Soylent Green was a popular 1973 science fiction movie. Soylent Green is food made from dead humans but was supposed to be made from plankton. The manufacturing of Soylent Green was kept top secret.
Now in 2012 an Oklahoma Republican Senator is introducing a bill to outlaw aborted human fetuses in food. Perhaps it should be called the Soylent Green Bill.
Senator Ralph Shortey said "there is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors." Shortey admits that he has no evidence that this is actually occuring in Oklahoma or anywhere else. But then as the saying goes an ounce or prevention is worth a pound of cure. Better to make this illegal before any company starts to do it.
However, the bill seems to me far too narrow. Given the scenario in Soylent Green it would seem much more sensible to have the bill cover use of any dead humans for food purposes. For more see this article.
We will need to watch developments as Shortey notes. Environmentalists might point out that it is wasteful of land to bury corpses. While cremation is a partial solution, recycling would be the ideal. Of course special interests such as funeral directors would support bills such as Shortey's but then brave new entrepreneurs might very well prevail at least to the extent that the dead homeless and those who have to be buried at public expense might be processed at profitable green rendering plants.
No comments:
Post a Comment