The Dangerous Path of Social Engineering Through Science

Two academics from Western Michigan University’s Department of Medical Ethics, Humanities, and Law recently published a paper in Bioethics making a radical claim: it is “morally obligatory” to promote the spread of alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a tickborne disease that makes people severely allergic to red meat.

Their exact words: “Promoting tickborne AGS is strongly pro tanto obligatory.”

The logic runs as follows. If eating meat is morally wrong, then anything that prevents people from eating meat is morally justified. 

AGS, they argue, is a “moral bioenhancer” because it alters human biology in a way that encourages what they see as virtuous behavior. And since genetic engineering could, in theory, eliminate other dangerous pathogens carried by the Lone Star tick, they conclude that promoting the spread of AGS ticks would be a moral duty.

Even if you accept their premise that eating meat is immoral, this line of reasoning is deeply troubling. Once we sanction the deliberate unleashing of disease as a tool of social change, we have crossed into a world where biology is manipulated not to cure illness, but to enforce ideology. That is social engineering by science, and it is a line we should not cross.

Advocating for dietary change is one thing. If you want to stand on a corner and persuade people to stop eating meat, that’s your right. But to engineer a disease that takes away people’s choice is coercion, not persuasion. If we let this logic take hold, where does it end? 

Do we reprogram genetic traits linked to risk-taking because some argue society would be safer without them? Do we engineer away personality traits like aggression or competitiveness because a subset of academics finds them undesirable? Do we tamper with features like hair color, eye color, or skin tone under the guise of reducing discrimination? Once the principle of autonomy is surrendered, there is no obvious stopping point.

Even in its most “controlled” form, this argument represents a slippery slope. It elevates ideology over individual rights, coercion over consent, and scientific power over human freedom. That is not ethics; it is activism cloaked in academic robes.

Public trust in medicine and academia rests on honesty, transparency, and a shared commitment to minimizing harm. When scholars blur the line between debate and biological coercion, they betray that trust and undermine the very credibility their institutions depend on.

Medicine operates on a simple principle: First, do no harm. Academia should follow a parallel standard: First, tell the whole truth. Stripping away choice under the banner of morality violates both.

The ethics of eating meat belong in the public square, where arguments can be tested, debated, and freely chosen. But promoting the spread of disease, even engineered to appear “safe,” is neither moral nor ethical. It is a dangerous step toward a world where human freedom is sacrificed to scientific social engineering. And history has shown us that once you normalize reshaping people’s biology to serve ideology, the consequences are never as controlled as the theorists imagine.