Recently, I was bedridden for a few days sick with some kind stomach flu that left me rather quickly. I'm glad to be better, but I stumbled upon a documentary on the History Channel that got me thinking. The documentary covered a rather morbid subject matter: the history of cannibalism. As you might have experienced, you never know what kind of content will be televised on the History Channel.
Are there any good arguments against cannibalism? The very thought of eating another human being hopefully repulses all of us, yet why is it wrong? There are people who starve to death in this world, so why is eating other people for sustenance so abhorrent?
When you think about it, we are all cannibals to an extent. Everyday, we inhale human dander and dead skin cells, which are then metabolized. Isn't this a form of cannibalism because we are ingesting human DNA and cells? If not, then what is the quantity that determines whether eating human cells constitutes cannibalism or not?
One time, an acquaintance of mine suggested that we export all the fat from the liposuctions performed every year to starving people in the third world. While radical, I can't think of a counterargument unless we can somehow prove that cannibalism is inherently immoral. Perhaps from a practical standpoint, eating other humans is detrimental because it can cause the spread of disease and infection through contaminated flesh. Yet there are many instances of cannibalism that actually saved human lives. In times of famine, people in China and North Korea engaged in cannibalistic acts because there was no food. In another example, a group of Ethiopian rugby players were forced to eat their dead friends to survive after a plane crash that left them stranded in the Andes Mountains. In this case, the survival of the remaining crash victims was directly dependent upon eating their dead friends. So these two instances, cannibalism seems to be justified in desperate, life or death situations.
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