Lab grown meat is a scam in the same vein as corn derived ethanol fuel. The inputs required just don't balance out. Tissue cells are not designed to grow by themselves, so you need cell growth medium (made from animals), and anti-biotics, and you need to flush waste out - and they end up stewing in their own filth anyway. If you culture a single cell organism, then it'll be way too easy for some other weird thing to sneak in and contaminate the soup.
If you want cheaper science fiction food for grunts, a better approach would probably to genetically engineer plants to produce more complete protein and fat profiles.
Cancer is more than just cells growing fast. For a cell to be cancerous it needs to have other specific characteristics.
For example, cancer cells lose what is known as "contact inhibition". Cells can sense each other and if they sense overcrowding they'll stop their cell cycle. But cancer cells will grow regardless of cell population density.
That's not saying lab meat would be automatically safe, just that it wouldn't be cancer cells.
Lab grown meat is a scam in the same vein as corn derived ethanol fuel. The inputs required just don't balance out. Tissue cells are not designed to grow by themselves, so you need cell growth medium (made from animals), and anti-biotics, and you need to flush waste out - and they end up stewing in their own filth anyway. If you culture a single cell organism, then it'll be way too easy for some other weird thing to sneak in and contaminate the soup.
If you want cheaper science fiction food for grunts, a better approach would probably to genetically engineer plants to produce more complete protein and fat profiles.
Also in order to grow them fast enough to be mass consumed, they're basically growing cancer cells
Cancer is more than just cells growing fast. For a cell to be cancerous it needs to have other specific characteristics.
For example, cancer cells lose what is known as "contact inhibition". Cells can sense each other and if they sense overcrowding they'll stop their cell cycle. But cancer cells will grow regardless of cell population density.
That's not saying lab meat would be automatically safe, just that it wouldn't be cancer cells.