Why Is Cannibalism So Bad For You?

As a human being, convincing a cannibal chieftain that I am not going to taste good for their dinner, is actually a complicated situation to consider. Cannibalism is surprisingly not against the United States law. It is misperceived that cannibalism is illegal. In reality, the reason why cannibalism is seen as revolting is because of the thought of a person eating the flesh of another person. Cannibalism is seen by people just like haggis and liver is seen as revolting to most people. When it comes to ethics, there are different components that would claim the cannibal eating me is morally unacceptable. This can be compared to killing another human being for no reason. Both of these cases contain the same common thought that killing people no matter what the circumstance is morally incorrect. The majority of society believes that cannibalism and homicide are both incorrect. This thought comes from three views. The three views that can be used to describe if an action is morally correct are, the natural law theory, relativism, and moral objectivism. These three views are looked at individually and not used together. The natural law of theory deals with reasoning deduced from the nature of humanity throughout society. Relativism deals with reasoning that is deduced within a certain culture. Moral objectivism deals with reasoning deduced from universal morality. Cannibalism is not always seen as incorrect in all societies. Some societies see cannibalism as a valid activity.

Humans have to deal with many different diseases and the ones most disliked are the ones with no cures. Like cancer, transmissible spongiform encephalopathies have no cure, but they are more rare. These diseases are prion diseases which cause the brain to deteriorate. Prions are proteins that sometimes behave like viruses, which mean that they should have some form of nucleic acid, but since they don’t, they cause abnormalities. The nervous system contains many normal prions, but when an abnormal prion comes along, it transforms all the normal prions into abnormal ones. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is found in cattle, but it can be transmitted to humans.

Cannibalism, also known as anthropophagi, is defined as the act or practice of eating members of the same species. The word anthropophagi comes from the Arawakan language name for the Carib Indians of the West Indies. The Caribs are well known for their practice of cannibalism. Among humans, this practice has been attributed to people in the past all over the world, including

In bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the disease is caused by the misfolding of proteins that cause proteins and peptides to develop a fibrillary structure. The PrPc is a correctly folded prion and the misfolded form is called PrPSc. BSE occurs when the normal PrPc come into contact with the toxic PrPSc and the normal prion takes on the shape of the PrPSc. The normal chaperones are unable to convert the PrPSc back to the normal form. The PrPSc now takes on the role of chaperone and the conversion of PrPc prions continue over and over. PrPSc, now being hydrophobic avoids the water of the inner cell and begin to accumulate and form plaques along the neuronal cell membranes. The aggregation of the prions on the cell membrane eventually lead to cell death which produces the sponge-like appearance in the brain of cattle infected with BSE (Thompson, 2014).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has tested hundreds of thousands of cattle for BSE. Researchers believe that the infectious agent that causes mad cow disease is an abnormal version of a protein normally found on cell surfaces, called a prion. For reasons still unknown, this protein becomes altered and destroys nervous system tissue (brain and spinal cord). There exists strong epidemiologic and laboratory evidence for a causal association between a new human prion disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) that was first reported from the United Kingdom in 1996 and the BSE outbreak in cattle (http://www.cdc.gov). According to The National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit, by June 2014 it had killed 177 people in the United Kingdom, and 52 elsewhere. This essay will focus on the possible causes, effects, and treatment for this

In both my body and your’s there are these things called prions which occur normally in humans but when folded incorrectly, they are harmful to the body. These incorrectly folded prions then go on and alter other normal prions by actually changing the structure of the prion’s alpha helical regions into beta pleated sheets. If these altered prions are in your brain, they build up in your neurons and cluster together with each other eventually causing neuron loss and other brain damage. This continued brain damage and neuron loss leads to holes in the brain giving it the consistency of a

Prions (PrPsc) influence the PrPc proteins they come in contact with to misfold and begin to aggregate. The aggregation leads to development of fibers or plaques. The aggregation of PrPsc around the neurons triggers the cell to self destruct. It is also able to spread to nearby neurons resulting in areas of neuronal death which results in the brain tissue having spaces of void which appear like a sponge.

Hunger would alter the mind of a human, and dismiss the unethical thoughts of cannibalism and push a human to do what is seen as completely immoral, eat its own. This may seem like a dramatic and unreasonable argument that will never happen however cannibalism has already been seen in cases of famine and war. Feuchtwang explains, “Images from past famine horrors were repeated in descriptions of circumstances that were peculiar to the time of the Great Leap. For instance, one man who was at the time a local cadre in Quanzhou city told us, 25 years later, in remembered disgust and shame: ‘In mountain areas there was cannibalism. People found human fingernails in dumplings’”

However, differing from the other diseases, Prion sometimes spreads through contaminated meat. In the article “Prion Diseases” it shows meats that have mad cow disease can cause prion disease. Intake of unhealthy meat is not infectious since the spread is not direct. Moreover, like Alzheimer’s, transferals through medical procedures may cause the gain of Prion Disease. Prion disease can be the result of a transfusion with a person with the disease. Furthermore, many things may take a toll on the spread of Prion disease, but it is not

"Mad cow" disease is a deadly disease caused by prions in the brains of cattle. The real name of this disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Abnormal prions are usually found in the brain tissue of many diseased cattle and they transmit the infection. Many changes are seen in the brain of infected cattle. Infection can lead to small holes in parts of the brain, giving the tissue a sponge-like appearance when viewed with a microscope. These small holes cause slow decline in a cow’s brain and eventually other symptoms develop affecting the whole body. The cows then die.

Throughout the course of our evolution hominids have engaged in, what today would be considered savage, inhumane practices, such as manslaughter, torture and mutilation (Lewis, Jurmain & Kilgore, 2013). These actions today are considered almost taboo in society, however anthropologists who study such behaviour and historians who have meticulously documented it are completely comfortable divulging their work to the scientific community. Based on this acceptance, one would expect the topic of cannibalism to be met with the same understanding within academia. Astoundingly though, the discussion of cannibalism within our ancestral past encounters much controversy and is greatly looked down upon within the general population (White, 2001). For those who study this highly provocative practice, like paleoanthropologist Tim White, the idea of cannibalism is as significant to the holistic study of anthropology as the idea of evolution is to the study of creationism. This viewpoint is only one of many related to cannibalism today and is shared by a very small group of individuals. The thought of cannibalism within modern society though comes with so much displeasure to the point that conferences go to the length of entitling presentations such that the notion of one human being consuming another is eluded altogether. An example of this tactic would be the Multidisciplinary Approaches to Social Violence in the Prehispanic American Southwest symposium which outlined

Prions cause diseases, but they aren’t viruses or bacteria or fungi or parasites, but proteinaceous infectious particles, an abnormal form of a normally harmless protein found in the brain causing variety of fatal neurological diseases of both animals and humans. They are the ones that cause the well-known “mad cow” disease in Britain and “Scarpie” for animals. Prions act slowly, and are virtually indestructible.

The role of prions in BSE is to trigger proteins in the brain to fold abnormally. These prions are formed by abnormally folded protein that causes neurodegenerative conditions, similarly to that of Alzheimer’s disease. These misfolded proteins tend to clump together, or aggregate, because of their shape. This disease has no known cause but is generally associated with the ingestion of meat from cows who already have BSE.

Prions are a type of protein found naturally in the brain and other regions of the central nervous system. The diseases associated with

In addition, the eating of dead animal corpses is not as healthy as eating a plant based diet. For example, meat is high in saturated fat, which raises blood cholesterol. High cholesterol increases the risk of heart disease. Meats are high in sodium as well and consuming high amounts of