Steaks Grown from Human Cells Spark Interest and Outrage | Hacker News Reader

Steaks Grown from Human Cells Spark Interest and Outrage

nytimes.com

40 pointsbookofjoe57 comments

>“But in our scenario, you are at least giving consent by taking your own cells. In the world of lab-grown meats, you are taking cells from animals without their consent.”

I'm an ethical vegetarian and this logic puzzles me. For the world to eventually move to lab-grown meat, there's (possibly) eventually going to have to be some living animals from whom some cells are harvested so they can be grown into tissue and organs.

True, the animals can't consent to that, but that seems like an interesting hill to die on given other non-consensual alternatives. If an animal were hypothetically sufficiently intelligent and given an ultimatum between "painlessly scrape some cells out of me and live the rest of my life on a pasture until a natural death" vs. "(probably mercilessly) torture and kill me and trillions of my relatives for eons to come", I wonder which they'd choose.

Ethical vegan of ~10 years, I completely agree. To be against taking cultures for lab-grown meat, I think you'd also have to be against veterinary care, and trap-neuter-return programs, which similarly improve animal welfare by subjecting them to a medical procedure without their consent.

I think it’s very hard to argue against trap-neuter-return programs or even trap-foster-adopt programs without coming off as a pretty extreme radical. I’m genuinely curious in what sort of arguments one could come up with other than consent and autonomy absolutism. To my untrained eye, that level of support for animal autonomy seems like it could only be informed by an almost Disney-esque anthropomorphism.

The world out there is a cruel, terrifying place. I’ve heard plenty of wild birds and rabbits scream in agony when killed by feral cats, right outside my window.

I don't argue against it because it seems to be a necessity according to people more knowledgeable than me but I'm shocked at how easily it's hand-waved away as a non issue (morally) by most people. I find the act of castrating an animal horrific, first because of the violation of its bodily autonomy and second because genitals are not just a piece of meat but alter how the brain works which to me means it's also a violation of the mind. I think people who care about animals should think twice about having a pet if it means forcing that kind of procedure on a living being.

That's my general take on the subject. To your point about anthropomorphism, I disagree, I think assessing one's health and bodily integrity is a primal instinct that is most likely shared by most animals. I can't say for sure but I have experienced a lot of body horror myself (torn & deformed limbs) and it was never higher thoughts that prevailed, even in situations without pain (like after surgery).

The trap-neuter-return programs are intended to maintain populations of stray animals. This is particularly important in the case of cats. Why? Because cats are an introduced predator with the ability to drive large numbers of bird and other small prey animal species to extinction.

Since we are the ones who introduced cats in the first place, we are responsible for the consequences. Violating the bodily autonomy of individual cats is a small price to pay to avoid a population explosion that would ultimately result in the large scale killing of countless birds and other small animals.

"people who care about animals should think twice about having a pet if it means forcing that kind of procedure on a living being"

I sympathize with your view very much, but there's also the agony that results from unconstrained breeding of cats and dogs to consider.

In developed nations feral cats and dogs are often hunted down and exterminated. Even while they live their lives in are often no picnic, whether they're in a shelter or in the wild.

Also, if you have, say, a cat and you don't get them neutered and you let them out what are you going to do with all the kittens? If you don't let them out, the endless confinement could be argued as a form of misery itself.

Then you could argue about having pets at all, but then what about all the cats and dogs that live miserable lives in shelters or are unwanted or abused in other homes? Wouldn't they be better off with you?

>I find the act of castrating an animal horrific, first because of the violation of its bodily autonomy and second because genitals are not just a piece of meat but alter how the brain works which to me means it's also a violation of the mind. I think people who care about animals should think twice about having a pet if it means forcing that kind of procedure on a living being.

There are two different situations, though: preventing reproduction and preventing potentially undesirable hormone-fueled behavior. You don't need to castrate just to prevent reproduction.

I don't think there'd be anything wrong with performing a vasectomy, for example. I'm not sure if there's a similar analog for female animals, though.

> this logic puzzles me. For the world to eventually move to lab-grown meat...

Puzzles don't matter. The world doesn't like them much and therefore doesn't do them much. What they do like is tasty food. So that's the route to conversion. Not the puzzles.

I feel like this is a slow-creep argument (unsure of the actual term, thinking similarly of the Overton window)

Back before we humanly killed animals, an argument could be made

“well it would be better to humanly kill animals as painlessly as possible, versus a painful death. Therefore I’d prefer and support the humane killing”

Now that humane killing is the norm, the act of killing became bad, or at least has become more popular. Obviously the more popular today notion of killing animals being unethical existed back then.

Now we’re onto the argument of consent, regardless of pain (sampling cultures versus not). The next step will be, even having these animals on pastures is unethical, as they cannot be free to go where they want (despite these essentially domesticated livestock being unable to live in the wild without heavy evolutionary pressures I.e. massive death or extinction)

So as “extreme” as it may seem to proclaim that it’s unethical to sample cells from an animal, regardless of pain, I think it’ll surely shift to being more mainstream and acceptable as a viewpoint.

I also think the latter vs in your statement is a straw man, and a poor one at that. To say all livestock grown for meat consumption are “tortured” is a gross generalization.

Sure it exists, but so does ethically raised, pasture raised livestock that are humanly killed (and such practices increasing at a great rate, as grass fed/finished becomes more desirable)

Lastly, this personification of all animals is a misrepresentation of many species. I think there are a few animals we can truly question their sentience (dolphins come to mind), while others I think we can say to a reasonable degree are less sentient than humans, and therefore if killed in the most painless way possible is ethically okay. Obviously this is a philosophical can of worms.

> I feel like this is a slow-creep argument

You're thinking about what some others (including newscasters, politicians, etc.) call a slippery slope[1].

I'm wary about criticizing arguments via slippery slope, because.

1. Most optimal-ethically choices sit at a middle-point of a slope when you consider only one dimension; e.g. a limited right to free speech.

2. With respect to shifting mores, one can also consider the situation of empire and slavery. The argument goes that communication and automation respectively were insufficiently developed in the past that these structures were in fact the most empirically ethical, but that they are generally no longer optimally good given today's communication and automation technology. Analogously, as we have better dietary options today, the ethically optimal option might have shifted. That is, the point in the single dimension has shifted because we have shifted wrt the other dimensions.

[1]: note that this is a misuse and misunderstanding about an actual slippery slope fallacy. In the valid usage, the slippery slope is exhibited completely within the fallacious argument so that the evidence is exaggerated to support the conclusion when the conclusion actually does not follow. In the misuse, one worries that the proposed conclusion would lead to a change in what people think is accepted, such that bad things become accepted.

> Now we’re onto the argument of consent, regardless of pain (sampling cultures versus not). The next step will be, even having these animals on pastures is unethical, as they cannot be free to go where they want (despite these essentially domesticated livestock being unable to live in the wild without heavy evolutionary pressures I.e. massive death or extinction)

The only way for this massive death/extinction (within the current system) is if everyone adopts this vision overnight. What's more likely to happen is by people eating less and less meat, animals will be less and less bred by farmers. Probably something similar to when cars supplanted horses in cities.

> Now that humane killing is the norm

Is it? As far as I know, most animals are "factory farmed" in conditions so inhuman that some countries have laws against... documenting their conditions on video.

>To say all livestock grown for meat consumption are “tortured” is a gross generalization.

I'm aware, and wasn't trying to say that (hence "trillions" instead of "all").

I just said that, for an average (say) cow, if you assume current trends continue for decades and centuries, with no lab-grown alternatives, it is likely that over time trillions of cows will be raised in cruel conditions and killed for food.

While this is happening, there may also simultaneously be billions (or more) of cows that are raised with a lot of open space to graze on and are treated well before being killed. Relative percentages aside, it's still a high absolute number of animals tortured and killed.

This reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide when they met animals that give consent. In fact I think the animal itself was the waiter. I seem to remember something along the lines of "Are you sure? I'm quite well marbled."

You remember correctly - it's from the second book, "The restaurant at the end of the universe", and the animal in question had been genetically altered to strive for its own consumption, and enjoy the whole process of it.

It's quite a terrifying thought, to be honest - maybe because the animal in question is very much conscious and intelligent.

I'm never quite sure whether or not Douglas Adams wrote it for comedic effect or to provoke some deeper discussion.

Might as well be both.

There's no puzzle here, you kill plants for your nourishment without asking for their consent.

We all draw lines between what we do and don't give moral consideration to, and these aren't necessarily purely subjective. There's a reason why almost no one cares if you slice open a grapefruit compared to slicing open a living person's head: we believe sentience and consciousness to be some significant, valued attribute, and at least to some degree non-illusory.

The current scientific understanding is that most animals are so much more sentient and conscious than all plants that it makes sense to give moral consideration up to some threshold lying between the two. (With unicellular organisms even lower.) There are some animals (e.g. jellyfish) that as far as we know appear to reside below the plant threshold, in which case I'd consider it okay to kill and eat those animals.

> I'm an ethical vegetarian

Isn't that a contradiction? You know that mother cows are slaughtered after they're done producing milk, right? And the male calves are mostly slaughtered immediately.

"I'm a celibate prostitute"

I think veganism is much closer to being ethical

You're right, it is. It's cognitive dissonance on my part because theoretically, dairy products can be produced ethically, even though they rarely are.

They probably will choose the latter one, because the butcher is talking to the nerve cells. A nerve cell cannot speak for the cells that are ultimately harvested. To make it ethical, the nerve cell has to choose the suffering, to at least join the fate of all the crushed other cells. Because one way or another, billions of living cells are killed.

But you can turn this also the other way round: If we are all, humans, cows and trees, ultimately one living creature, why should we worry more about dying cows than we worry about our dying skin cells or dying white blood cells that defend us? We are killing more awareness by drowning our attention in cheap entertainment and we are enduring more suffering by not delivering food to the starving children, and adults around the world.

Yes, but we all draw lines between what we do and don't give moral consideration to. For non-living things, like rocks or water molecules, we offer no direct moral consideration (ignoring potential indirect effects). Unicellular organisms merit the same lack of consideration, in my opinion, given our current scientific understanding. The scientific understanding may change in the future, but that's my current stance.

We are all one conglomerated living creature - the many twisting branches of the LUCA - but over time different aspects of this creature emerged with varying levels of complexity and information processing capability. One could argue that a lot of our atoms come from stars, so why treat ourselves any differently from stars, or that all matter and energy in the universe is just the offspring of a unified low-entropy blob at the Big Bang, so what difference does any of it make anyway.

There is some logical truth to this reasoning, but if we assume sentience to have at least some effectively non-illusory component, then I think it makes sense to consider sentient systems very differently from non-sentient or almost-non-sentient ones.

I suppose it's an ethical dilemma if you believe human cells are somehow special in the universe. If you're a materialist who just believes we're advanced animals then why object?

The only thing that concerns me are health related issues. We've been eating animal meat for tens of thousands of years and it is generally recognized as safe. Sure, there are obvious health issues, and even the occasional prion disease or parasite, but basically we know the risks and, in the "first world" anyway, we mitigate them. It seems that the consumption of human flesh has caused issues in the past due to prion diseases. If we're confident there isn't a path where the prions could infect the lab meat, or we test for it, then "eat up" as far as I'm concerned.

> special in the universe

This is such a weird qualifier to me. Why wouldn’t you think this? We’re the only beings capable of so many things that others can’t even begin to comprehend. Even if you think other beings are capable of achieving certain higher tiers of life (or however it is you define “special”), we’re the only ones that actually can; of course we’re special. So yeah, is it ethical to consume the literal highest level of evolution and dominance of life we’ve ever seen?

We're special because we're us and not them.

The wish to be special isn't difficult to understand.

The idea that human muscle cells are supremely intelligent is ridiculous. We're not talking about eating lab grown human brains.

It's still cells, get down from your pedestal

I have a question,

if we start growing tank meat, cells that have cancer like qualities might be very successful in a tank.

Cells with no density or attachment growth inhibition will kill the host. (or at least create an ugly tumor in the carcass)

Removing the animal removes this filter.

How dangerous is to eat cooked cancerous cells?

How much more dangerous would this be if they were human, or even my cells?

I wouldn't want to end up looking like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease

could we solve this by growing complex tissues, rather than a loose cell soup?

Broadly speaking, eating cancerous cells is safe, but eating misfolded prions is quite dangerous.

I think any ethical discussion on this also needs to consider the similar practice of eating human placenta, though note that there is not very solid evidence of any mainstream widespread practice.

Note that some animals regularly eat their own placenta.

And although there's other animals that either a) eat their spouses (spiders) b) eat their children (crocs), c) raid the nests of other species, kill their children and get the other species to raise ours (cuckoo).

Homicide, fratricide, patricide, theft, rape (gang and single) & torture are all common place in nature.

The list of atrocities of what's available in nature to me is never a good litmus test of what we as conscious humane beings should condone. We can do better than exhibit the mindless behavior (as a result of our desires) that animals do.

yeah between cannibalistic raids by troops of chimpanzees, dolphin gang rape, necrophilic ducks, and the bloodlust of your average housecat, I don't get the people that refer to nature as harmonious or somehow more moral than humans. I mean have heard of parasitic wasps, or tongue eating louse?

> The list of atrocities of what's available in nature to me is never a good litmus test of what we as conscious humane beings should condone. We can do better than exhibit the mindless behavior (as a result of our desires) that animals do.

I don't think that it's a good litmus test, but I don't think that it's pointless to reflect on what ethical rules would have to say if we treated animals in the capacity of humans, similar to how philosophers discuss marginal cases. Animals aren't exactly mindless, but behave differently in great part because they evolved differently, and may cease to thrive if certain ethical rules applied to them. The environmental pressures that led to certain behaviors being optimal for animals can inform us on what's ethical and what's not for humans.

Here's more detail about the use of Fetal Bovine Serum in lab meat production. Warning: graphic description of its extraction in the article.

https://slate.com/technology/2017/07/the-gruesome-truth-abou...

Apparently at least one company has adopted an alternative:

https://www.livekindly.co/meatable-slaughter-free-lab-grown-...

Yeah if any company uses medium with FBS and marks it as ethical that's a load of bollocks.

Could an ethical vegan weigh in on this? Separate this from health considerations for the moment. Would you feel that it is morally acceptable to eat meat cultured voluntarily from the cells of another competent adult human ... or from yourself?

I can't think why not.

Does it make a difference if the meat is cultured from a non-consenting cow, who is only briefly inconvenienced?

> Would you feel that it is morally acceptable to eat meat cultured voluntarily from the cells of another competent adult human ... or from yourself?

Doesn’t cannibalism lead to various health issues or risks? Or does the lab-grown part fix that?

The risk in cannibalism is around prion diseases, which is mostly a problem when we ingest brain tissue. Both mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and kuru (a close human analogue) are more problematic when infected brain tissue is on the menu.

With mad cow, the cattle were fed from recycled parts of the same species, mostly organ meats (including the brain). With kuru, the prions propagate mostly through brain tissue. Those prions sometimes find their way into muscle tissue, but unless we seed the lab-grown meat with proteins which include prions, it's unlikely to be an issue.

Not vegan but trying vegetarian, and all I can say is, you do you buddy. Just yuck from me.

On the first question, yes I don't see a problem (aside from the whole issue of people who are willing to donate stem cells for money would probably much prefer to have their financial needs met without requiring a medical procedure).

On the second question, yes I think there is a slight difference since animals can't consent. If the question is strictly "would you rather do a biopsy on a cow or a consenting human" I'd choose the human.

I'd think most people would agree on the rule "don't hurt a person unless you have a good reason". Vegans just extend that to "don't hurt an animal (the kingdom) unless you have a good reason". And to me, informed consent free from coercion is a good reason, but taste is not.

Vegans are typically 100% ok with human milk consumption in the context of breast feeding, that's the closest precedent I can think of.

Not strictly an ethical vegan, but I wouldn't eat meat cultured from anything.

Eating cultured meat from an animal seems no worse than normal meat, but eating cultured human meat seems straying into cannibalism. I'm sure there are reasons other than health for why this is not more popular.

Imagine people eating steaks grown from human cells and then getting appetite for a real thing... :-)

Imagine if you feed your dog with it.

it seems if we can make the cells differentiate and multiply as needed say for steak as Meatable does for example, and if we apply that to human cells it gets us closer to making organs for transplantation.

why not? This harms no one

I think it dehumanizes humans.

So it offends your sensibilities, but GP is correct, it doesn't physically harm anyone. It probably will help reduce conscious suffering in the long run.

Interesting. If this isn't an interaction between a high-divinity moral foundation individual and a low-divinity individual.

GP didn't say it "doesn't physically harm anyone". Are you saying there's no harm except physical harm?

Obviously not. But the set of harms that should reasonably be given as an answer to "why not?" is not equal to the set of all imaginable harms.

Surveillance doesn’t physically harm anyone, either, but does that also reduce conscious suffering in the long run? Sibling comments are right: physical harm != harm.

There is a more direct link from surveillance to physical harm (loss of freedom, imprisonment, death) than there is from lab meat. I agree, physical harm != harm, but harm != harm we should restrict others' freedom in order to prevent.

Let me clarify. I wouldn't be surprised if the smell and taste of cooked human flesh causes physiological and mental changes to humans. Those changes could possibly lower the barriers for human to human violence.

Probably worth studying before bringing this into the mass market.

Maybe case studies of cannibalism would shed some light. An otherwise peaceful society who, for example, eats recently dead people, may suggest there wouldn't be any concerns with lab grown human meat.

with all due respect sir (or madam) we live in a capitalist society

I've heard it pairs well with a nice Chianti.

and some fava beans.

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