An academic paper published by two faculty members at a Kalamazoo medical school came under fire online last month.
The paper by two professors at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine was published last year in the journal Bioethics.
"Beneficial Bloodsucking," by Parker Crutchfield and Blake Hereth, explores various possible benefits of intentionally spreading the tickborne illness alpha-gal syndrome, which makes people allergic to red meat.
"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," the authors write in the abstract.
A post on X that criticized the paper that noted cases have increased in recent decades and that reactions can include life-threatening conditions such as anaphylaxis. It went on to suggest that there may be a conspiracy to spread AGS.
But fact-checking website Snopes describes the paper as “purely a philosophical exercise.”
It attributes the rise in AGS cases to factors such as climate change, and humans moving into natural areas where ticks live. The paper itself notes that the technology it describes that would help spread AGS does not exist.
WMed Spokesperson Laura Eller also described the paper as a philosophical exercise.
"The work in question is a piece of academic philosophy published in Bioethics, a peer-reviewed journal of theoretical and normative inquiry. Like much scholarship in the field, the published article is a thought experiment," the statement read.
"It begins from stipulated premises and reasons about what would follow if those premises were granted. Thought experiments are a long-established and legitimate philosophical method. Their purpose is to examine the implications of ethical commitments and to surface hidden assumptions so they can be scrutinized. They are neither policy proposals nor clinical recommendations."
Michael Symonds reports for WMUK through the Report for America national service program.
