The rights and wrongs of eating people

[sawyl]

We had an interesting discussion over coffee this morning about the precise moral problems raised by cannibalism. I, playing the devil's advocate, supplied a series of reasons why it might be better to eat a human being who had freely consented to being eaten than to eat animals which cannot give consent; and that allowing others to eat your body after death is morally equivalent to donating your body to a hospital for the edification of medical students.

I'm not sure that we really resolved the question, but it was interesting how poorly initial feelings of revulsion correlated with the real moral issues the problem raised.