A Swedish scientist has posed an unconventional solution to climate change: cannibalism.
Speaking at a summit in Stockholm last week, Stockholm School of Economics professor and researcher, Magnus Soderlund, reportedly said that he believes that eating human meat, harvested from dead bodies, may be able to save mankind, if only society were to "awaken the idea".
Per the Epoch Times, Soderlund posed his argument during the panel talk, "Can you imagine eating human flesh? at the Gastro Summit, which included the topics: "Is cannibalism the solution to food sustainability in the future" and "Are we humans too selfish to live sustainably?"
"Conservative" taboos against cannibalism, the professor posited, can change if people simply tried eating human flesh.
Soderlund went onto argue that our future food sources will continue to get more and more scarce, forcing people to consider alternative forms of nutrition, including pets and insects like grasshoppers and worms.
And this could be where cannibalism comes in; the scientist believes that if people were introduced to human flesh slowly, they would warm to the idea. As a behavioural expert, he believes the we can ultimately be "tricked" into "making the right decisions".
The professor was later asked during an interview with Sweden's TV4 whether he would personally try human flesh: "I feel somewhat hesitant but to not appear overly conservative … I’d have to say … I’d be open to at least tasting it," he said.
There are potential health risks when it comes to cannibalism, however. A tribe in Papua New Guinea practiced eating their dead to prevent them being eaten by worms and maggots, and developed a slow virus known as Kuru or the "laughing death".
Per the US National Library of Medicine, the disease is caused by an infectious protein found in contaminated human brain tissue. The practice of cannibalism amongst the people of New Guinea was ceased in 1960.
