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Debates: Point-Counterpoint: Would Doubling the Human Life Span Be a Net Positive or Negative for Us Either as Individuals or as a Society?

2004; Oxford University Press; Volume: 59; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/gerona/59.6.b554

1758-535X

Gregory Stock, Daniel Callahan,

Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations

VIEWPOINT: DR. GREGORY STOCK The question before us is whether doubling human life span, and presumably adult life expectancies as well, would be beneficial for us as individuals or as a society. Those who believe such a development will arrive during the next generation or so are almost certainly being overly optimistic, but we will examine here not that issue, but whether the goal itself is worthwhile, because the answer has significant public policy implications. Some critics of biotechnology have argued that such a development would be undesirable and that we should therefore discourage research to achieve the insights that might allow us to meaningfully intervene in the aging process. It may seem self-evident that extending our vital years would be desirable, but so many people have argued the contrary that it is worth looking closely at both the personal and social consequences of such a development. I will argue that the benefits would not only be personal, but social. On the personal side, life’s larger trajectory, when looked at from afar, is a brutal one. If we live long enough, everything we love is eventually taken from us: our family, our friends, our health, our connections to the world around us—smell, taste, vision, hearing—our vitality, even our minds. Anyone who looks at this trajectory from youth towards decrepitude as idyllic should sit in a nursing home and contemplate a photo of the early years of someone who has become hunched and frail, or who is barely present at all. Who would not feel at least a twinge at this diminution? We’ve developed many ways of trying to accept not only these ravages, but death itself. The first is to ignore this descent: We can simply pretend it isn’t happening. This works when we’re young, but becomes ever less effective as the years march by and our strength seeps from us. The second way is to deny death: we can assert that the soul is eternal, that our memory will live on, that we are young at heart, that we are not older but better. A third way is to battle the process like Ponce de Leon did slogging through Florida, Dorian Gray, or those engaged in anti-aging research because, in the backs of their minds, they hope to extend their own future. Or we can accept this descent as sad but inevitable, and say that it’s natural and can’t be avoided, or even tell ourselves that it’s the best thing and claim, like Leon Kass, the Chair of the President’s Bioethics Advisory Commission, that death gives meaning to life. Dan Callahan, I suspect, is right in the middle of this last category, not only accepting aging, but in some ways, extolling its virtue and ultimate wisdom. I, on the other hand, see it as a sorry state of affairs. Frankly, I don’t see how you can applaud our current life expectancies and rue their extension while truly saying ‘‘yes’’ to life, unless you think we live in a perfect world, where everything happens to be optimal just as it is. And this is an attitude exhibited with little else. We alter the world around us all the time. We build and dam and plough. We domesticate animals and plants. We breed our pets to suit our personalities. If we accept that the proper trajectory is that ending with a ‘‘natural’’ life span, then we are accepting that more healthy life is not a general good for us, at least as individuals. This would seem to imply that less healthy life should perhaps be our goal. If we are going to accept that, then it implies a lot of changes, the least of which is that we should terminate much of our public health efforts and biomedical research. Sure, at some point in our journey toward decrepitude, life can become so painful that it’s difficult to bear, and the prospects ahead so grim that death can look like a rescuer. That’s why we don’t always mourn when we see an older person die. Death is an escape at times. But the game of anti-aging medicine is to buy more youthfulness, not more decrepitude. If life shifts at some point from being a positive to being a negative, it does so not at some particular age, but as a result of the internal changes and debilities that accompany the process of life itself. And it stands to reason that delaying the arrival of those changes would delay this shift and add life that is of value to us individually. The cost of intervention might be too high, of course, but theoretically the personal cost could be brought down to very near to zero, as is the case, say for antibiotics that insulate us from infectious disease. In my view, only at the point that someone ceases valuing life itself would he or she not see freely chosen anti-aging interventions as being a personal benefit. To reject such an intervention for oneself is one thing, but to try to deny it to others is entirely another. What about social costs, though?