Sometimes you run across something or someone that just drops your jaw in disbelief. Both were applicable today. I’ve seen plenty of nutty professors boldly go where no nut has dropped before — where a nut has pontificated and posited arguments that unmoored from reality — but today, a man named Blake Hereth has leapt to the top of my nutty professor list.
Strap in, dear reader, you’re in for a roller coaster of professorial nuttiness.
Blake Hereth has a PhD. He’s an assistant professor at Western Michigan University in the Department of Medical Ethics, Humanities, and Law. Before that, he worked at the University of Arkansas.
Blake's pronouns are “they/them.” Respect his pronouns.
During the Biden administration, and through a grant funded by the Air Force, he investigated the ethics of warfighter enhancement. Hereth has authored or co-authored multiple papers on what he’d describe as ethical imperatives. What are those imperatives? Dystopian nonsense.
I’ll focus on two. The first was written during his tenure at the University of Arkansas. It was titled:
“Here’s Not Looking at You, Kid: A New Defense of Anti-Natalism"
Two quotes from that paper:
Anti-natalism is the view that persons ought morally to refrain from procreation. We offer a new argument for a principled version of anti-natalism according to which it is always impermissible to procreate in the actual world since doing so will violate the right to physical security of future, created persons once those persons exist and have the right. First, we argue that procreators can be responsible for non-trivial harms that befall future persons even if they do not cause them and if the harms are temporally delayed, provided the harms are reasonably foreseeable by procreators.
If persons procreate in spite of such knowledge, they share responsibility (and liability) in the outcome. We then raised and responded to several objections to our arguments, showing that none succeeds.
In short, Hereth tells us that having children, any children, is bad. Very bad. If you do that irresponsible, unethical thing of having children, you are responsible for harming that person (just by bringing them into the world), and you, parent, are responsible for any and all harm/wrong that person commits during their lifetime. You're a parent? You are a bad person. So, mankind, don’t have children. Ever.
As nutty as that may sound, his nutty conclusions in this year's offering will disgust you. His latest paper argues that a tick-borne illness called Alpha-gal, which causes people to have a violent allergic reaction to eating red meat, is a good thing. Although people have become violently ill eating red meat after being infected by the Lone Star tick, and sometimes they have ended up in the hospital, Hereth argues that that is just too bad. “Greater good”
In a paper titled Beneficial Bloodsucking Hereth and his co-author write:
Our main conclusion is that we should promote a particular tickborne syndrome: alpha-gal syndrome (AGS). AGS is caused by the allergen alpha-gal, which in humans causes an allergic reaction to eating mammalian meat and mammalian organs. People who have the allergy may have a variety of symptoms, including hives, gastrointestinal upset (e.g., vomiting and diarrhea), or anaphylaxis in severe cases. Often, these symptoms present 2-6 hours after ingestion of mammalian meat.
Assuming that tickborne AGS becomes sufficiently widespread and is not reversed, this will result in enormous changes to human behavior – changes that benefit billions of nonhuman animals whose red meat is no longer desired.
Assuming that eating meat is generally morally impermissible, acquiring AGS is likely to morally enhance a person’s behavior, as they are far less likely to eat (red) meat if they are allergic to it.
I read the paper and, yes, my mouth was agape most of the time. Hereth’s paper is a demand that humans be infected with Alpha-gal, that no “cure” be researched or developed because Alpha-gal isn't a “disease,” and if some people are harmed (sometimes severely), well, tough, humans, stop eating meat. Greater good or some theoretical nonsense that allows these ghouls to sleep at night. More from Beneficial Bloodsucking:
Herein, we have argued that AGS is a moral bioenhancer and that its promotion is morally obligatory. Among other things, that means that researchers have an obligation to develop the AGS-carrying capacity of ticks, and that means human agents are obligated to expose others to AGS (and possibly lone star ticks), not to prevent the spread of AGS or lone star ticks, and to undermine attempts to ‘cure’ AGS. Indeed, given that AGS is a moral bioenhancement with no significant negative effects on human health (so long as one avoids eating meat), it is not a disease and thus cannot be ‘cured.’ persons even if they do not cause them and if the harms are temporally delayed, provided the harms are reasonably foreseeable by procreators.
The final sentence wraps a bow around their nonsense:
[I]f we relied entirely on consequentialism, one might object to our argument on deontological grounds. The Convergence Argument avoids that objection.
What is the “Convergence Argument”? All premises point to a single conclusion. They spend 25 pages presenting a “We think eating red meat is bad” conclusion and dismissing the consequences of allergic sickness to a “tough” conclusion. Pain is ethical for the greater good. Here "they" are:
These guys are a couple of nutty profs. I’m thankful that my children all avoided teachers like these guys.
Pro Tip: People of Western Michigan avoid Crutchfield and Hereth. If you see them, run — they might have a tick to "show you."
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