Rank stupidity at Western Michigan University's School of Medicine?

13 August 2025

Should rank stupidity be a metaphorical hanging offense?

Flamboyant stupidity irritates me.

Below is another look at it, as it continues its psychotic rampage throughout the United States.

From the journal, Bioethics

Comes an abstract written by professors Parker Crutchfield and Blake Hereth:

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.

Public health departments warn against lone star ticks and AGS, and scientists are working to develop an inoculation to AGS.

Herein, we argue that if eating meat is morally impermissible, then efforts to prevent the spread of tickborne AGS are also morally impermissible.

After explaining the symptoms of AGS and how they are transmitted via ticks, we argue that tickborne AGS is a moral bioenhancer if and when it motivates people to stop eating meat.

We then defend what we call the Convergence Argument: If x-ing prevents the world from becoming a significantly worse place, doesn't violate anyone's rights, and promotes virtuous action or character, then x-ing is strongly pro tanto obligatory; promoting tickborne AGS satisfies each of these conditions.

Therefore, promoting tickborne AGS is strongly pro tanto obligatory. 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 tickborne AGS is morally obligatory.

The rest of the paper is behind a paywall.

The authors' backgrounds

The University presents Crutchfield's qualifications this way:

Parker Crutchfield, PhD, received his bachelors degree in philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

He completed his PhD in philosophy at Arizona State University, working in applied ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science.

Following graduate school, he was assistant professor of ethics and the inaugural director of research at the Missouri School of Dentistry and Oral Health at A.T. Still University, a school which he helped found.

As Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Ethics, Humanities, and Law at WMed, Dr. Crutchfield conducts clinical ethics consultations, teaches medical students and residents, and conducts research in medical ethics.

Hereth's qualifications are equally 'impressive':

Blake Hereth, PhD (they/them), received their undergraduate degree in philosophy from Cedarville University in 2011.

After completing their MA in philosophy at the University of Arkansas from 2012-2014, they spent a year as an adjunct professor at Drake University and Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa.

From 2015-2019, they completed a second MA in philosophy (2017) and a PhD in philosophy at the University of Washington, Seattle.

After graduating, Dr. Hereth served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at their alma mater, the University of Arkansas, for two years (2019-2021), before accepting a research position as Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (2021-2023), where they worked under a U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research grant to investigate the ethics of warfighter enhancement.

Subsequent to their time at UMass Lowell, Dr. Hereth served for one academic year as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Wexler Lab at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, where they worked to model ethicist engagement in private neurotechnology companies.

In addition to these positions, 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.

So, let's see

We have two professors (of differing ranks):

educated in arguably pretend fields

with no apparently direct experience

related to taking care of people and patients

in the purportedly 'real world'

. . . evidently telling medical students and readers, satirically or not, how to organize the planet.

Hmm

If their abstract is satiric, it should say so. And further justify, why such trivial satire is worthy of publication. For instance, as in posting a rebuttal to some other person's published argument.

On the other hand, if the above-cited abstract is serious — then it should it include an abbreviated reference to how the paper fleshes out its anti-human intellectual stance.

For example by saying that — "In view of the fact that human beings are inherently morally unworthy, we should prevent them from killing and eating red meat. Ticks to the rescue."

Instead, the authors content themselves with a pseudo-intellectual stab at making a hypothetical case that has no objective relevance to anything that would be ethically defensible in any legitimate medical school on this planet.

Other than to say that — as a trivial intellectual exercise — If such is so, then X certainly follows.

Yet, no effort whatsoever went into justifying the abstract's 'If' proposition.

The moral? — Stupidity galls

If would be nice — propositionally speaking — if evolution actually had some sort of discernible goal that went beyond its attributed 'survival of the fittest'.

Weeding fools and foolishly conceived (or presented) journal articles out of humanity's ranks would be good ones.

PeteFree.com

Rank stupidity at Western Michigan University's School of Medicine?