Board Thread:Theories/@comment-27441457-20151225042055/@comment-26932251-20160605083827

" The Beast/Zeke"

Just a side note, I think it's safe to just call him Zeke at this point.

Also, to get to the rest of your post, correct me if I'm wrong but at this point the only proven way for a dumb dumb to turn into a shifter is for that spinal fluid to enter their mouth (presumably the spinal fluid goes to the stomach and gets processed but we don't even have that much explicitly confirmed, for all we know the spinal fluid might seep in through the back of the throat and go directly into the brain). Also, you know, giving a shot to the titan might prove... difficult.

Finally, it appears that the spinal fluid, I mean, when they give people a spinal tap, they take just a very tiny bit, a sample. Considering that in all depicted instances in the manga, the dumbs dumbs eat the shifter enough to the point that they take the entire spine, they might need a full spine's worth of spinal fluid and you can't just completely empty out a human being of their spinal fluid through a lumbar puncture because then they'd die.

From what I can tell, it's entirely possible that when a human is a dumb dumb, then they get something that might amount to a complete transfusion of spinal fluid when they eat a shifter. Maybe, in theory, a human could be made a shifter if a donor shifter was completely "emptied out" using a lumbar puncture and the receiver had all of the fluid injected, but given their apparent limited technology and the fact that the donor dies either way, it might just be more practical to just have the dumb dumb eat the shifter.

I mean, keep in mind, it appears that the Reiss shifters only set up the ritual when they are on the edge of death... even if you could transfer the power and they'd stay alive, they wouldn't stay alive for long anyway.