Quite A Scientific And Twisted Concept Of Morality

There is nothing worse than someone advocating  doing something to others, against their will, on the basis that doing so is moral.

 

You can certainly twist ethics and morality around to make atrocities become moral imperatives to suit your own worldview.

 

A couple scientists are proposing to do just that in a paper published in the scholarly journal  Bioethics.

 

With a straight series of keystrokes, if not a straight face, the authors Parker Crutchfield and Blake Heret in their article Beneficial Bloodsucking  propose that infecting Americans with  alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a condition caused by the bite of the lone star tick whose only effect is the creation of a severe but nonfatal red meat allergy would be not just good to do but should be required - because it is morally right, of course.

 

This is, per their world view, that as (per them) eating red meat is morally bad therefore a means to stop it, even if it is literally biological warfare, is not just good, but morally obligatory: 

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.

The problem is the underlying assumptions of morality in the Convergence Argument and its “if -- then” statement.

 

Under that sort of logic, anything is permissible, if not mandatory, so long as the person making the statement deems it to be morally required. Note especially how they hand-wave away infecting people with a biological agent to stop them form eating red meat is not considered to violate anyone's rights.

 

C.S.  Lewis really knew what he was talking about when he wrote:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

 

Yes, this is a published scientific paper advocating people be "cured" by being infected with an allergy in order to achieve the stated desired end to get people to stop eating red meat – for the best and most moral reasons, of course.