In the rarefied halls of Western Michigan University’s Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, Professor Parker Crutchfield teaches medical ethics. One might expect such a role to instill reverence for human dignity, bodily autonomy, and the Hippocratic admonition to first do no harm.
Instead, Crutchfield has authored arguments for covertly drugging the population to improve its “morality” and, more recently, for actively spreading a tick-borne disease to make people allergic to red meat.
This is not satire. In the journal Bioethics, Crutchfield and co-author Blake Hereth published “Beneficial Bloodsucking,” which posits that if eating meat is morally wrong, then humanity has an obligation to promote the proliferation of lone star ticks carrying alpha-gal syndrome (AGS). The condition triggers severe allergic reactions to mammalian meat, causing hives, gastrointestinal distress, anaphylaxis, and in some cases, life-threatening complications.
The reasoning follows a familiar progressive script: identify a preferred lifestyle — in this case, veganism or strict vegetarianism — declare it morally obligatory, then justify any means necessary to enforce it. Peter Singer’s animal liberation philosophy undergirds the argument, treating human dietary freedom as subordinate to abstract ethical calculations about animal suffering.
History teaches us the danger of such utopian blueprints. When intellectuals claim the right to reshape human nature for the “greater good,” the results range from re-education camps to outright democide.
Crutchfield’s earlier work reveals the full scope of his vision. He has contended that moral enhancement drugs should be administered secretly because people might resist having their wills altered. Better, he suggests, that they never know their desires have been chemically constrained.
This is the logic of totalitarianism dressed in scholarly prose — the enlightened few manipulating the many for their own benefit, all while claiming benevolence.
Consider the practical horrors. Alpha-gal syndrome is no minor inconvenience. It can render everyday foods dangerous and has expanded alongside the range of the lone star tick. Public health officials rightly warn against it. Yet these professors frame the disease as a feature, not a bug.
They even carve out exceptions for certain indigenous groups with cultural hunting traditions, while dismissing the deeply rooted meat-eating practices of European, African, Asian, and Middle Eastern peoples. Such selective cultural deference exposes the selective compassion at the heart of this ideology.
The proposal also betrays a profound disregard for God’s design. Scripture presents meat as part of the created order, not an inherent evil. After the Flood, the Lord told Noah, “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things” (Genesis 9:3).
Throughout the Old Testament and into the New, meat features in covenant meals, sacrifices, and the table fellowship of Christ Himself. To treat the consumption of responsibly sourced meat as a moral failing requiring biological coercion is to reject both natural law and biblical revelation.
That a medical ethics professor at a respected institution would entertain — even hypothetically — weaponizing disease against human populations should alarm every thinking person. Academia increasingly serves as an incubator for ideas that, a generation ago, would have been confined to dystopian fiction. Today they appear in peer-reviewed journals, complete with PubMed entries and academic prestige.
Western Michigan University has placed its medical students under the tutelage of a man who believes secret chemical and biological interventions are legitimate tools for social improvement. Parents, taxpayers, and future patients have every right to demand accountability.
When those entrusted with forming the next generation of physicians advocate for covert population-level manipulation, the corruption of the academy has reached a terminal stage.
This episode underscores a deeper civilizational choice. Will we preserve the God-given dignity of the individual, including the freedom to eat what Scripture and nature provide? Or will we surrender to a new priesthood of bioethicists who view humanity as raw material for their moral experiments? The answer will determine whether medicine remains a healing art or becomes an instrument of control.
As the psalmist reminds us, “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well” (Psalm 139:14).
Any ethic that treats the human body as a canvas for ideological tinkering — whether through forced medication or engineered disease — stands in rebellion against the Creator who formed us with purpose and liberty.
