OPINION:
Two medical school philosophy professors have released a morality paper, “Beneficial Bloodsucking,” arguing that the public needs to be bitten by ticks to cure their love of meat and improve the world.
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The article is being debated after researchers reported an increase in tick bites and emergency room visits, sparking conspiracy theories about secret insect experiments.
The paper calls for engineering a particular breed, the lone star tick, to cause widespread attacks that result in people developing alpha-gal syndrome. The disease creates an intense allergic reaction to consuming red meat.
Apparently, the ticks will not be able to tell whether their victims are immoral steakhouse regulars or innocent, tofu-eating vegans.
Being one of those attacked by the man-altered insect is “morally obligatory,” the writers argue.
“The bite of the lone star tick spreads alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a condition whose only effect is the creation of a severe but nonfatal red meat allergy,” they write. “In short, when a tick sucks human blood and transmits AGS, it enhances the moral capacities of the person it bites; the AGS-transmitting tick is a moral bio-enhancer. The more they transmit AGS, the better they and the world will be.”
Despite the two saying that alpha-gal syndrome is “nonfatal,” people should be aware that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disagrees: “Alpha-gal syndrome (AGS) is a serious, potentially life-threatening allergy and tick-borne disease.”
Although the CDC officially identified 110,000 cases of suspected alpha-gal syndrome from 2010 to 2022, the agency estimates that public underreporting means the actual number of infected Americans could be as high as 450,000.
“Visits to emergency rooms for tick bites are higher than normal in many parts of the country right now, according to CDC’s Tick Bite Tracker,” the agency said in April.
“Beneficial Bloodsucking” began its journey in July 2025, with a post on the mainstream journal Bioethics. That link found its way to a spot within the prestigious National Institutes of Health and its National Library of Medicine webpage.
The Washington Times asked NIH about posting an article that advocates making people sick to change dietary preferences but received no response.
The authors, Parker Crutchfield and Blake Hereth, teach in the Department of Medical Ethics, Humanities and Law at Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine. Mr. Hereth’s “biosketch” refers to him as “they/them/their.”
“Dr. Hereth has served as Chair of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on LGBTQ People in the Profession, where they have spearheaded efforts to advance the interests of LGBTQ persons within professional philosophy, including bioethics,” the bio says.
In what they call an academic “thought experiment,” Messrs. Crutchfield and Hereth write, “It is presently feasible to genetically edit the disease-carrying capacity of ticks. If this practice can be applied to ticks carrying AGS, then promoting the proliferation of tick-borne AGS is morally obligatory.”
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Last month, Newsmax host Rob Finnerty interviewed Nicholas Hulscher, an epidemiologist with the McCullough Foundation, which fights “medical tyranny.”
Mr. Hulscher pointed to the Western Michigan University paper and said, “You can’t make this up. Bioterrorism is masquerading as bioethics,” adding that “we need serious investigations” into various laboratories that have been tinkering with ticks.
“There is a major tick problem going on,” he said.
The name that often comes up when discussing the reengineering nature is billionaire Bill Gates and his grant-rich Gates Foundation.
He is funding tick research, but the work focuses on stopping the cattle tick and is unrelated to the lone star tick or alpha-gal syndrome, fact-checkers say.
Mr. Gates is also financing a laboratory in South America. Each week, it breeds 30 million mosquitoes that carry the bacterium Wolbachia. Released, the mosquitoes will then breed with wild mosquitoes that carry deadly viruses such as dengue fever.
The Gates Foundation’s hope is that the bacterium will block the transmission of the virus. “This might sound the beginnings of a Hollywood writer’s horror film plot,” Mr. Gates writes. “But it’s not.”
Messrs. Crutchfield and Hereth urge the scientific and government communities to engineer the lone star tick to achieve three goals: always carry AGS, survive and reproduce across a wide geographic area, and stop spreading other infections, which it does today.
“If we are right, then today we have the obligation to research and develop the capacity to proliferate tick-borne AGS and, tomorrow, carry out that proliferation,” the paper states. “Promoting tick-borne AGS prevents the world from becoming a significantly worse place, doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, and promotes virtuous action or character.”
The authors explain how the syndrome materializes: the allergen alpha-gal triggers an immune response, leading to health problems when meat is consumed. These problems include hives, vomiting, diarrhea and, in rare cases, anaphylaxis, which can cause death.
“Often, these symptoms present two to six hours after ingestion of mammalian meat,” they write. “However, there is little reason to believe that there are additional harms associated with the allergy, aside from the allergic reaction itself.
What’s next, they say, is to accept their global plan.
“We argue that researchers and the public should promote the widespread transmission of AGS, starting with immediate research and development of a tick’s ability to carry and transmit AGS. … Eating meat is morally wrong. … Eating meat makes people morally worse and makes the world a worse place.”
Among many dissenters online is The Catholic World Report, with an article by John M. Grondelski, a former associate dean at Seton Hall University’s School of Theology.
“Let’s say straight up: these authors advocate intentionally making people sick,” Mr. Grondelski writes. “They downplay the significance of what they promote by pretending you won’t get sick if you become a ‘morally virtuous’ person (by their index) and, even if you do, the illness isn’t that bad.”
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• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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