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Should We Eat the Human-Pig Chimera?

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Abstract

Scientists will soon be able to grow human-transplantable organs in pigs. This paper focuses on the question of whether it is morally permissible to eat genetically altered pigs after harvesting their organs. Despite a lack of scholarly discussion of this question, the impetus for it is straightforward. There is no reason to think that peoples’ taste for pig will subside when scientists reach the point of being able to growing mature human organs inside them. In this paper, I argue that there is a good reason why we should eat genetically altered pigs and currently no compelling reasons to the contrary.

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Notes

  1. For ethical discussion, see Streiffer (2005) and (2019), Koplin and Savalescu (2019), Bourett et al. (2016), Shaw et al. (2015), Eberl and Ballard (2009), and Robert and Baylis (2003). For scientific discussion, see Tarifa et al. (2020), De Los Angeles, Pho, and Redmnond (2018), Yamaguchi et al. (2017), Rashid, Kobayashi & Nakauchi (2014), Nagashima et al. (2014), Kobayashi et al. (2010), Wu et al. (2016), Wu et al. (2017), and Suchy and Nakauchi (2017) and (2018).

  2. I am focusing on genetically altering pigs for organ donation. I am not going to discuss genetically altering pig brains to study and develop new treatments for neurodegenerative disorders.

  3. The Least Harm Principle is borrowed from Tom Reagan (1983) and Stephen Davis (2003). The harm can be either physical (e.g., being kicked in the ribs) or psychological (e.g., being the object of a smear campaign). The sufferer of harm may be consciously aware of the harm (e.g., experience the pain of being kicked in the ribs), but this need not be the case. A creature can be harmed but, for a variety of possible reasons, be unaware of being harmed. For instance, a person may be ridiculed by her peers, but fail to recognize the ridicule because it is never before her.

  4. The position defended in this paper is in line with “new omnivorism,” which, according to Andy Lamey, refers to the position that “endorses animal protection as philosophy but goes on to defend eating animals.” (Lamey 2019: 1; see Fischer and Lamey 2018: 410). New omnivorists agree that animal suffering is morally significant and that factory-farmed animals suffer greatly. They go on to note, however, that animals also suffer in a variety of ways in the planting and harvesting of plants, and thus, minimizing animal suffering does not require us to adopt a strict vegetarian diet.

  5. See Streiffer (2019: section 2)

  6. J. Jeremy Wisnewski notes similarly that disgust “by itself is no indication of whether or not” eating something “is immoral” (2007: 19). Shaw and colleagues write that “revulsion does not constitute a sound reason for objecting to something” (2015: 973).

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  1. Saint Marys University of Minnesota, 700 Terrace Heights, Winona, MN, 55987, USA

    Christopher Bobier

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Bobier, C. Should We Eat the Human-Pig Chimera?. Food ethics 5, 15 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41055-020-00073-6

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