Is there anything medically wrong with eating human flesh.

Gordon wrote: »

Yes, you could get laughing disease.

Bloody Nipples wrote: »

Kuru is a type of spongiform encephalopathy, like bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), only you get it from eating human rather than beef. To be infected with it you'd have to eat the flesh of someone with Kuru, so while you could theoretically develope CJD or nvCJD, it's like saying beef isn't medically safe to eat because the cow may have BSE.

Unless you're eating body builders, human meat is likely to be very fatty, even on a relatively healthy human. The typical human would actually be full of cholesterol and would just have horrible, tender, fat meat on their bones. So it would be quite fattening and there would be little nutrition in the meat. If someone wanted to eat human meat it should be a once-every-few-months sort of thing. Definitely not something to eat everyday.

In general, cannibalism is a bad idea because whatever killed the person you're eating might also kill you. There are a lot of species-specific parasites and germs, so you're more at risk of these from eating a cow than from eating a human. Apes are actually nearly as dangerous, since they're so similar to us, and a lot of diseases that affect them also affect us.

The story you heard is probably about "kuru", the laughing sickness. It's similar to mad cow disease, and probably has a similar cause. Like mad cow, it mostly concentrates in the brain, so you probably won't get it if you avoid the brain and spinal cord. Besides, kuru is rare out side of certain parts of Africa.

The hamstring muscles are large and obvious, but they're also going to be tough, because they receive so much use. It corresponds to the chuck and rump cuts on a cow. Then again, the cuts corresponding to the tender loin muscles are also going to be tough in a human, since they do all the work of keeping us vertical. (Cows don't work those muscles as hard since they go on all fours.)

So you'd want to go with a braise, which is also better for keeping down parasites. That will tend to kill off whatever bugs were affecting your victim.

It's still not a good idea, for legal reasons if nothing else.

I’m not aware of any general problems associated with eating manflesh, but there was some very interesting work done in Papua New Guinea on a disease called kuru. Apparently, in some tribes it is (or was) the custom for people to routinely eat their dead, and people would bequeath specific parts of their bodies to their particular friends - on a kind of sympathetic magic principle, e.g. leave your testicles to your best mate if you want to enhance his virility. Each sex ate only the bodies of its own sex.

Bloody Nipples wrote: »

Kuru is a type of spongiform encephalopathy, like bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), only you get it from eating human rather than beef. To be infected with it you'd have to eat the flesh of someone with Kuru, so while you could theoretically develope CJD or nvCJD, it's like saying beef isn't medically safe to eat because the cow may have BSE.

TheAnswer wrote: »

Human flesh is referred to as "long pork" in certain cultures. It's just sick sick sick. I think I'd rather starve, nor would I eat my dog (would probably eat someone else's dog but couldn't eat my own).