More cases of cannibalism in Russia, where one man was found guilty of killing then eating his mother, while three others were likewise convicted for murdering and eating a homeless man. The leftovers were sold to a kebab shop. What is it that bothers us so much about this? To kill and eat someone seems far worse than merely killing them but why? And why is it that eating someone you haven’t killed – whether unconsciously as in Titus Andronicus or consciously as in the anthropophagic reenactment that forms the basis of the world’s most popular religion – provokes entirely different reactions of pity and compassion? Later this month a film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” starring Viggo Mortensen goes on general release. Some of the most disturbing scenes in the novel are those that deal with cannibalism but in the post-apocalyptic world McCarthy describes eating human flesh seems, if not quite pardonable, understandable. How else are these people meant to survive? For Freud (who would have had a field day with the first of the two cases above), cannibalism, along with murder and incest, was one of the three great taboos. For him it tended, unlike the other two, to manifest itself primarily in repressed forms in modern society or as a stage in infant development. Given that the number of hungry people in the world has passed the one billion mark and that climate change is likely not only to exacerbate this problem but also to bring with it others such as natural disasters, population displacement and war I wonder if he would have the same opinion today?