Cannibalism is the ultimate taboo, yet the law, modern medicine and human genetics all have strange things to say about it. These three stories sound made up, but every one of them is true.
1. Is cannibalism actually illegal?
Only one state has a law that directly bans it: Idaho. The other 49 states have no specific anti-cannibalism statute.
Idaho's law carries up to 14 years in prison. It also includes a survival exception for people facing extreme, life-threatening conditions, so a stranded hiker is treated differently from a predator.
Before anyone gets ideas, there is a catch. In any state, you would break numerous other laws to get the meal, from homicide to abuse of a corpse. The missing statute is a loophole in name only.
2. Why did the CDC step in over new moms eating placentas?
A newborn became seriously ill after her mother ate the placenta. Doctors linked the baby's dangerous strep infection to the mother's placenta capsules, made from placenta that was dehydrated and put into pills.
The CDC then issued an advisory. Its warning was blunt: "No standards exist for processing placenta for consumption." In other words, nobody can guarantee what is in those capsules.
The practice is often promoted as a natural boost after birth, but the CDC's warning shows that an unregulated process can pass bacteria to a vulnerable baby.
3. Could a funeral ritual have changed a tribe's genes?
Yes, in a sense, and the gene protects against deadly brain diseases. The Fore people of Papua New Guinea honored their dead by eating their brains, and that ritual spread a fatal brain disease called kuru.
At its peak in the 1950s, kuru killed up to 2% of the tribe each year. Decades later, scientists found that some survivors carry a gene variant. Mice engineered with it resisted every prion strain tested, eighteen in all, including the kind behind mad cow disease.
One honest caveat: cannibalism did not create the variant. It likely already existed and became common because it helped carriers survive.
So the next time someone asks if you'd do it to survive, remember that the law, the CDC and the Fore all have a very different answer than you'd expect.
