As a false rumor spread that Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates was behind the proliferation of the lone star tick, whose bite can result in a potentially fatal red meat allergy, a separate claim circulated in May 2026 that a peer-reviewed paper argued it is "morally obligatory" to genetically engineer ticks to spread said meat allergy.
The rumor appeared on social media, including Instagram and TikTok. On X, a longer post asked, "At what point do we stop treating papers like this as fringe academic exercises and start asking whether anyone is already acting on them?" (archived):
The post included two maps purporting to show how the lone star tick spread across the U.S. from before 1966 to 2026. Suggesting such a spread could have been intentional, the post read, in part:
A peer-reviewed paper published last year in the journal Bioethics by two professors at Western Michigan University School of Medicine argues that it is "morally obligatory" to genetically engineer ticks to spread alpha-gal syndrome, a permanent condition that makes you violently allergic to red meat.
In addition, Snopes readers searched the site and emailed, seeking to confirm the veracity of the claim.
It is true that a peer-reviewed journal article made such an argument. A paper titled "Beneficial Bloosucking" that appeared in 2025 in the journal Bioethics says that because eating meat is wrong and healthy people often find it difficult not to eat meat, a meat allergy can help them become virtuous. As such, promoting the proliferation of alpha-gal syndrome is "morally obligatory," the authors argued.
However, the authors also acknowledged that the technology to help lone star ticks spread alpha-gal syndrome does not exist.
A thought experiment
In other words, the article is purely a philosophical exercise, not a roadmap that explains the increase in both the lone star tick population and in cases of alpha-gal syndrome, both of which are the result of the expansion of tick ranges due to climate change and human invasion of tick habitats.
Its two authors,
The university told Snopes in an emailed statement "the published article is a
Snopes also reached out to Christian Koeder, of the Faculty of Medicine at University of Freiburg, Germany. Koeder is one of the two authors of a March 2026 response to Crutchfield and Hereth's paper titled "Why It Is Wrong to Promote Alpha-Gal Syndrome: A Response to Crutchfield and Hereth."
"I think some people have misinterpreted their original 'Beneficial Bloodsucking' article as a realistic plan," Koeder told Snopes in an email. "It was more (I think) of a theoretical scenario to highlight the extreme cruelty that animals are treated with in the meat industry (farms, transport, slaughterhouses)."
The details
A 2025 study shows that the number of cases of tickborne alpha-gal syndrome in the U.S. exploded in the last two decades. The same is true of Lyme disease, an illness spread by the black-legged (or deer) tick. As the climate warms, and as humans continue to build in low-density areas and ticks become able to better resist winter, reports of exposure to the pest and the illnesses they carry have soared.
People with alpha-gal syndrome become moderately to severely allergic to the alpha-gal molecule, which occurs naturally in certain mammals — cows, pigs, goats, sheep and horses, but also deer and rabbits.
While they don't outline the arguments in favor of foregoing meat in one's diet, Crutchfield and Hereth argue that it is widely argued in ethical scholarship that eating meat is wrong (Page 1):
Among the best and most widely accepted arguments in applied ethics are those concluding that eating meat is morally wrong. Their premises, logic, and conclusions differ. However, broadly, they end in one of two claims: (a) that eating meat is wrong, or (b) that eating factory farmed meat is wrong.
Therefore, the authors say, there is a moral obligation not to eat meat, which alpha-gal syndrome promotes (Page 2, emphasis ours):
AGS [alpha-gal syndrome] promotes in the people who have it a resistance to eating mammalian meat. Thus, they eat less mammalian meat, which is an improvement in their capacity for moral behavior. It helps them satisfy their obligation not to eat meat, an obligation they would otherwise be disinclined to satisfy; the allergy presents only after eating meat: no meat, no allergic reaction. In short, when a tick sucks human blood and transmits AGS, it enhances the moral capacities of the person it bites; the AGS‐transmitting tick is a moral bioenhancer. The more they transmit AGS, the better they and the world will be.
Citing the comments of reviewers of their article who argued that people with alpha-gal merely stop eating red meat, but favor chicken and fish, thereby annulling the supposed benefits of alpha-gal syndrome, Crutchfield and Hereth say there is "anecdotal evidence" that people who have alpha-gal syndrome become vegetarian, but they don't fully answer that question. "Would a person who substitutes cause more suffering?," they write. "Perhaps, but perhaps not."
In their response, Koeder and his co-author Rainer Ebert quantify the net loss of life when people substitute read meat for white meat. "Consuming meat from smaller animals (e.g., chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and smaller fish) instead of meat from cattle and pigs results in a greater net number of animals being killed," they write. "This effect is particularly pronounced for very small species, such as sardines."
Crutchfield and Hereth argue that allowing alpha-gal-causing ticks to proliferate would be a good thing, though they acknowledge it is not yet feasible (Page 2):
[W]e should promote the proliferation of AGS by promoting the ticks that transmit it. To be clear, we do not argue that, today, we are morally obligated to promote the spread of tickborne AGS, because presently it is not possible to do so. But it is feasible to genetically edit the disease‐carrying capacity of ticks. If we are right, then today we have the obligation to research and develop the capacity to proliferate tickborne AGS and, tomorrow, carry out that proliferation.
They conclude by saying alpha-gal doesn't cause problems other than the meat allergy, so spreading the syndrome would be a way to help people become more virtuous, "morally enhancing" them.
"Herein, we have argued that AGS is a moral bioenhancer and that its promotion is morally obligatory," they write on Page 8.
However, the paper was only a philosophical exercise and not policy guidance, their medical school told Snopes in an emailed statement:
Like much scholarship in the field, the published article is a thought experiment. It begins from stipulated premises and reasons about what would follow if those premises were granted. Thought experiments are a long-established and legitimate philosophical method. Their purpose is to examine the implications of ethical commitments and to surface hidden assumptions so they can be scrutinized. They are neither policy proposals nor clinical recommendations.
For further reading, Snopes examined the claim that farmers in Missouri have found mysterious "boxes of ticks" in their fields.