Podcast: Unleash GMO Ticks to Spread Meat Allergies? Idiocy From The Ivory Tower

By Cameron English and ChuckDinerstein — Oct 21, 2025

We should genetically engineer ticks and release them into the environment, so they can infect people with a meat allergy. That's a real—and thoroughly wicked—proposal from two bioethicists at Western Michigan University. Join us as we dissect possibly the dumbest idea the academy has ever produced.

Image: ACSH

Join Cameron English and Dr. Chuck Dinerstein on Episode 139 of the Science Dispatch podcast as they discuss a wildly unethical "thought experiment."

Forced Meat Allergies: An Unethical 'Thought Experiment' from the Bowels of Bioethics

It may sound like an Alex Jones fever dream, but there are real academics proposing to deliberately infect people with a tick-borne meat allergy to mitigate the effects of climate change. It sounds wildly unethical because it is.

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Cameron English

Director of Bioscience

Cameron English is a writer, editor and co-host of the Science Facts and Fallacies Podcast. Before joining ACSH, he was managing editor at the Genetic Literacy Project.