Is it ever OK to eat another human being?
Hannibal Lecter Photo: (Flickr user FREDDY AGURTO PARRA CC BY 2.0)
Of course Hannibal Lecter enjoyed the occasional nibble, and a surprising number of animals eat their own kind. But deep-seated societal and cultural taboos mean that cannibalism remains a difficult topic to discuss or even acknowledge.
But how different would things be if you happen to be stranded in the Andes after a plane crash, or marooned on a desert island, or stuck on a life raft in the middle of the ocean for months?
Bill Schutt is the author of Eat Me: A Natural and Unnatural History of Cannibalism.
The first known depiction of cannibalism in the New World Photo: (Amerigo Vespucci, Mundus Novus, Public Domain)
