[AmericanThinker] Researchers consider infecting Americans with ticks to make them allergic to red meat
Two researchers from Western Michigan University have written a paper titled “Beneficial Bloodsucking,” which was published by the journal Bioethics this past July. (No, it isn’t about vampires.)
The paper argues that intentionally spreading alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a potentially life-threatening allergy to red meat, could be not only morally defensible, but perhaps even necessary, in order to reduce animal suffering and combat climate change.
Here are the authors, Parker Crutchfield
…attention-seeking adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Western Michigan University…
and Blake Hereth,
… (they/them) is Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics, Humanities, and Law at Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine. The two very white gentlemen desperately need to do something to differentiate themselves from the crowd if they’re ever to get tenure and keep their jobs in a difficult academic environment…
in their own words:
Because promoting tickborne AGS prevents something bad from happening, doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, and promotes virtuous action or character, it follows that promoting tickborne AGS is strongly pro tanto (‘to that extent’) morally obligatory.
Say what?
Enlisting genetically engineered ticks to curb the consumption of hamburgers, steaks, and other red meats violates the hell out of everyone’s rights.
As one might expect, there were numerous negative online comments, prompting Crutchfield to characterize the paper as “just a thought experiment and not an endorsement of spreading the allergy-causing ailment.”
And yet they committed their mental onanism in public. So gauche.
[PubMed] ABSTRACT
The bite of the lone star tick spreads alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a condition whose only effect is the creation of a severe but nonfatal red meat allergy. Public health departments warn against lone star ticks and AGS, and scientists are working to develop an inoculation to AGS. Herein, we argue that if eating meat is morally impermissible, then efforts to prevent the spread of tickborne AGS are also morally impermissible. After explaining the symptoms of AGS and how they are transmitted via ticks, we argue that tickborne AGS is a moral bioenhancer if and when it motivates people to stop eating meat. We then defend what we call the Convergence Argument: If x-ing prevents the world from becoming a significantly worse place, doesn't violate anyone's rights, and promotes virtuous action or character, then x-ing is strongly pro tanto obligatory; promoting tickborne AGS satisfies each of these conditions. Therefore, promoting tickborne AGS is strongly pro tanto obligatory. It is presently feasible to genetically edit the disease-carrying capacity of ticks. If this practice can be applied to ticks carrying AGS, then promoting the proliferation of tickborne AGS is morally obligatory.
Posted by: Mercutio ||
10/19/2025 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1798 views]
Top|| File under: Nut Jobs
#1
Such Biohazard Lab stunts should land their asses in jail immediately.
#4
One of the first things you learn after having a child with Downs syndrome is *not* to read bioethics papers by academics. Not unless you are planning on becoming a serial killer.
#5
Always welcome, dear Mercutio. It triggered questions that needed answers, which fortunately were quickly found, thanks to that wonderful invention, the internet. ;-)
#6
Parker Crutchfield
…attention-seeking adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Western Michigan University…
and Blake Hereth,
… (they/them) is Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics
At least the morons are incapable of actually engineering a bioweapon.
[AmericanConservative] Confessions of a Bad Christian.
One thing my faith as taught me: that I should be much more watchful of what's inside me than what's inside you.
The rumors are true. I am a Christian. I go to church. There, I said it.
Let me begin this confession by apologizing to my fans, all six of them, whom I’ve deceived into believing I was a regular pagan who dances naked around bonfires deep in the forest, like a normal person. I do not generally do naked bonfire dancing unless pressured to do so by my colleagues in higher education.
To my godless friends: I know you’re worried about me. What if I’m secretly a theocrat who believes Jesus will come back on a space pony and slay everyone who doesn’t believe what I believe? Some do believe in the magical pony and some believe it will be a benevolent unicorn while others believe this image serves as a metaphor for an event that has already occurred and that the thing to be destroyed is already destroyed. The point is not to get fixated on the pony, which is like hating the music of Led Zeppelin due to the bulge in Robert Plant’s trousers. Try not to look directly at it.
I know a respected atheist scholar who believes electromagnetic energy can cleanse her breastmilk of impurities, but I don’t tell her I think she’s nuts, because Jesus says I have to feel compassion for crazy people. She probably thinks I’m insane because I believe the Christmas story actually happened in space and time. I’ve known many young mothers who are virgins, which we call “Baptists.” But I’m not here to preach the Virgin Birth or cite studies showing how weekly church attendance reduces gingivitis. I’m here to confess.
#2
I do give some of my income to an organization that does weird things with that money, working to reduce recidivism rates and hosting scandalous public celebrations that feature bounce houses for children.
[AmericanThinker] Once again, President Donald Trump ...So far he's been unkillable, and they've tried.... is going to meet with Putin to persuade him or buy his agreement to end the war with Ukraine. As a U.S. citizen and the author of forty books and a dozen films about Russia, I feel compelled to warn the White House that Putin will not end the war with Ukraine, even if President Trump offers him his Mar-a-Lago villa in Palm Beach, Trump Tower in New York, and a dozen of his golf clubs. It’s not because Putin doesn’t want to take a break from the war, it’s because he can’t. Why? Because he knows Russian history not from school textbooks, but from real life.
For example, in 1825, the return of Russian troops after their victory over Napoleon led to an anti-tsarist uprising known as the Decembrist Revolt.
In 1905, Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War sparked the first Russian Revolution.
The mass desertion of Russian soldiers from the Russian-German front during World War I led to the February Revolution of 1917 and the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II.
Lenin’s March 1918 peace treaty with Germany allowed the Bolsheviks to execute the entire tsarist family.
The return of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in February 1989 marked the beginning of the USSR’s collapse.
Knowing this, Putin cannot end the war with Ukraine and bring his troops home. Only the opportunity in May 1945 to leave his entire army in Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... as an occupying force helped Stalin avoid a postwar coup. Putin, Stalin’s heir, dreams of occupying Ukraine and the Baltic states, as well as Finland and Poland, to keep his army away from Moscow. He remembers the 525,000 soldiers who returned from Afghanistan in 1989 and turned into "Afghan" bandidos who terrorized the entire USSR population. Recently, in June 2023, just 5,000 rebellious Wagner Group soldiers left the Ukrainian front. Led by their commander, Yevgeny Prigozhin, they nearly stormed Moscow.
Therefore, Putin knows exactly what will happen if not five thousand, but one and a half million soldiers who are accustomed to the brutality of war return home from the Ukrainian front.
The war with Ukraine allowed Putin to get rid of two million of the most active opponents of his regime, who fled Russia from Putin’s forced mobilization. Meanwhile,
...back at the barn, Bossy had come up with a new idea, one that didn't involve kerosene... the rest of the young Russian men have been sent to the front or recruited into the punitive services. Putin is not concerned about their mass deaths on the Ukrainian front because, as Marshal Zhukov said during World War II about the losses of his soldiers: "Russian women will give birth to more." On the other hand, the de facto martial law imposed in Russia is the best way to force the country into submission to Putin and his junta. Therefore, any war—with Ukraine, the Baltic states, NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... , or anyone—is much more important to Putin than anything President Trump could offer him.
#3
The author might actually have a point. His history is at least partially correct. I don't know about the part with Stalin and the post-WWII occupation of Eastern Europe but it kinda sounds plausible.
I can think of two reasons why Putin won't stop.
1) His troops have finally started wearing the Ukrainians down and gaining ground. Why stop when you're winning?
2) It's no good to start a war and then start begging for a cease fire when you start getting your ass kicked. You must know that your enemy will be seriously pissed off and will want to make sure you don't fuck around any more. NATO started this war just as sure as Hamas started the war in Gaza and now they want a cease fire? No. Sorry. I personally would like for the killing to stop but I don't believe it will any time soon.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/19/2025 10:08 Comments ||
Top||
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The Federal Security Service (FSB) has declassified documents on Nazi atrocities in Donbas during the Great Patriotic War. This was reported on October 18 by the FSB Directorate for the DPR.
Declassified documents document the monstrous crimes committed by Nazi invaders in prisoner-of-war camps in Konstantinovka.
"There are four large mass graves on the chemical plant's premises, in which approximately 7,800 people are buried," the materials state.
A witness to the events, a worker at a chemical plant, said he witnessed the inhumane treatment of Russian prisoners of war by the Germans.
"The sick weren't even allowed to take dirty snow to quench their thirst. Anyone who dared to take snow without permission was beaten, and there were even cases of execution," he said.
The Nazis considered the sick who couldn't stand to be corpses in the camp. They were carried out naked into the cold and stacked in piles of 30-40 people.
"There were cases where living people were buried, that is, thrown into a pit. A weak person watches, scratching the earth with his hands, and they bury him," an eyewitness said.
He also saw how the Nazis trained dogs, practicing on prisoners.
"They trained them on Russian residents; the dogs attacked people, tore off their clothes, and seriously injured them," his words are quoted in the documents.
These documents provide direct evidence of the Nazi genocide, which sought to exterminate as many people as possible. Their publication is necessary to preserve historical memory and prevent attempts to justify Nazism and its crimes, the FSB emphasized.
Previously, the FSB declassified materials on the brutal execution of Young Guard members by the Nazis in the winter of 1943. The agency published copies of interrogation reports of Oleg Koshevoy, Lyubov Shevtsova, and other Young Guard members who participated in the execution. During an interrogation in 1947, German gendarme Otto Drewitz reported noticing Koshevoy, who was wounded, among the corpses. He approached him and shot him in the head at point-blank range.
From the Facebook page of Avi Abelow via the Facebook page of Clarice Feldman
Following Trump’s Gaza peace deal, many people believe there’s calm in Gaza right now. That there’s a ceasefire. That maybe, just maybe, the Gaza nightmare is ending.
I wish that were true.
However, the truth is that we have right now isn’t peace. It isn’t even de-escalation. It’s a tactical pause, and our Islamonaz*I enemies, Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, Hamas and Iran, are using it exactly how terrorists always do: to rearm, regroup, to one day strike again.
Over Shabbat, while Israelis across the country were trying to find a moment of rest, Hamas terrorists came out of terror tunnels, not destroyed yet, in both Khan Younis and Rafah, during the ceasefire, to attack the IDF soldiers in the areas being held by Israel according to the agreement.
Thankfully, our soldiers saw the threat, and the terrorists were killed from the air, according even to the ceasefire agreement.
Another clear sign this "ceasefire" is a sham.
Israel is doing what the world won't, confronting the Islamonaz*i evil supported by Qatar, Turkey, Egypt and Iran, head‑on. We cannot outsource the job of disarming Hamas or trust Turkey, Qatar, Egypt or Iran not to rearm Gaza. President Trump won't do it for us, and we don't want U.S. boots in Gaza. Only Israel can guarantee our security.
The only permanent solution is full implementation of Trump's Gaza emigration plan, remove the infrastructure of terror and all those “non-combatants” who support killing Israel, which is all Gazans. No Gazans remaining who cheer for our slaughter.
This also means that no Qatari, Turkish or Egyptian operatives can be in Gaza who would undermine our efforts and instead help rebuild another Islamonaz*i Gaza war machine. Do that, and Gaza will no longer be a launchpad for future massacres. Anything less is a recipe for another October 7th.
Israel must control all of Gaza, 100% of it, and resettle this historic Jewish land with Jews. There is no other way to protect Israel from Gaza.
DEAD HOSTAGE RETURNED
Today we received the body of another hostage.
Not a live person. A body.
18 more dead Israeli hostages still remain in Gaza unreturned. Let that sink in.
While the world demands “humanitarian aid,” we are collecting our corpses.
Why the deal forced us to release hundreds of terrorists who are responsible for killing close to one thousand Israelis, before receiving all hostages, dead and alive, is beyond me. A huge mistake.
Our coordinator for the hostages and missing, Gal Hirsch, updated the families personally. A military ceremony will follow. This is how Israel treats its fallen, with honor, with dignity, with love.
Now compare that with how Hamas treats human life, using their own mothers, grandmothers and children as human shields, murdering political rivals in the streets, desecrating the dead, and filming it for propaganda to make Israel look bad in the PR war.
We will always lose the PR war, because we cannot compete with the evil of our enemies and with the need of global media channels to push their evil lies and propaganda.
THE GAZA MAP HAS CHANGED
This war is not only being fought with bullets. It’s being fought with borders. And for the first time in decades, Israel is redrawing the line, literally.
Our Defense Minister has ordered the IDF to demarcate the new boundary between Israel and Arab controlled Gaza, according to the deal as of now, what is being called the “yellow line.”
Most of Gaza’s territory, 53%, is now under Israeli control. It’s cleared. Secured. And yes, it’s largely empty of enemy population.
This is not “occupation.” This is victory — and it’s justified.
Land is the only thing our enemies care about. Not the loss of life. Not the death of their mothers or children. Just the loss of land.
And yes, we’re doing this within the framework of an international agreement. One that everyone signed off on, and one that Hamas, not Israel, is violating daily.
According to Trump’s deal, Israel is also supposed to pull back from this land in Gaza, but only after Hamas disarms, which it never will.
So We’re talking about 53% of Gaza returning to Israeli control, hopefully forever.
In the meantime, a buffer that prevents October 7th from ever happening again, until we liberate all 100% of Gaza.
WHAT FUTURE FOR GAZA?
Let’s be real. There is no future for Gaza under Arab control. None.
The idea that Hamas is collapsing? It’s wishful thinking. In reality, they’re doubling down. Just last night, they massacred dozens of Abbas loyalists, and other clan members, all political rivals, gunned down in cold blood. The same people the West claims will rebuild Gaza. Not going to happen.
We cannot allow any rebuilding in Gaza under any Arab control, knowing it all a ruse to rearm. Because there is no ridding Gaza of the 1,400+ year Islamic jihad ideology.
And that’s why the Rafah Crossing must be opened, by Egypt, immediately. This was part of the agreement. Egypt must allow a mass civilian evacuation, for Gazans who want to flee the Gaza area of rubble.
The only humanitarian solution right now is getting people OUT, not shoving more aid IN while Qatar, Turkey, Egypt and Iran help it rearm for their next round to destroy Israel.
Let me say this to those who still haven’t chosen a side, or are unsure what to believe:
If your moral compass is spinning, it’s because the media is lying to you. This isn’t a war between equals. It’s a war between life and death, between good and evil, between a democracy defending its people and a 1,400+ year Islamic genocidal ideology that celebrates killing all infidels.
Israel will not be returning to “business as usual” after this. Not this time. President Trump said it, and we’re saying it too: We’re not going back.
This war changed the map. It changed the rules. And it should change how you view this conflict.
No more apologies for defending ourselves.
No more pretending Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Hamas are partners. And no more playing along with a fantasy that’s gotten us killed over and over again.
We want peace. But peace doesn’t come from appeasement. It comes from clarity. From strength. From truth.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
