Is cannibalism always wrong?

I was thinking of the airline passengers who lived-through a crash in the Andes and survived the weeks until they were rescued by using the bodies of those who didn't.
No. there is a case in English law where three men in a boat were adrift in the sea. They thought they where all going to die, so they ate the sick cabin boy, thinking he wouldn't make it. A short time later they were rescued and promptly confessed their actions. They were tried for murder but were proved inocent on the grounds of diminished responsability, as one could not say that they wouldn't have done the same in their situation.
Gotta do what you gotta do.
No, cannibalism isn't always wrong, there was a film called the last cannibal world, and it included people who had been cannibals all of their life, how where they supposed to change.
Is that a movie? It depends how you feel. Some people think if your dying, then it isn't wrong. I can't even imagine doing that though, even if I was dying.

PS- To the person above me, I know all about primates, and chimps eat monkeys all the time.
Well cannibalism, as a course of human evolution is not a natural phenomena. Humans are naturally omnivores. Most omnivores under normal circumstances do not indulge in cannibalism. Take our near genetic cousins the chimps for example.. never has it been observed in wild or captured primates for one chimp to cannibalize another. There may be occasional killing another chimp due to factional rivalry or the alpha male going about kidnapping and killing newborn males (especially if they are offspring of dominant females), but definately no cannabilism.

However, in pure carnivores, it is a common phenomena, for one carnivore to kill and eat another of its own species. Although this does not occur during their normal course of living, should there be scarecity of food, it has been known to occur. Also birds and reptiles are notorious where it comes to dishing on their own. By the time we get to the insect kingdom, all social responsibility breaks down when it comes to feeding time. This is especially true for spiders.

Now the point I want to make is that since human beings are omnivores we do have a bit of the herbivore as well as a bit of the carnivore within us. When you see a cow or a deer licking its offspring clean off the plesenta, would you consider that cannibalism? Chicken, very very often, attack their own eggs, and consume the shells, and in the process all the contents of the eggs themselves. Is a chicken evil?

We'll then come to the part where we'd ask ourselves, does cannibalism, to be taken as unusual and abominable behaviour, have to be performed by intellegent beings. We'd fall into a quandry where classifying an intellegent being would be in question. Would early man, with enough knowhow to make tools and arms be considered 'gross' if he/she were to cannibalize a fellow human? Would 'untouched by CIVILIZATION' pigmy tribes of untill mid last centuary, that routinely fought other pigmy tribes and then cannibalized them be considered sub-human.

The answer is in the perception. Where you would have been brought up in an environment that abhors bloodshed, a fellow human may have been brought up to believe in absolute might through cannibalism. Such a person would not think twice about butchering a fellow and making pot roast with the trimmings with him/her. During WW2 german era, various experiments were conducted by renouned Nazi doctors, where captured infants were locked up and brought up amongst and as various animals. One such experiment was that consucted in bringing up a child as a pig. By the time the child was a teen, the mental structure was such that it not only behaved like a pig, ate like one, but also reacted like other pigs, when a fellow pig was taken and put to pot. A person will believe untill shown various options in the manner the person has been educated.

Even the educated may revert to primevial behaviour - that of a carnivore on the look out for food where any creature - even its own species, is fair game. There is a famous story told by survivors of the Ship Medusa, which was shipwrecked; and 150 men and women built a large raft to escape in. The Raft was sturdy enough to support the people and even brought in a few last survivors to rescue. The morbid part relates that out of the 150, there remained but 15, the rest were victims of first starvation and later homicide followed by cannibalism.

Which brings us back to the cannibal that butchered a little girl. The person most likely had a mix of various influences, his upbringing, educative inputs through television, books and first-hand action. As a grown-up these must have triggred a primitive outburst where norma perception of social respect and responsibility towards another human is replaced by survival instincts at its most primitive, all of this bolstered by the cumulative knowlage of all the years of education in various ways.

I guess we'll always be guessing what went wrong....!!
Yes but the really horrible thing was once they had eaten all the dead people they had to eat the left over airline meals!!!
depends on the circumstances. The Andes air crash survivors did what they had to do to survive. Survival is the strongest instinct, nobody can judge anyone that hasn't been put in this kind of situation themselves. The Catholic Church fully supported what they had to do.
all depends on how long you`ve gone without food
Cannibalism is wrong but not in extreme circumstances such as the one you mention survival is the most important thing. If i was in that life or death situation i know which option i would choose
Id like to think I could do that for the sake of my children . Tough decision, I couldnt eat it raw. Id have to cook it.
at least they waited till they were dead they survived didnt they flesh is flesh when its dead most people dont have a problem when they eat cows or pigs lambs etc. but its still flesh
if the soul has gone to heaven then what is wrong with eating what is left on earth? some christians eat the body of christ and drink his blood at communion every sunday.
Guess not. None of those survivors were ever charged with anything.

Excuse me, I have to go a baste that femur. . .
You can't say it's always wrong- in the example you give, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Still, that doesn't make it very pretty... not something you'd want to make a habit of. As the big fella says up there, it can be a matter of perception... but if a person perceives cannibalism as a decent act, and has no qualms about headhunting, then they probably shouldn't be running about in society at large.
Then again, if they live in a community of headhunters, there'd be no trouble... it could even be considered a holy experience.... still, that's not the kind of community most of us would like to join, I would imagine...
nah its okay in certain circumstances aint it....some regions in the world today...like in africa still have cannibals.....!!...youd think my girlfriend was a cannibal the way shes always eating the beef baton!!
Perfectly justified in thet situation......By the way. What bits would you have liked to eat?


Answer:
In England & Wales cannibalism per se is not forbidden. However there are surrounding laws which effectively make it illegal, such as desecration of deceased, which is an offence. However to every offence there are defences available. In the circumstances that you cite, the airline crash in the Andes, which later was made into a film, the bodies of the dead were eaten out of necessity. There is a defence of necessity which can be raised in such circumstances.

There is an old English case dating back to the late 1800's concerning 3 sailors who had abandoned ship and were drifting at sea in a little boat. One of the sailors had a very bad injury to his leg and the other two sailors considered that this guy was probably going to die anyway so they justified their decision to kill him and eat him so that at least they could survive. They did this and as luck would have it a passing ship rescued them a couple of days later. The matter went to trial and the two sailors claimed necessity and also they claimed that the man was dying anyway so what they did was of no consequence. The court however convicted them. One of the reasons for the conviction was that the defence of necessity could not be a defence to murder. However the court acquitted them on charges of cannibalism, stating that the defence of necessity was established.

The moral of the story is that where someone if already dead, and the surrounding circumstances are such that the survivers can only continue to survive through cannibalism, then the law will recognise this as a valid defence. However the law will not allow a person to be killed for cannibalistic purposes, even if that person is dying anyway.

I recall reading the book about the airline pasengers you mention. They only ate the bodies of strangers and those who were unknown to them and they tried to do this humanely by not desecrating the torso or head. It was awful.
If it is a matter of life and death and making use of those who have already persihed then although unpleasant and traumatic, there is a valid argument for cannibalism.

There is a very old sailors regulation called 'The law of the sea' which states that sailors who are adrift can consume the flesh of the deceased to preserve their own life.