After thought for yesterdays post:

Cannibalism in the past has yielded similar results. The Fore people of Papau New Guinea used to devour their dead relatives as a ritual. It was meant to bring about immortality through incorporation. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a prion related brain wasting disease. It is essentially the human equivilant of BSE. The Fore used to call it Kuru, or "laughing death". When a random Kuru sufferer died and was eaten, an epidemic broke out. Thanks to the cannibalistic ritual, the disease continued to recycle itself. The only relief from the disease was when the Australian authorities banned cannibalism and enforced that ban.

Any animal should not eat it's own dead if only for the reason that our bodies are the perfect incubators for the diseases that kill us. Things become taboo for a reason.

Sorry to any Michael Valentine Smith fans out there.

-slacker