The shape of things to come – from artificial wombs to suicide coffins

It wasn’t until half way through Jenny Kleeman’s Sex Robots and Vegan Meat that I was able to put my finger on why it was making me uncomfortable. Sometimes you read a book where the author’s mindset is so alien to your own that you feel almost as though you’re translating from a foreign language; this was one of those times. But on page 143 I found the Rosetta Stone.

Kleeman was talking about vegan meat — cultured steaks and burgers developed in a laboratory. She had met various scientists and entrepreneurs who were trying to make it happen (including some, it should be admitted, who come across as spivs and carnival barkers). And then she said: ‘Vegan meat depends on a pessimistic view of human beings: the belief that we are incapable of changing the way we eat.’ Instead, we should, as humanity, lose our taste for meat altogether.