i note the carefully composed photo, so you can't see the evidence of the awful surgeries the poor monkey has probably endured, nor the restraints that are holding him/her still. if the scientists are so convinced of the moral rightness of their work, why not depict the full truth of the means that bring us to that end?

Not to mention hormones, pesticides and the other crud the animals are exposed to, and that wind up in the meat.

Hello Inox,

Science can't seem to reach a clear consensus as to the safety or efficacy of even low-carb diets, but some vegans and vegetarians will have you believe that, despite our canine teeth, humans are somehow automagically better off with no meat at all.

There is plenty of science that supports the idea that a diet very low in animal products is healthiest, and that humans don't need animal products at all to thrive. You can read Dr. Colin Campbell's well-respected China study and there are also lots of others (e.g., the Okinawa studies - Okinawans having the highest population of healthy centenarians on the planet).

More anecdotally, the Ornish diet, South Beach, Rice and other popular diets say to greatly limit meat and dairy intake. So, probably, does your non-radical doctor. These days, conventional wisdom is that you only eat a little bit of meat each day, and preferably not every day. Atkins remains the big exception, but a lot of experts find Atkins problematic on many levels.

Especially if you delete industry-inspired and funded FUD (for example, the FDA's faux food pyramid) from your thinking, the conclusions are quite clear. And that doesn't even count the hormones, pesticides, etc., industrial meat is laden with.

i find it quite possible that we evolved to eat a little meat when we could find it (probably carrion), rather than starve to death, but I could counter your canine example with the fact that humans can't handle cholesterol well. If we evolved to eat lots o' meat we would have surely evolved a mechanism to handle the cholesterol.

But you know what's a huge scam? MILK and dairy are huge scams. Think about it...

Hillary

proof again that eating meat - esp. meat from factory farmed animals - is an inherently selfish act. it not only harms the animals and the environment, but the humans who are also involved in the industry. From my blog:

"Here are three examples of labor abuse at factory farms and slaughterhouses:

"In an article entitled Finger-Lickin’ Bad in the February 21, 2006 issue of the online environmental publication Grist, author Suzi Parker documents the exploitive and antiquated sharecropper-type business model used by poultry agribusinesses to dominate the small farmers who actually raise many of the birds sent to slaughter.

"In an article entitled The Chicken Hangers in the February 2, 2004 online publication In the Fray documents not only the horrific working conditions in the poultry industry but management’s hostile (and often unlawful) resistance to unionizing efforts or even basic workers’ rights.

"In a January 26, 2006, The New York Times article entitled Rights Group Condemns Meatpackers on Job Safety (paid subscribers only no link), begins, For the first time, Human Rights Watch has issued a report that harshly criticizes a single industry in the United States, concluding that working conditions among the nation’s meatpackers and slaughterhouses are so bad that they violate basic human rights."

Paul McCartney famously said that if slaughterhouses had windows, everyone would be vegetarian. Well, there's a reason they don't have windows...

Hillary

Wonderful comments Tarmle. There have in fact been studies (probably cited on Boing itself) about how the same neurons fire during an actual experience and a computer simulation of that experience.

I would remind all the biological determinists ("we're all primitive apes") that Mark's little daughter recoiled from the simulated? cruelty. Nearly all very young children do. So be careful what you attribute to nature, esp. since we have no way of doing controlled experiments to confirm it. And plenty of apes have been shown to demonstrate compassion. And guess what - plenty of humans, too.