Try my meaty poll

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1820279]

context

Comments

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

Artificial human meat seems like a wonderful way to spread new-fangled diseases that we don't know how to screen for.

[steer.livejournal.com]

How on earth would artificial meat spread diseases? That seems a kind of whacky idea.

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

It's the artificial human meat that's the problem. If it's human, the bacteria, viruses, and other disease vectors care about whether it's artificial about as much as your digestive system does.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Cells in culture are prone to contamination by other cell lines. As mentioned in the 1st para of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa

[steer.livejournal.com]

That seems to be about human cells contaminating other cell cultures though. That is, a particular strain of human cells which excels at growing in certain conditions.

We already know that it is perfectly safe to eat food grown in culture (or equivalent) because it's regularly done (mycoprotein for example -- people do have sensitive reactions to it but that is not connected to the fact it's cultured). Of course that does not mean this extends to "meat" or to "human meat".

I'm really not an expert here but the question arising was would artificial "human" meat be more of a health risk than artificial "animal" meat. The presumed risk being that "human" cultured meat would harbour pathogens which can infect humans better than "animal" cultured meat.