bob@cadovax.UUCP (Bob "Kat" Kaplan) (04/22/85)
> [...] and by the time one of the people starves to death, > the other will have sufficient appitite to eat him. A lot of this discussion has overlooked a rather important consideration: eating human flesh is generally an unsafe practice. Meats purchased from a butcher have been approved for human consumption by the FDA. This is not true of human meat. The FDA does its best to ensure that meat intended for human consumption is free of parasitic larvae, as many living things are primary or intermediate hosts for the types of parasites that are dangerous to humans. There's probably about a 50/50 chance that a human being is harboring some kind of unwanted but relatively harmless parasite (e.g., tapeworm, roundworm, ascarid, etc.) without even knowing it. The chances are probably even greater of being an intermediate host (harboring the larvae but not the mature parasite) to a potentially harmful parasite. Let's say your friend swallows some water containing larvae from some type of harmful worm. For some types of parasite, the eggs will be encysted in your friend's muscle tissue but will not develop into worms or cause your friend any harm. But you're hungry and you take a bite of your (now dead) friend's arm. As the flesh is digested, the cysts will dissolve, the larvae will mature, and you'll be infested with worms. Of course, the FDA isn't perfect and sometimes meat with encysted larvae gets sold. This isn't as bad as it seems, because thorough cooking will destroy the larvae. Thorough cooking of human flesh must be observed as well, but this is not always possible (e.g., on life-boats, etc.). If you're starving with no prospects of help, you might as well eat your dead companion. But, if later you find your liver and pancreas teeming with schistosomes, don't say you weren't warned. -- Bob Kaplan "Our love burns like fire, then turns to ashes."