It would be impossible for a single human to catalog all the ridiculous things taxpayer dollars support, and academia is just one offender among many. In addition to useful fields such as chemistry, physics, or mathematics our universities also include a host of other departments with marginal, if any, value. The collective output of that segment appears to exist merely to pad the curricula vitae of the authors, moving from their laptops to hastily edited journals with deservedly little to no attention. Unfortunately a tiny fraction of their voluminous idiocy is used to justify outrageous policies, and for this reason we occasionally must waste a few minutes disassembling another peer reviewed and published paper.
This latest entrant in the contest for Most Stomach Churning Ethics Paper has likely hit the online news because a copy is now available to the public without a fee. Government funding (our money) provides an enormous amount of support to the American university system, but we often don’t get to see the results because that same system publishes those results in pay-to-read journals. Luckily for us the obligatory one year waiting period for possession of nefarious research has expired, and we may now pass judgement on yet another piece of congealed slop being sold as scholarship.
The garbage du jour is titled “Beneficial Bloodsucking” (Crutchfield & Hereth, 20251), published in the Wiley journal Bioethics. A copy of this ignominious work is now available at this link (see the footnote below for an archived copy if the link doesn’t work). From the paper’s abstract:
The bite of the lone star tick spreads alpha‐gal syndrome (AGS),2 a condition whose only effect is the creation of a severe but nonfatal red meat allergy. …Herein, we argue that if eating meat is morally impermissible, then efforts to prevent the spread of tickborne AGS are also morally impermissible. (Crutchfield & Hereth, 2025)
Yes, you read that right. The ethics scholars have managed to arrive at a truly ridiculous conclusion—it can actually be morally wrong to try and prevent the spread of a potentially harmful disease. It’s a stupidly simple premise, but credit to the authors for managing to drag this absurdity out to ten whole mind-numbing pages (including references) without having to play with the fonts and margins.
The axiomatic part
The paper itself is based on prior acceptance of the immorality of a carnivore diet, which the authors are treating as axiomatic for the purpose of their arguments. While the rest of us were busy working productive jobs our moral superiors in academia have met, discussed, and reached an agreement on this topic.
Among the best and most widely accepted arguments in applied ethics are those concluding that eating meat is morally wrong.3 (Crutchfield & Hereth, 2025)
Note their entire paper is founded on a “moral principle” being actively ignored by the overwhelming majority of people. From their university campus bubbles the paragons of probity have declared the behavior of nearly all other humans abhorrent. In contrast their own vegetarian, methane-free farts smell as clean as their brand new, government subsidized electric cars.
The singular reference cited in support of this position is The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat,4 a collection compiled from a New York Times essay contest on the immorality of eating meat. Is this review biased? You tell me. It also “includes essays that attempt to defend meat consumption” (as opposed to non-judgmental wording, such as “includes essays in defense of meat consumption”). We’re not spending $75 of hard earned cash to read and critique a collection of essays submitted by random readers of the NYT, but is the position of their staff on this subject surprising? They were all trained by the same higher education system employing the authors of this paper, a self contained ecosystem designed to produce a reflexive deference to its collective output.
As a brief aside, one commonly raised objection to eating meat such as cattle is the supposed negative impact raising cattle has on the total food supply. The absurdity of this claim is explained in Cattle and Land Use: The Differences between Arable Land and Marginal Land and How Cattle Use Each (Anderson, 20235). It’s a great summary of the issue so please read the whole thing later, but here is the painfully short version: two thirds of all agricultural land is marginal rather than arable (able to be plowed) and is not used to grow human crops. Ruminants such as cattle can graze marginal land and can also digest things humans cannot, thereby creating more food for humans. Cattle are actually a win-win for the entire food production cycle.
Regardless of the realities of food production, we can comfortably assume the authors would still object to a carnivore diet based on the harm to the critter being prepped for dinner. Neither they, nor their devoted disciples, will be swayed by something as simple as “more food for humans.” Therefore we will accept that some readers will be satisfied with the starting axiom, and focus on critiquing the part about how promoting the spread of a disease is a Good Thing.
The authors’ argument
Because they need to impress their parents’ friends at garden parties, thereby justifying the ludicrous sums spent on their degrees, the authors provide an appropriately esoteric summation of their argument. This includes the obligatory Latin to help illustrate the distinction between themselves and the hoi polloi6 whose behavior they would dictate.
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 tanto7 obligatory; promoting tickborne AGS satisfies each of these conditions. (Crutchfield & Hereth, 2025)
Please try to not be put off by the phrasing “if x-ing prevents …” instead of “if something prevents …” in the argument; lack of clarity is a specific requirement in most humanities programs. Translating into ordinary human grammar, the authors argue promoting tickborne AGS prevents the world from becoming worse, does not violate anyone’s rights, and promotes virtuous action (I assume by this last they define vegetarianism as virtuous, and meat eaters as lacking character). Therefore we are morally obligated to promote the spread of the disease. For anyone discussing the paper over drinks the pro tanto part will sound quite intellectual, but it’s just shorthand for a simple idea:
To say that one has a pro tanto obligation not to eat meat is just to say that, absent some justification, one shouldn’t eat meat. (Crutchfield & Hereth, 2025)
So it’s not an absolute prohibition on eating meat, which could in theory be justified in some specific cases (potential starvation, perhaps). However not eating meat is—in their opinion—the default moral position. Continuing this logic, since not eating meat is pro tanto obligatory then promoting something (AGS) that stops people from eating meat is also pro tanto obligatory. Note the authors specifically state “promoting” tickborne AGS is pro tanto obligatory, which is a bit beyond merely arguing against trying to prevent its spread. The burden of proof has been shifted to those who don’t want a potentially harmful syndrome to justify why society should not actively promote its spread (meaning you must now prove why you shouldn’t be given AGS). They want all us heathen, low-character meat eaters to have this syndrome.
Syndromes and diseases
The authors’ argument relies in part on characterizing AGS as a syndrome and not a disease. Crutchfield and Hereth emphasize this in their concluding remarks, claiming AGS has no harmful effects except those caused by eating red meat. Describing AGS as a disease is however consistent with the formal distinction between a syndrome and a disease, as explained in “Diagnoses, Syndromes, and Diseases: A Knowledge Representation Problem” (Calvo et al., 20038).
A syndrome is a recognizable complex of symptoms and physical findings which indicate a specific condition for which a direct cause is not necessarily understood. …Once medical science identifies a causative agent or process with a fairly high degree of certainty, physicians may then refer to the process as a disease, not a syndrome. (Calvo et al., 2003)
The use of these terms is not constrained by a strict set of rules, and they are often used interchangeably. Calvo provides an example of the slow progression from calling something a syndrome to calling it a disease.
Mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome became Kawasaki syndrome which in turn metamorphosed into Kawasaki disease; the latter is properly a disease, no longer a syndrome, by virtue of its clearly identifiable diagnostic features and disease progression, and response to specific treatment. (Calvo et al., 2003)
The cause of AGS has been determined and it can be clearly diagnosed, therefore AGS can be classified as a disease rather than a syndrome. The authors’ emphasis on this nomenclature—AGS being a syndromes rather than a disease—is a bit of rhetorical misdirection. Calling something a syndrome removes the association with a category most people understand as negative, implying AGS does not manifest serious reactions. However the reactions can be very serious, even life threatening, and they can be caused by many things besides eating red meat.
The dumb part
Any non-academics reading the actual output of academia find a common issue: too many authors fail to read their own references. By “fail to read” I don’t mean they trip or something while trying to read, I mean they don’t bother to verify a reference actually supports the assertion being made in the paper citing it. A typical example of such high quality referencing is found in the Crutchfield and Hereth paper.
The authors have concluded, after much deliberation and possibly one too many late night trips to the local vegan buffet, that society should actively promote the spread of AGS because it acts as a brake on immoral behavior. Per the authors, efforts to spread AGS are morally acceptable because there are no serious medical consequences to having the syndrome. The meat eater is punished for his transgression with something painful enough to modify his behavior but no worse than that. Yes, we savages are now being treated like lab rats in one of those behavioral modification tests with an electrified food bar.
Our main conclusion is that we should promote a particular tickborne syndrome: alpha‐gal syndrome (AGS). …People who have the allergy may have a variety of symptoms, including hives, gastrointestinal upset (e.g., vomiting and diarrhea), or anaphylaxis in severe cases. Often, these symptoms present 2–6 h after ingestion of mammalian meat. However, there is little reason to believe that there are additional harms associated with the allergy, aside from the allergic reaction itself. (Crutchfield & Hereth, 2025)
So aside from the vomiting, the diarrhea, and the anaphylaxis, there is apparently little reason to believe there are additional harms. We already need to ask at this point if they bothered to Google “anaphylaxis,” or looked into whether diarrheal diseases are ever fatal.
The authors don’t cite a specific reference for this supposed absence of evidence for severe or harmful consequences, but their sixty-one references do include two papers about alpha-gal syndrome.9 These are apparently just included for show because it’s clear Crutchfield and Hereth did not read them carefully. The first, “Diagnosis and Management of Patients with the α-Gal Syndrome” (Platts-Mills et al., 202010), has a series of notes under the subheading The Clinical Syndrome and Diagnosis, and one of the notes summarizes the range of reactions.
Reactions range from localized hives or angioedema to severe anaphylaxis which requires emergency treatment and admission to hospital. (Platts-Mills et al., 2020, note ii, page 3)
Table 1 (page 18) of the paper describes a few typical cases of AGS. Two of the six listed cases are of people with reactions so severe they required resuscitation and adrenaline, so they would have died without emergency medical care. Although Crutchfield and Hereth are quite sanguine about the range of AGS reactions, most of the rest of us would consider death to be a harmful condition.
Some academics go the extra mile and read at least the abstract and main section titles before citing a source. However in this case the authors could not muster even this tiny bit of effort with their second reference (Wilson et al., 202411) discussing the clinical presentation and treatment of AGS. The title of Section 4 of the paper is Clinical Spectrum of IgE to Alpha-Gal: Asymptomatic to Life-Threatening Anaphylaxis.
The initial description of AGS stemmed from investigation into patients suffering clear anaphylactic reactions. Reactions to cetuximab were often severe, as were the initial case series of patients reacting to mammalian meat, which explains why the syndrome was often referred to as ‘delayed anaphylaxis to red meat’. (Wilson et al., 2024)
Crutchfield and Hereth mention the anaphylaxis associated with use of cetuximab (a cancer drug) but dismiss this as rare, and they leave out the part where their own reference mentions similarly severe reactions from just eating red meat. Of course not everyone with AGS has the same reaction when exposed to alpha-gal, and the severity of reactions can vary. This is not a simple matter of an allergy reliably causing just enough discomfort to prevent a specific action, like the smack of a nun’s ruler across your knuckles when you misbehave.
As should be clear from these few examples, the impact of AGS is not as limited and consistent as Crutchfield and Hereth portray in their argument Few people would consider vomiting with a side of diarrhea a mild reaction, and AGS can have much more serious consequences. The authors are arguing to promote the spread of a syndrome many people won’t even know they have until a potentially fatal or near fatal reaction occurs. How is this the morally superior position?
Per the authors AGS is a perfect moral enhancer; they specifically state “the allergy only presents after eating meat.” This is a gross oversimplification, as any products using beef or pork gelatin, cooked in animal fat or lard, or using meat broth or bouillon can also stimulate the reaction. Milk and milk products can also contain alpha-gal, so we’re talking about potentially making all of humanity allergic to cheese.12 Alpha-gal is also found in carrageenans, a common food additive derived from red algae.13 Many different foods can trigger the reaction, so the unlucky few who exhibit severe AGS responses need to police their intake carefully to avoid sources of alpha-gal. Medical products such as heparin (a commonly used blood thinner), antivenoms, monoclonal antibodies, and heart valves from pigs and cows can also contain alpha-gal.14 This is not a simple case of avoiding one easily identifiable food product, nor are the reactions uniformly mild enough to not be life threatening.
For rational people the potential fatal consequences of AGS will be more than adequate reason to discard the authors’ conclusions. All humans are different, and some will suffer more extreme impacts of a disease than is seen in the majority. Those people are not sacrificial lambs in the promotion of an ideology, even if the majority believed in that ideology. There is no morally superior position in advocating the spread of any syndrome or disease to even more people, and every ten year old already understands this. Unlearning it requires years of university indoctrination, a six-figure student loan debt, and a brain addled by constantly ingesting too much Beano.15
The scary part
All the above is more than sufficient reason to run this paper through the shredder, but we have yet to discuss the alarming bits. Although the authors feel we should promote the spread of tickborne AGS we are currently not morally obligated to do so. This is not due to some hesitation about intentionally spreading disease; it’s just not possible right now to increase the tick’s ability to spread the syndrome.
We aim to establish the main claim that we should promote the proliferation of AGS by promoting the ticks that transmit it. To be clear, we do not argue that, today, we are morally obligated to promote the spread of tickborne AGS, because presently it is not possible to do so. But it is feasible to genetically edit the disease‐carrying capacity of ticks. If we are right, then today we have the obligation to research and develop the capacity to proliferate tickborne AGS and, tomorrow, carry out that proliferation. (Crutchfield & Hereth, 2025)
Per the authors we have an obligation to conduct research into enhancing the ability of the lone star tick to spread AGS. With the accomplished we will then be obligated to breed and spread those genetically modified ticks. This, by the way, includes engineering ticks better able to “survive and proliferate in more widespread conditions” so we have as many of these little buggers out there as possible. Of course a synthetic version of AGS would be even better, and in a chilling statement they refer to this as a moral bioenhancement.
The synthetic version of AGS is an example of moral bioenhancement. A moral bioenhancement is any intervention that improves a person’s moral capacities, which include moral reasoning, moral emotions, moral attitudes (desires, beliefs, hopes, etc.), or moral behavior. (Crutchfield & Hereth, 2025)
It’s a frightening euphemism, describing deliberate biological changes to human beings to permanently alter their behavior so it’s more in line with someone else’s abstract moral code. Calling this Orwellian is an understatement, and it’s being justified by the reasoning of ethics scholars who have decided on everyone’s behalf what is, and is not, acceptable behavior. Since they can’t convince the barbarians to not eat meat they will force us instead. And by “force” I mean force, as in “we can do this to you against your will.”
If it’s not voluntary, the only way to deliver AGS is by force, either covert or overt. But then this engages numerous normative obstacles, obstacles which our tick‐editing recommendation do not confront. (Crutchfield & Hereth, 2025)
They would be happy to inject us all with an AGS-causing compound if one existed, and this would only be challenging because of society’s current, silly norms against forcibly injecting people with things. Luckily for our moral superiors there is a way to effectively trick us into getting the syndrome by programming ticks to deliver it instead. Yes, per the authors it’s morally acceptable to modify ticks to deliver something to healthy people that they won’t take voluntarily. Of course if a synthetic form of AGS were available it would also be permissible to give everyone the syndrome by essentially poisoning the food supply. These would be convenient ways to “overcome empirical and normative obstacles.”
We are not claiming that synthetic AGS shouldn’t be pursued or that it is impossible to implement permissibly. It may be feasible for a person to take synthetic AGS to grocery stores and secretly inject it into beef, pork, lamb, etc. Perhaps that method of delivery would overcome some of the empirical and normative obstacles. (Crutchfield & Hereth, 2025)
By “empirical obstacle” they presumably mean the part where they get punched in the face while trying to hold someone down for an injection. Although the authors don’t address this scenario specifically, one has to wonder if they would actually defend simply sneaking up behind people and jabbing needles into them. Regardless of the delivery method most of us would view being involuntarily given a medical condition to be a violation of the basic right of bodily autonomy, but the authors disagree. They twice mention, in their carefully numbered and lettered chain of reasoning, that rights are not being violated but are merely being infringed.
In (1B) and (2B) we rely on a distinction between a violation of one’s rights and an infringement upon one’s rights. An infringement, but not a violation, is a justifiable transgression of rights. For example, public health measures like vaccination don’t violate (even if they infringe) people’s right against bodily interference and coercion. (Crutchfield & Hereth, 2025)
The authors are using language to create a distinction without a difference. Why does it matter whether we call it a violation or an infringement? According to the dictionary people those are synonyms—in fact the first and strongest synonym listed by Merriam-Webster for infringement is violation.16 Crutchfield and Hereth are creating subtle grades of difference between various violations of rights to make their argument more palatable. It’s a rhetorical trick to avoid directly admitting their argument assumes someone’s right to bodily autonomy can be violated as long as that violation aligns with their personal moral principles.
The mention of vaccination is also noteworthy when considering the widespread adoption of vaccine mandates beginning in 2020. A representative example of arguments in favor of such mandates was put forth by another group of morally stunted scholars, this time from the University of Oxford’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.17 In “Compulsory medical intervention versus external constraint in pandemic control” (Douglas et al., 202018) the authors argue a compulsory (forced) medical intervention like vaccination is permissible if it enables the lifting of other, more intrusive interventions. By their reasoning vaccination is less intrusive than other things already being implemented, such as quarantines and lock downs, and therefore can be made compulsory.19 Apparently if the government successfully removes a foundational liberty without sparking a violent uprising, that liberty can then be used as a trading card to exchange for some other basic liberty. “Take this drug or we’'ll turn you apartment complex into a makeshift prison” is a sentiment to warm the long dead heart of Josef Stalin, but it has no place in what we claim to be an enlightened society.
For anyone who accepts arguments such as those presented by the professional nitwits at Oxford, the Crutchfield and Hereth paper makes this even simpler. Authorities don’t need to horse trade personal freedoms to convince the public to acquiesce to their treatment regimen, they can just have the ticks or mosquitoes bypass consent entirely. And beyond being simply permissible to do this, the paper’s Conclusion reminds us this is a moral obligation.
Herein, we have argued that AGS is a moral bioenhancer and that its promotion is morally obligatory. Among other things, that means that researchers have an obligation to develop the AGS‐carrying capacity of ticks, and that means human agents are obligated to expose others to AGS (and possibly lone star ticks), not to prevent the spread of AGS or lone star ticks, and to undermine attempts to “cure” AGS. Indeed, given that AGS is a moral bioenhancement with no significant negative effects on human health (so long as one avoids eating meat), it is not a disease and thus cannot be “cured.” (Crutchfield & Hereth, 2025)
Per the authors scientists are morally obligated to develop a synthetic form of AGS, or AGS-carrying ticks. Beyond just doing nothing to prevent its spread, morally superior “human agents” are obligated to “expose” the barbarian hordes to this syndrome while working to prevent anyone from trying to cure it. Quite stunningly, the authors have concluded we are morally obligated to prevent anyone from finding a cure for a potentially fatal condition. Emerging from their their offices, lecture halls, and faculty soirees, this is what they have produced for our consumption. It sounds like a plan conceived by someone literally named Dr. Evil.
The emotionally coddled, adult five year olds clogging university humanities departments regularly demonstrate absolute faith in the proclamations of authority, especially in the public health system. These same ethical scholars would no doubt agree all vaccines are universally good, and based on the concept of herd immunity vaccinating everyone for something, even if they don’t want or don’t need the vaccination, will protect other people who may be vulnerable to the disease. Following their reasoning it’s perfectly acceptable to forcibly vaccinate that recalcitrant segment of the population. Since this may face “empirical and normative obstacles” it’s also acceptable to bypass the pesky free will of the recipients and transmit the vaccine via ticks or mosquitoes. The medical establishment can simply decide what we should be injected with, then genetically altered insects can be released into the population to inoculate the heathens.
Once involuntary vaccination is normalized, one shudders to think how these same people would address a variety of other issues. What if they decide humans are overpopulating the planet? Are we obligated to alter human biology to prevent pregnancies? There are already methods to do this by giving hormones to women or chemical castration drugs to men. What about violent crime? Are we required to give men estrogen to reduce their testosterone levels? There’s no real limit to where this reasoning can take us. It’s the horrors of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World made real, with humans being chemically modified to create what the system’s architects view as the ideal society.
This is the logical endpoint of the authors’ arguments: if there is a way to control human behavior by making it biologically deterministic then it is permissible, even obligatory, to do so. The only requirement is for our intellectual superiors to decide a particular behavior is immoral, or that they are advancing some other, greater moral good. The decisions about how to reshape our biology can be made by a tiny minority who have reasoned their way into positions no one outside their own cloistered circle of university faculty would support. In the minds of the authors society is obligated to enforce their moral vision via genetically engineered changes to our biology. The behavioral modification can be done without our consent or knowledge and in a manner impossible to avoid. Crutchfield and Hereth would remove our free will simply because we don’t see the world the same way they do.
What a useless, ignorant pair of jackasses.
Crutchfield P, Hereth B. Beneficial Bloodsucking. Bioethics. 2025 Oct;39(8):772-781. doi: 10.1111/bioe.70015. Epub 2025 Jul 22. PMID: 40693342. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40693342/
Archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20260520052023/https://philpapers.org/archive/CRUBBS
It’s called alpha-gal syndrome because it’s an acquired allergy to galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, a carbohydrate found many foods derived from mammals. Nobody wants to write that out every time so it’s abbreviated to alpha-gal.
In the next paragraph the authors note scores of people have stopped eating meat based on these arguments. A score is traditionally twenty (“four score and seven years ago”), but in yet another example of the continual degradation of language some people now use it to mean an undefined but large number.
Bramble B & Fischer B. (2015) The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat. Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-moral-complexities-of-eating-meat-9780199353903?cc=us&lang=en&
Anderson S. (2023, January 2017). Cattle and Land Use: The Differences between Arable Land and Marginal Land and How Cattle Use Each. CLEAR Center, UC Davis. https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/cattle-and-land-use-differences-between-arable-land-and-marginal-land-and-how-cattle-use
Greek, meaning the common people. See, I can do it too.
“To that extent.” This concept is clearly defined in law but much less so in philosophy. Check Reddit to see how confused students are by pro tanto.
Calvo F, Karras BT, Phillips R, Kimball AM, Wolf F. Diagnoses, syndromes, and diseases: a knowledge representation problem. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2003;2003:802. PMID: 14728307; PMCID: PMC1480257. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14728307/
By the way, when I went to PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) and searched for “alpha-gal syndrome” these were the second and fourth search results and available for free. This paper was not hard to critique.
Platts-Mills TAE, Li RC, Keshavarz B, Smith AR, Wilson JM. Diagnosis and Management of Patients with the α-Gal Syndrome. J Allergy Clin Immunol Pract. 2020 Jan;8(1):15-23.e1. doi: 10.1016/j.jaip.2019.09.017. Epub 2019 Sep 28. PMID: 31568928; PMCID: PMC6980324. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31568928/
Wilson JM, Erickson L, Levin M, Ailsworth SM, Commins SP, Platts-Mills TAE. Tick bites, IgE to galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose and urticarial or anaphylactic reactions to mammalian meat: The alpha-gal syndrome. Allergy. 2024 Jun;79(6):1440-1454. doi: 10.1111/all.16003. Epub 2024 Jan 9. PMID: 38193233; PMCID: PMC11142869. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38193233/
CDC. (2026, January 5). Fast Facts: Products That May Contain Alpha-gal. https://www.cdc.gov/alpha-gal-syndrome/data-research/products-containing-alpha-gal/index.html
Tobacman JK. The common food additive carrageenan and the alpha-gal epitope. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2015 Dec;136(6):1708-1709. doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2015.08.048. Epub 2015 Oct 27. PMID: 26518095. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26518095/
Crutchfield and Hereth dismiss concerns over heparin and other medical products because the reactions are rare and alternative products exist. This is a very self-serving argument; those reactions are rare because AGS is rare. If we just give AGS to all meat eaters (which they insist is ethical to do) then those reactions will be common, at which point we will all be forced to find/switch to alternative medical solutions. This is an underhanded manner of expanding their mandate via fait accompli (a thing already accomplished and irreversible).
Favored by vegetarians who have found one of the negative consequences of a diet containing way too many legumes such as soybeans. Yes, I made a soy joke.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/infringement
There is probably a ground breaking paper in moral theory waiting to be written about how some of the least moral people on Earth work as ethics professors.
Douglas T, Forsberg L, Pugh J. Compulsory medical intervention versus external constraint in pandemic control. J Med Ethics. 2020 Aug 20;47(12):e77. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2020-106435. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 32820018; PMCID: PMC8639959. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32820018/
As discussed in my book, there was no clear evidence various measures like masks and lock downs would have a significant impact on the spread of a viral respiratory illness, yet they were implemented nonetheless. That means draconian yet ineffective measures were forcibly implemented, then the ethics scholars decided those measures could be used as leverage to compel vaccination. Good job, guys.
Dr Evil? Or Dr Mengele?