Humans Unfit For Human Consumption

[GNC]

OK, what do you think of this one? Apparently we humans are now so filled with toxic elements from pollution that if we had to pass an official test (FDA or something) to see if we were fit to be eaten, we would fail utterly. Is that true? It's from Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth book off the 1970s, or I think it is.

 

[ramonmercado]

OK, what do you think of this one? Apparently we humans are now so filled with toxic elements from pollution that if we had to pass an official test (FDA or something) to see if we were fit to be eaten, we would fail utterly. Is that true? It's from Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth book off the 1970s, or I think it is.

Oral sex could be dangerous...

 

[Gizmos Mama]

I don't know if it's true, but it does seem likely to me, as most top predators in the "natural" food chain, especially the ocean predators, have a high toxin load, and they are only getting the other environmental toxins in the chain, not all the extra crap we pump into our food supply, as well as our environmental load.

 

[EnolaGaia]

... It's from Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth book off the 1970s, or I think it is.

The text of the original 1970 edition of this book is accessible at:

https://archive.org/stream/TheLateG...te+Great+Planet+Earth+by+Hal+Lindsey_djvu.txt

I'm unable to locate any specific mention of cannibalism, human meat / flesh, food standards, etc., anywhere in the text. Other than general allusions to famine and impoverished agricultural production, I can't locate anything addressing food at all.

 

[EnolaGaia]

I think I've found a significant clue ...

In a 2013 review of the 1979 movie of the same name (narrated by Orson Welles), a Letterboxd contributor wrote:

Orson Welles narrates this nutjob apocalypse-mongering documentary. At times it was unintentionally hilarious with quotes like "If the average American was submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for sale as food, he or she would not pass government standards for being fit for human consumption", but most of it was just wacko comparisons between the end times written in the Bible and the 1970s. Funny, but at the same time really, really bad and hard to sit through. Proceed with caution on this one.

(Emphasis added)

SOURCE: https://letterboxd.com/fantasticfilms/film/the-late-great-planet-earth/

This suggests you (GNC) got it from the film rather than the book (or, conceivably, from a revised edition of the book issued between 1970 and 1979-ish).

 

[luvpixie]

I heared you can get a disease called Kuru if you eat humans.

 

[Mythopoeika]

OK, what do you think of this one? Apparently we humans are now so filled with toxic elements from pollution that if we had to pass an official test (FDA or something) to see if we were fit to be eaten, we would fail utterly. Is that true? It's from Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth book off the 1970s, or I think it is.

Oh, that book?
That's such a reliable source of information, that is.

 

[GNC]

I think I've found a significant clue ...

In a 2013 review of the 1979 movie of the same name (narrated by Orson Welles), a Letterboxd contributor wrote:



SOURCE: https://letterboxd.com/fantasticfilms/film/the-late-great-planet-earth/

This suggests you (GNC) got it from the film rather than the book (or, conceivably, from a revised edition of the book issued between 1970 and 1979-ish).

It's on YouTube, but I couldn't pinpoint the exact bit in it. The whole thing is basically a shower of shite in the form of supposed prophecy that has the cheek to criticise "false prophets" in it. True prophets use the Bible, apparently. We've had quite enough of that here over the past few months.

Anyway, is the unfit for human consumption bit a UL or has it been heard anywhere else? Seems not.

 

[GNC]

I heared you can get a disease called Kuru if you eat humans.

Yes, that sounds about right, but I don't think that would be down to toxins in the human body introduced within our living memory, would it? I know you can die from eating human brains! Is that the same thing?

Actually, this subject is getting kind of disgusting, and I'm a little sorry I brought it up! How would you measure it anyway? It's not as if scientists are trying to farm people for meat, but foiled in their research by mercury in the water or whatever.

 

[Xanatic*]

Yes, kuru kuru is usually something you only get from cannibalism. I think it's a prion disease similar to CJd. In general, eating your own species is a big vector for diseases.

 

[Quake42]

Yes, kuru kuru is usually something you only get from cannibalism. I think it's a prion disease similar to CJd. In general, eating your own species is a big vector for diseases.

That’s right. It’s BSE for humans, nothing to do with toxins or pollution.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Unless a human has consumed heavy metals or some other form of poison, there's probably not that much that's toxic in human meat (apart from the kuru in the brains and spine). But I don't think I'll be testing that out.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Yes, kuru kuru is usually something you only get from cannibalism. I think it's a prion disease similar to CJd. In general, eating your own species is a big vector for diseases.

Yep ... Prion-based diseases can't be eliminated except by reducing the prions (and the meat containing them ... ) to cinders. This means prion diseases are the only pathogens which can't be reliably eradicated from meat intended for human consumption.

 

[AlchoPwn]

OK, what do you think of this one? Apparently we humans are now so filled with toxic elements from pollution that if we had to pass an official test (FDA or something) to see if we were fit to be eaten, we would fail utterly. Is that true? It's from Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth book off the 1970s, or I think it is.

I'm fine with that. I don't particularly want people to eat me, nor am I inclined to eat other people. As far as I am concerned this just acts as a reinforcement of the mutual agreement humans have not to eat each other.

A little known fact, apparently the survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 as written about by Piers Paul in
"Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors", after they ate human flesh they became terribly constipated. So one might say that eating humans is highly irregular
:rim:

 

[JamesWhitehead]

after they ate human flesh they became terribly constipated

All meat is regarded as constipating, according to vegetarians. I would have dished up the veggies first, in the hope of obtaining a bit of roughage.

Also, it was bloody cold! I recall that our dog had an episode of concrete-bowel-syndrome, when a period of bad weather caused her to turn her nose up at the very notion of going outside for a shit. :bmonk:

 

[Cochise]

Yes, kuru kuru is usually something you only get from cannibalism. I think it's a prion disease similar to CJd. In general, eating your own species is a big vector for diseases.

Hence the saying 'Dog doesn't eat dog'. If only the cattle feed manufacturers had remembered that one.

Robert Pickton may have provided test cases re- toxicity of human meat:

On March 10, 2004, the government revealed that Pickton may have ground up human flesh and mixed it with pork that he sold to the public; the province's health authority later issued a warning.[11][12][13][14] Another claim was made that he fed the bodies directly to his pigs.[15]

From Wikipedia. Those interested in gruesome details will find them on the Web easily enough.

 

[Xanatic*]

Isn't the saying that it's a dog eat dog world?

 

[AlchoPwn]

Isn't the saying that it's a dog eat dog world?

That is the better known saying Xanatic, but Cochise's saying is also valid:
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/dog does not eat dog

 

[ramonmercado]

Prion researchers die, if a film is made about this they'll have them biting each other in the lab.

France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes two lab workers​

PARIS—Five public research institutions in France have imposed a 3-month moratorium on the study of prions—a class of misfolding, infectious proteins that cause fatal brain diseases—after a retired lab worker who handled prions in the past was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), the most common prion disease in humans. An investigation is underway to find out whether the patient, who worked at a lab run by the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), contracted the disease on the job.

If so, it would be the second such case in France in the past few years. In June 2019, an INRAE lab worker named Émilie Jaumain died at age 33, 10 years after pricking her thumb during an experiment with prion-infected mice. Her family is now suing INRAE for manslaughter and endangering life; her illness had already led to tightened safety measures at French prion labs.

The aim of the moratorium, which affects nine labs, is to “study the possibility of a link with the [new patient’s] former professional activity and if necessary to adapt the preventative measures in force in research laboratories,” according to a joint press release issued by the five institutions yesterday. ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...rch-after-fatal-brain-disease-strikes-two-lab