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New Evidence in Historical Cannibalism Debate
An anonymous reader writes "ScienceNOW is reporting that a team of scientists led by Geneticist Jaume Bertranpetit has called into question findings from an earlier study of human prion diseases. The first study, led by John Collinge of University College London, stated that the existence of a gene that codes for prions was a result of a "balancing act" that had kept it in the gene pool for so long. The balancing act was supposedly due to widespread cannibalistic practices in human history. The new report suggests that their results were skewed because of low frequency variations known as 'ascertainment bias.'"
...but the mainstream news media will continue to utilize the cannabalism story due to their 'entertainment' bias
It doesnt really matter that much to me if my ancestors did a little canibalism, or even a lot for that matter. After all Im pretty sure that somewhere down the line some or perhaps even a lot of my ancestors engaged in equally terrible things to survive or perhaps even took part in them without "survival" really being an issue.
These thoughts dont exactly delight me.
However they dont really frighten me either.
To me all this article really says is that genetics is more complicated that we are currently able to understand and goes a lot deeper than just decoding a genome. One scientists sees some data and comes to a conclusion, another scientist looks at the same data a couple years later and reaches the opposite conclusion.
Exactly. We should only consider to be "taboo" those practices that are taboo across all cultures everywhere. Anything taboo that can be generalized is probably really worth avoiding, because if most every human is averse to it, it's likely to be bad for our survival. We should pay attention to our universal instincts.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
We should only consider to be "taboo" those practices that are taboo across all cultures everywhere.
First of all, you use the term "taboo" in your proposed definition of taboo. That never makes for a helpful definition.
Second, your statement can either be taken to mean: if it's not forbidden in all cultures, then it's ok to do. Which means if you can find one culture that did not forbid, say, rape or murder or child molestation (which you probably could do), we should change our laws so as to stop discouraging these misunderstood "non-taboo" practices.
I doubt you mean anything that dumb, right? In which case you must be trying to distinguish between "taboo" and "immoral", where "taboo" means maladaptive and forbidden across cultures, and "immoral" is questionable but non-maladaptive behavior that should still be discouraged. Otherwise you've inadvertantly made yourself a NAMBLA advocate.