Fact check: Ethics Professors recommend promoting meat allergy ticks to stop people from eating meat by giving them AGS

There is a little more to the story than this.

A bizarre philosophical tick for promoting ticks and AGS.

Of course, as you might suspect, this story is absolutely true.

This is the Abstract from the published study, provocatively entitled “Beneficial Bloodsucking”, which explains the authors’ ethical argument in full:

The bite of the lone star tick spreads alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a condition whose only effect is the creation of a severe but nonfatal red meat allergy. Public health departments warn against lone star ticks and AGS, and scientists are working to develop an inoculation to AGS. Herein, 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. We then defend what we call the Convergence Argument: If x-ing prevents the world from becoming a significantly worse place, doesn't violate anyone's rights, and promotes virtuous action or character, then x-ing is strongly pro tanto obligatory; promoting tickborne AGS satisfies each of these conditions. Therefore, promoting tickborne AGS is strongly pro tanto obligatory. It is presently feasible to genetically edit the disease-carrying capacity of ticks. If this practice can be applied to ticks carrying AGS, then promoting the proliferation of tickborne AGS is morally obligatory.

Parker Crutchfield, from University of Michigan website

One small point in his abstract ought to be challenged; that Alpha-Gal Syndrome is non-fatal. Being an anaphylactic reaction it can be fatal, in fact, even if there are no recorded cases of AGS causing a fatality.

The lead author, Parker Crutchfield, has proven himself to be a bit of a disturbing weirdo, really, in his publications in the past: during Covid he suggested infiltrating the water supply with “morality pills” to make people more compliant.

“To me, it seems the problem of coronavirus defectors could be solved by moral enhancement: like receiving a vaccine to beef up your immune system, people could take a substance to boost their cooperative, pro-social behavior. Could a psychoactive pill be the solution to the pandemic?” Crutchfield writes.

“It’s a far-out proposal that’s bound to be controversial,” he concedes, but nevertheless is one Crutchfield believes “is worth at least considering, given the importance of social cooperation in the struggle to get COVID-19 under control.”

“As some have argued, a solution would be to make moral enhancement compulsory or administer it secretly, perhaps via the water supply. These actions require weighing other values,” he writes.

The chemicals mentioned by Crutchfield are oxytocin and psilocybin, the active component of “magic mushrooms,” which he says “may cause a person to be more empathetic and altruistic, more giving and generous.”

Earlier, in 2018, Parker Crutchfield argued in a published paper that “Compulsory Moral Bioenhancement ought to be covert.” (I’ve linked to the prepublished version, the final published version is here.) This is the abstract:

Some theorists argue that moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory. I take this argument one step further, arguing that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration ought to be covert rather than overt. This is to say that it is morally preferable for compulsory moral bioenhancement to be administered without the recipients knowing that they are receiving the enhancement. My argument for this is that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration is a matter of public health, and for this reason should be governed by public health ethics. I argue that the covert administration of a compulsory moral bioenhancement program better conforms to public health ethics than does an overt compulsory program. In particular, a covert compulsory program promotes values such as liberty, utility, equality, and autonomy better than an overt program does. Thus, a covert compulsory moral bioenhancement program is morally preferable to an overt moral bioenhancement program.

In that paper he suggests that compulsory moral bioenhancement could be carried out covertly using a vaccination program for children:

The present issue is not whether the public health program of administering moral bioenhancement ought to occur; it’s a matter of how it should occur. Let us suppose that if it were to occur overtly, it would occur similarly to vaccination programs for children: at the age where the moral bioenhancement is safe and effective, children would receive the moral bioenhancement from their pediatrician or family physician or community health department, and that would be that. That information would then go on their health records, and they’d go on with their more moral lives. Let us also suppose that if the program were administered covertly it would be conducted in similar fashion. When children are scheduled to receive vaccinations, they are at the same time given the moral bioenhancement, but neither the children nor their parents or guardians are told about the moral bioenhancement and it doesn’t go in their health records. The administration of it could be double- or even triple-blinded, so that only a few individuals are aware of the moral bioenhancement. Everyone would go on with their lives unaware of the moral bioenhancement.

A particularly worrying paragraph in that article was this one:

Further, if moral bioenhancement is necessary to prevent ultimate harm, I’m skeptical that voluntary moral bioenhancement is up to the task. People who volunteer for moral bioenhancement are not those about whom we should be most worried—it’s those who have no interest in being better people that should worry us.

Better people according to whose definition? Parker Crutchfield’s definition of what is good is clearly a long, long way away from my definition of what is good, or yours, or any normal person who has not been propagandised by the woke university system: he might well perceive you or me as people who need compulsory moral bioenhancement, because we don’t agree with his idea of what good is. Because we don’t want to be bioenhanced in order that we may agree with him, we clearly need bioenhancement, according to his rather warped ideas. This is basically totalitarianism.

What is rather dystopian is not only these dreadful suggestions he is making, but the fact that this discussion is taking place apparently quite seriously in the context of ethics discussions in Universities, and furthermore, that this man is teaching medical ethics to medical students. One feels that the harm his ideas might do could easily spread a long way, particularly as he is provoking students to share his ideas.

Fortunately, his papers don’t seem to attract many citations: to me this a hopeful indication that the academic bioethics community regards him as a nutcase fringe dweller. His h-index is only 10, which is not enough to be promoted, despite his publishing many papers. Rather ironically, the publicity he is getting from the ‘Bloodsucking’ article might well contribute slightly to increase his h-index to 11, which may lead to some sort of promotion!

The co-author, Blake Hereth, describes himself on his website thus, which will give you a good idea of where he’s coming from:

I'm Blake. I'm proudly nonbinary (pronouns they/them), bisexual, and disabled. I work in neuroethics, bioethics, applied ethics, and philosophy of religion. I completed my PhD in Philosophy at the University of Washington, Seattle, in 2019.

Blake Hereth — from his website — fair use.

He has a list of published papers arguing for a gay, Christian, pacifist point of view. The scripture is not unclear on the topic of homosexuality, and I will say no more about that, live and let live (but by God’s grace I will build my life on Jesus’ words, whatever others might do), but his conclusions about the rights of people who eat meat do not agree with scripture either. God specifically gave Noah and all his descendants the right to eat meat (Genesis 9:3-4)

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

I can find no connection between these guys and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which I believe some people have suggested, apart from Gates’ influence on the University of Washington where Blake Hereth did his Masters and PhD. The University of Washington did receive US$279 million from the Gates foundation, but it was not the philosophy department but the UW health department that received this money. So that’s a non-sequitar in my humble opinion unless someone has evidence.

GDS, meat, tick bites and vaccine additives.

An interesting side issue raised by this paper is the relationship between Alpha Gal syndrome, meat, tick bites, and vaccine additives. They have recently discovered a new kind of immunoglobulin, Immunoglobulin E, that is triggered in Alpha-Gal syndrome by the ingestion or injection of the carbohydrate Galα1-3Galβ1-4GlcNAc-R (α-Gal), which is found in mammalian meat, and passed on in tick bites.

This carbohydrate Alpha-Gal is also found in Bovine (cow) or Porcine (pig) derived Gelatin, which is often used as an excipient today in many vaccines, and this is why some people who suffer from AGS have anaphylactic reactions after a vaccine injection. An excipient is a (supposedly) inert stabiliser used as the vehicle or medium for a drug that is being injected. Past excipients were peanut oil and tomato juice. It seems quite possible that these did not turn out too well, particularly considering the prevalence of peanut allergies in young people today, and tomato allergies in some older people.

Here are the Australian vaccines that use animal derived gelatin as a stabiliser, from the TGA website:

The inclusion of Porcine Gelatin in the ProQuad vaccine, for instance, is confirmed on the Seqirus labelling info sheet.

Now if the Alpha-Gal carbohydrate causes Alpha-Gal syndrome when it is injected by a tick bite, might not the porcine or bovine derived Gelatin also cause Alpha-Gal syndrome as well? Since it causes the anaphylactic reaction in people who already have the syndrome, the connection seems undeniable, the logic seems impeccable, but what do I know? I’m not a scientist, just a bum from the street.

Who makes these vaccines?

What is also interesting is looking at the companies who make the Pro-Quad vaccines. I asked myself the question, who holds the most shares in CSL? CSL are the owner of CSR Seqirus, which makes the Pro-Quad vaccine and many others.

CSL Seqirus is heavily involved in mRNA technology, Pandemic preparedness, Influenza vaccines for avian flu, etc etc.

And what do we find when we look at the institutional shareholders in CSL, or at least, as it is listed in Australia? From https://au.investing.com/equities/csl-limited-ownership:

Blackrock and Vanguard, who seem to own a piece of everything, have a combined shareholding of over 10%, and together are the shareholders holding the most influence over CSL. This in itself is not remarkable: Blackrock and Vanguard seem to hold 5-10% of nearly everything. But still, it is something to consider.

In fact, an awful lot of current vaccines contain Bovine and Porcine products, (including Porcine DNA, believe it or not, in the Rotavirus vaccine… What is that for?!)

Considering that many progressive people today think it would be a good thing for the environment and the planet if we all stopped eating meat, it would seem that vaccine recipients developing AGS might not be something they’re particularly worried about, even if it’s not something they’re actively planning to induce.

That’s all I’ll say on the subject. More than this, I cannot come to a conclusion. But it seems to me that articles deciding whether to control ticks or not might be a sort of a red herring, when the problem might be what they’ve already been injecting into people’s arms. But what do I know? Make your own mind up.

This is a news article not medical advice: I’m not a Doctor, so none of this article should be construed as medical advice; go see your Doctor and ask him/her if you want medical advice.

References

https://vaccine.guide/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Excipient_Media_Summary.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vaccine_excipients

Crutchfield, P. and Hereth, B. (2025), Beneficial Bloodsucking. Bioethics. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.70015

Cabezas-Cruz A, Hodžić A, Román-Carrasco P, Mateos-Hernández L, Duscher GG, Sinha DK, Hemmer W, Swoboda I, Estrada-Peña A and de la Fuente J (2019) Environmental and Molecular Drivers of the α-Gal Syndrome. Front. Immunol. 10:1210. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2019.01210 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2019.01210/full

Soumya Reddy, Lauren Yi, Bridget Shields, Thomas Platts-Mills, Jeffrey Wilson, R. Hal Flowers, Alpha-gal syndrome: A review for the dermatologist, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Volume 89, Issue 4, 2023, Pages 750-757, ISSN 0190-9622, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaad.2023.04.054.(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190962223007582)