Ethics are a bitch. They are way too complicated for my tiny brain.

You see, I was at the grocery store today and saw some flanken ribs for sale (not that I had a clue what a flanken was so I had to Google it).

You see I thought it said Franken Ribs. Which of course made me think of franken fish, fish genetically modified to be hungry all the time so they grow faster. I’m no expert on franken fish so you’ll have to Google that yourself.

So I’m thinking franken ribs not from a perspective of a modified pig growing really big ribs but of ribs growing in a vat of gelatinous nutrients.  Kind of like the idea of growing spare organs.

So of course I wonder what the ethics are of eating a vat-grown slab of ribs. Technically I suspect it wouldn’t be an animal. Though I don’t know that for sure. This is where ethics fall into that bitch category.

I have no idea what to think about that. I don’t know if franken ribs are good or bad.

At least with the franken fish I can believe that modifying fish to be forever hungry and allowing those modified fish to find their way into nature is probably really bad. I don’t know if it’s ethically bad but I’m pretty sure the environmental impact will be nasty.

I mean what if a franken fish breeds with a shark. Holy crap that would be bad. Perpetually ravenous sharks prowling the ocean. It would be like Jurassic park unintended consequences bad.

Maybe it falls into the just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should category. Which I must say is a category that applies so well to so many things.

The latest thing I threw in that category was legislation or laws. Just because it isn’t unconstitutional doesn’t mean you should do it or allow it (Ahem, yes I’m talking about you Citizen United). Somehow we’ve managed to endow the constitution with some sort of ethical/moral pass. That’s messed up.

Maybe we need to find some of Jefferson’s DNA grow his brain in a vat and see if he can shed some commonsense on this whole constitution thing. Or we could just grow his brain in a vat and then eat it. That would probably solve a whole slew of ethical and constitutional questions. It might spawn a whole new discourse like “Well, if we can eat Jefferson’s brain it certainly then makes sense that corporations should have a voice in the democracy.”