages to get hold of a copy. If dmitri recommends it too, I know it'll be hard to get hold of

>>If you are only eating those who died, it won't do much for the population dilemma, and (as state) carries some not so minor dangers.<<

It's not supposed to solve the population dilemma. That's another one of the taboos, isn't it? We never talk about population control. It's not PC. I can only defend one indefensible idea at a time This is a way to feed us when there are way too many of us for the food available. The idea is that corpses are tested for prion diseases (difficult when the person is still alive) - and the brain and nervous tissue can be stripped out if the test is positive. Might put that in the new bit. Sounds ghastly - as the whole thing's supposed to, but in a wheedlingly reasonable and persuasive way