Moral mayhem of murder on the menu
By Michael Cook
Herald Sun (Melbourne), 15 January 2004

MARCH 9, 2001, was the ultimate bad herr day for Bernd-Juergen Brandes, a 43-year-old Berlin computer engineer.

In the morning he made his will, leaving everything to his gay live-in partner.

Then he took a 300km train trip to the central German town of Rotenburg.

There he met Armin Meiwes, a mild-mannered 42-year-old computer technician. What they had on their minds was dinner, Meiwes's dinner, to be precise.

Brandes was responding to his request in an internet chat room for a "young well-built man who wants to be eaten".

He was willing and Meiwes was ready, with a DIY abattoir and a well-stocked kitchen.

Brandes swallowed 20 sleeping tablets and half a bottle of schnapps.

Then Meiwes cut off part of his body and fried it as a snack for them both.

Brandes was bleeding to death, but still not dead when Meiwes stabbed him in the neck after a goodbye kiss.

Then Meiwes butchered him and froze the flesh.

Eventually he ate about 20kg, washing it down with a South African red. Eventually the police came knocking and he is now being tried in a German court.

The facts are mostly beyond dispute -- Meiwes has cheerfully and remorselessly admitted everything.

He had even videotaped the evening's proceedings.

After Hannibal Lecter, reports of real cannibalism seem banal.

There's no pursuit, no suspense, no glamour.

Only a bit of deadpan humour. When Brandes learned that both he and Meiwes were both smokers, he apparently said, "Good, smoked meat lasts longer".

The real interest of this case is not that stomach-churning evening, but in this month's courtroom drama.

Is cannibalism wrong between consenting adults? Does consent create morality? Guess Who's Coming for Abendessen would make a great David Williamson play.

Meiwes cannot be charged with cannibalism, as no German law forbids it.

Instead he's been charged with disturbing the peace of the dead, which makes him sound like a neighbour with a blaring stereo.

And it will be difficult to convict Meiwes of murder since Brandes wanted, even pleaded, to be killed and eaten.

He will probably be jailed for killing upon request, which makes him sound like voluntary euthanasia advocate Dr Philip Nitschke.

This crime is punishable by a mere six months to five years in prison.

German authorities would like to convict Meiwes of murder, but they can only do this if Brandes was mad.

But Brandes was a successful professional man who was fully aware of what he was doing.

He was an odd bod, admittedly, but most odd people are sane.

In any case, German investigators say there are hundreds of people interested in cannibalism in Europe. Many of them are middle-class professionals.

Meiwes even found at least two other volunteers who went as far as having choice cuts marked out on their naked bodies before they called it quits.

They can't all be mad.

What the horrific Meiwes-Brandes relationship shows is that informed consent alone cannot protect human rights. There will always be people who consent to acts that degrade and dehumanise.

It is hard to believe that some citizens, like Bernd-Juergen Brandes, prefer sub-human forms of slavery to freedom.

But such people exist.

So even if they don't value their own rights and dignity, they need laws to protect them from evil predators like Arwin Meiwes.

THIS is true for major social issues like prostitution, pornography, deviant sex, drug abuse and gambling.

And it is truest of all with "voluntary" euthanasia.

However you fence euthanasia with restrictions that guarantee that people who are tired of life will only be killed if they give "informed consent", there will always be monsters who push those fences over.

And who knows what is going on in the mind of the mild-mannered doctor who volunteers to give your ailing mother a lethal injection?

Michael Cook is the editor of the bioethics e-mail newsletter BioEdge. Email: mcook@australasianbioethics.org