American Byzantine 🇺🇸

A peer-reviewed paper published last year in the journal Bioethics by two professors at Western Michigan University School of Medicine argues that it is "morally obligatory" to genetically engineer ticks to spread alpha-gal syndrome, a permanent condition that makes you violently allergic to red meat. The paper is called "Beneficial Bloodsucking." Their argument: if eating meat is morally wrong, then preventing the spread of a disease that forces people to stop eating meat is also morally wrong. Scientists should gene-edit lone star ticks to enhance their ability to carry alpha-gal syndrome and expand their range into urban environments to infect more people. They call this a "moral bioenhancer." They frame releasing genetically modified disease-carrying ticks as a "vaccination" that only "infringes" on your bodily autonomy rather than "violating" it. The distinction, apparently, is that a tick bit you instead of a government official holding you down. Alpha-gal syndrome is not mild. The CDC estimates up to 450,000 Americans are already affected. Cases have surged 100-fold in the last decade. Symptoms include anaphylaxis. There is no cure. Alpha-gal cases are exploding across the United States. The lone star tick's range is expanding far beyond its historical territory. And two academics at a medical school published a paper arguing this is a good thing that should be accelerated. At what point do we stop treating papers like this as fringe academic exercises and start asking whether anyone is already acting on them?

🚨 NOW: TMZ tried to do a hit piece on Spencer Pratt and Spencer Pratt contacted TMZ directly 🔥 This is how you handle Fake News

Elliot Page is expected to play Elpenor, the youngest crew member on Odysseus’ ship in THE ODYSSEY, not Achilles.

THOMAS PAINE: "I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace."

Xi Jinping when he was 32 years old at San Francisco

Trump breaks protocol having a toast with Xi Trump never drinks alcohol as his brother died from it, but as respect for Xi 🇨🇳🇺🇸🫡