The Ethics of Life Extension

buggieboy writes "The President's Council on Bioethics met this month to discuss Age-Retardation: Scientific Possibilities and moral challenges. The consensus was that "aging is a natural part of the life cycle, not a disease." Think Social Security was discussed?" Bruce Sterling's book Holy Fire is a good look at this issue if you find it interesting.

Comments

This is insane

[Henry V .009]

Good God, what dumbasses. Overpopulation isn't a problem in any western developed country. They're the ones who would use this.

Besides, if it ever got to that point, child limitation would be a better option than life limitation.

Lots of things are natural. Doesn't mean they're any good. Anybody who wants to live natural can ditch agriculture and go back to hunting and scavenging.

Re:This is insane

[PhilHibbs]

Overpopulation isn't a problem in any western developed country.

Literally, that's true. However, overpopulation in western developed countries is a problem in underdeveloped countries. The amount of crap that we produce that gets dumped on them is terrifying. You think you recycle your waste at those collection points? You'd be shocked (assuming you have a conscience) at how much of it ends up in 'landfill' (i.e. in the open air, on fire, with children picking through it) in India, or poisoning Chinese poor people as they dip the PCBs in toxic chemicals.

Re:This is insane

[superflex]

Sorry, don't have time to do alot of research, but here is an interesting piece on this sort of problem.

Notable quote from this article: "At the same time that we're preventing pollution in the United States, we're shifting the problem to somebody else," said Ted Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an environmental advocacy group. "It's being exported and doing harm."

Re:This is insane

[Radical Rad]

Whoever wrote the paper seemed more worried about a _decrease_ in fertility than overpopulation. Many people can't wait until their kids move out of the house so they can have some of their life back before they get too old to enjoy it. Who would foster endless generations of children? Probably some but not many I think. They also seemed quite worried that the "cycle of life" that they already understand would change in ways they can not predict. I guess uncertainty scared them worse than mortality.

They didn't discuss in detail the benefits besides the obvious that it is what people want. Imagine a workforce that never ages. Everyone is in the prime of their life. Imagine the skills that employees could accumulate, the shorter learning curves because of previous experience. Imagine the increase in efficiency and productivity. Longer working life means people could save for retirement longer. Pension payouts would decrease. Workers could save enough to retire when they want and go back to working if they get bored which many do.

They also did not consider the possibility of rejuvenation for those who are already old. They talked of stretching the lifespan as if old age would also last longer, but with gene therapy maybe life can be maintained in its prime permanently or at least until you step in front of a bus.

How long is long enough?

[blahlemon]

I saw a good lecture on this once with multiple sides of the argument being presented. The best question a critic presented, IHMO, was how long is long enough? Twice the current life span? Three times? At what point would you be willing to say you've lived long enough? If you look at the elderly how many seem overwelmed by the speed the world makes changes? I've got a grandmother who uses a little e-mail but no matter how many times I explain it to her and show it to her she never really understands it, she just memorizes the mechanics. If human learning and the capacity to retain new concepts has a finite limit how could you reasonably expect to have any quality of life once the world has left you decades or centuries behind?

Re:How long is long enough?

[pauljlucas]

I've got a grandmother who uses a little e-mail but no matter how many times I explain it to her and show it to her she never really understands it, she just memorizes the mechanics.

In my observation, there are (at least) two classes of people: those who learn strictly by memorizing steps and those who see patterns, figure things out, and then "get it." The latter class are the "intelligent" people. That being the case, it's got nothing to do with age.

That aside, living in the modern world (despite what many here on /. might think) does not require the use of e-mail, the 'net, computers, fax machines, cell phones, or lots of other techie things.

If I were your grandmother, I wouldn't want to stop living just because I couldn't understand how e-mail works. There's so much more to life. If she could live another 100 years, she could see the world, enjoy more good meals, and see the birth of her great-great-great grandchildren.

How myopic of you to think that just because she can't "get" e-mail she'd want to stop living.

Practical Life extension

[Tiamat]

They speak in the report about the most studied, and most promising, practical means of life extension: calorie restriction with optimal nutrition. As they suggest in the report, the evidence is clear that it extends not just average lifespan, but maximum lifespan, by as much as 50%, in every species that has been tested, including mice, dogs, and now other primates.

Most people will wait for pharm companies to develop mimetics, or ways of producing the same results without actually having to eat less, but for those who have an interest in reading up on human CR visit the CR Society web pages, or pick up one of Roy Walford's books on Amazon. (He's a professor of pathology at UCLA school of medicine, and is a leading researcher of CR. Beyond the 120 year diet is a good layman's introduction to CR.)

Re:Practical Life extension

[hlh_nospam]

Predictably, the article spent some time covering calorie restriction as one of the few ways thought to significantly extend lifespan.

Calorie restriction has one BIG drawback: You are hungry all the damned time. You can ignore hunger for a while, but it never lets up. Without the imposition of some external discipline, you will eventually cave.

There is a possible alternative: Carbohydrate restriction. Carb restriction has nearly all of the effects of calorie restriction, without the gnawing hunger. From my own readings, and my own experience with low-carb diet, I have come to the following conclusion: One of the most important keys to living a long, healthy life is reducing the amount of insulin required by the body. (Of course, you need to avoid other causes of premature death, such as failure to wear seat belts, or being in certain areas of town after dark.)

It is not really clear whether insulin itself is the culprit, or blood sugar, or both, or some interaction of those things with other factors. But the evidence is quite clear, and growing. I have yet to see a nutritional study in which either the amount of carbohydrate or the glycemic load of the diet has been reduced without causing some improvement in health (although such improvements are usually attributed to some other factor, because of an almost universal bias on the part of nutritional researchers).

There may be some other things you can do to reduce insulin requirements, but the 3 most important seem to be:

1) Carbohydrate (easy) or calorie (hard) restriction.
2) Adequate and regular sleep.
3) Load-bearing exercise.

As near as I can tell, these three items are roughly equally important, as least according to the measurements I have available for my own responses to these factors. Of course, that's not all there is to it; in addition to restricting carbs, you need to limit or eliminate things like trans-fats. In addition to weight training, you should probably do some aerobics. As for sleep, well, that may be the hardest part for the caffeine-addicted geek.

Multiple life sentances

[LudditeMind]

Hey, then we could make criminals actually experience their 7 consecutive life terms. I'd bet the death penalty would become more popular among the public and the inmates.

The rich live longer and the poor die out?

[SolemnDragon]

My opinion, .02 thrown into the mix

1. First Priority, Bring the lower ends of the scale on the global lifespan spectrum up to par. That means dealing with AIDS, Starvation, Poverty, Pollution, and other major population decimators haunting the young and old in impoverished (and even in supposedly wealthy) countries.
2. Second Priority. Get their health care up to par, too. They're living longer, now let's get them something for that crippling illness.
3. Step three: Let's see some sustainability. That's right, now that we've raised both lifespan and quality of life, let's see if we can sort something out where the planet doesn't get destroyed by healthy humans.
4. Step four: now we're ready to talk about stretching the upper maximum age limit. Because before we do those things, all that we're offering is a new caste, one who can outlive those who are already dying of hunger and preventable diseases. Are we crazy? Yeah, it's great to live longer, but shouldn't we be more worried about those even right here in the US who don't have a chance of living up to the global average?

Incidentally, another chance to give somebody else's money can be found at the Hunger Site.

Idiots. All Idiots.

[dasunt]

Sure, life extension is unnatural. So is insulin, open heart surgery, cooked food, anti-stroke drugs, central heating/cooling, canned foods, automobiles, plumbing, farming, herding, manufacturing...

In short, look around you. Its all unnatural. Unless you are a pre-fire hunter gatherer that does not wear clothing or use tools, your life in altered by technology.

As for overpopulation, yep, technology already caused that. Guess how many pre-fire non-tool using hunter gatherers the world can support? Nowhere near six billion.

In short, these are idiots, nothing more.

Life Span is a genetic hack anyway

[WolfWithoutAClause]

The generally accepted scientific theory about why we get old and die eventually is as follows.

Every animal in the animal kingdom generally gets killed occasionally. Take a mouse. A mouse is small and crunchy to cats. Cats predate mice, so the chances of a mouse surviving say, a year and half is low.

Therefore from the mouse genes point of view is it better to spend most of the energy of a nut it just ate on repair or reproduction?

Clearly if chances are the mouse is dead anyway after a year and half anyway, and so won't reproduce after that time, then it is better to use most of the nut on reproduction. So mice reproduce fairly rapidly and die young.

In contrast, tortoises which are very well protected live for centuries. Birds, for their size, are also very long lived- this appears to be because they can escape most danger by flying away. Incidentally, flying squirrels live much longer than normal squirrels, elephants live a long while, cats live much longer than dogs etc. etc.

Now humans have sort of outgrown all this stuff- we are really, really good at protecting ourselves- even risks as low as 1 in million upset lots of people- "my kid just ate an Alar infested apple- he could die!"; and currently if it weren't for old age we would all live to be about 400 years old; until we had a car accident or died of flu or something.

Our genes just simply haven't had a chance to adapt yet. So we die 'early'.

If nothing is done then the longer lived members of our society- those that look better ('younger') for longer will have more children, because they have more time to do it; and their genes will eventually spread through the human population; and life expectency will go up. But this will take hundreds or thousands of generations.

I say we should help nature along; the current situation sucks.

Re:Life Span is a genetic hack anyway

[eglamkowski]

If nothing is done then the longer lived members of our society- those that look better ('younger') for longer will have more children,

Not unless there are some radical changes in female reproductive organs, like being born with more eggs, or being able to produce an unlimited number of eggs as men do sperm.

Re:Life Span is a genetic hack anyway

[CarlDenny]

if it weren't for old age we would all live to be about 400 years old; until we had a car accident or died of flu or something.

Hmm, looking up some statistics if we stayed as healthy as 25-44yos in 1995 (190 deaths/100,000), we'd have a median lifespan of about 360 odd years.
n = log(.5)/log(1-p)
Keen.

Re:Idiots. All Idiots.

[blahlemon]

The ethical question isn't based on natural vs. unnatural, it's based on what is reasonable vs. what is unreasonable.

Don't be so quick to call people idiots just because you fail to grasp the fundimentals of the arguement.

I beg to differ

[GuyMannDude]

Good God, what dumbasses. Overpopulation isn't a problem in any western developed country. They're the ones who would use this.

Most environmentalists (the real ones, not the ones that put a "Save the Planet" bumper sticker on their SUVs) and population control advocates are VERY MUCH worried about overpopulation in "western developed countries". The amount of natural resources that a single person in a developed country consumers over their lifetime is significantly greater than the resources that a single person in an undeveloped country uses. Overpopulation in developed countries is an even bigger threat to the environment than overpopulation in undeveloped countries.

Regarding your comment about child limitation, you should probably clarify what you mean. Very few people are going to be in favor of manditory government-imposed child restrictions. However, changing the tax code so that any children over the first two doesn't give you a full dependent deduction might be a way of subtly encouraging people to keep their numbers down.

GMD

Re:I beg to differ

[Iainuki]

Overpopulation in developed countries would be a problem if the populations were increasing, which they aren't. The birthrates in most developed countries have fallen below the replacement rate; the US population continues to grow only because of immigration.

Re:sorry if slightly OT...

[Smidge204]

I think that was pretty much on topic..

There's two things I'd like to bring up to expand on that idea, in a way. First, a quote:

"Millions long for immortality who don't know
what to do on a rainy afternoon." -Susan Ertz

Which I think pretty much sums up the situation for most of the people who would buy into the treatment. (Just look at how many hollywood burn-outs keep hacking their bodies up trying to stay young!)

The second is an obligatory reference to the HHGTTG:

"Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was --indeed, is - one of the Universe's very small number of immortal beings.

Those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had had his immortality thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational
particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands. (snip) To begin with it was fun, he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody."
=Smidge=

Scientific American articles

[GuyMannDude]

For those of you with an interest in the subject of aging, you may wish to check out some of Scientific American's articles on the subject from the last year:

The Truth About Human Aging

The Serious Search for an Anti-Aging Pill

GMD

Re:Idiots. All Idiots.

[juushin]

To point out a correction, insulin is naturally produced by the body. You must be referring to modern synthetic forms of insulin (Lyspro, Glargine) in your comment that insulin is unnatural.

Re:Overpopulation

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Age-Retardation would definately intensify the over population problem.

What over-population problem? The world has the natural resources, and we have the technology to exploit them, to support a much larger population than the present one. The only real challenge facing us is one of transportation: getting the stuff from where it grows, lives, or is made to where the people are.

extend lifespan, but don't force it on people.

[MarvinMouse]

I think the most ethical way of handling this is to allow research into expanding lifespans of people, but to also not force that "extra life" onto people if they do not desire to have it.

I believe that if a person honestly believes that they don't want to continue this temporal existance, then it is their decision. (Of course, this excludes people who do it on a whim or have serious psychological problems.)

Morality of the long term...

[gnovos]

If people live longer, approaching forever, they will be MORE worried about the various things that can snuff out life. Crime rates will drop dramatically due to longer lived criminals (imagine spending "life" in jail when that means 500+ years!) and a stronger stance by the governments on stopping violent crime. Overcrowding, if it is really possible to overcrowd the Earth, will just give people a REASON to go and explore space. Signifigantly longer life is a very very good thing for humanity in the long run.

Drive dangerously.

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Do you realise the consequences of driving safely?

1. You contribute to overpopulation. Maybe you don't realise that the human death rate is extremely and unnaturally low. By driving carefully you effectively cheat death and upset the cycle of nature.
2. You underappreciate life if you don't take risks. Part of the sweetness of life derives from the knowledge that we could lose what we have at any moment. Did you know that driving safely makes the biggest dent in the risk-taking we take and hence is the biggest reducer of our appreciation of life?
3. By choosing to drive carefully you increase your chances of suffering from diseases like cancer. The choice is up to the individual but many would prefer not to suffer a painful lingering death.

So drive dangerously folks!

Jumping to conclusion

[phriedom]

Wow, they really jump to some strange conclusions. For example the report states that longer lives will delay new generations rising to leadership, and therefore delay new ideas and will slow innovation. As if old people can't have new ideas...

Some problems have no solution.

[SlowFuse]

Human aging is almost certainly such a problem.

An adult human is composed of roughly ten trillion cells. A self repairing organism (one in which cells replace themselves) running around in an environment full of mutagenic agents, is in constant danger that one of those cells will be damaged in such a way that it just keeps dividing. In principle, nearly all of those ten trillion cells can initiate a deadly tumor at any moment.

The most probable reason that cancer is so terribly rare in the young is that the great bulk of our cells have a failsafe mechanism built in. They can only divide a finite number of times before they "arrest" and stop dividing. Runaway cell lines only get so big before they stop growing. There is no reason that cell division needs to be limited other than as a tumor failsafe. Its an evolutionary adaptation. A long lived, highly complex, self repairing, ten trillion cell organism would not be possible without it. But it limits the amount of repair you can do in a lifetime. That's why we age.

further, it is becoming clear that natural selection has balanced tumor risks, with repair concerns and extended our maximum longevity as much as we can hope for. You can cure cancer, if you are willing to age at a high rate. You can cure aging, and degenerate into a mass of tumors. But the idea that we are going to have to worry about the social implications of doubling human lifespans is laughably premature.

Want to know more. Check out this paper on the subject. Or visit Telomere.org

Selfish idiots more like.

[jonskerr]

Every comment posted by you finger-pointing name-callers is powered by the thought "Wouldn't it be great to extend MY life?" But what about OTHER people? You dorks would never want to have eight bajillion morons and idiots (who you so obviously hate) living forever and sucking up all the food, water, air, and inexpensive housing. Stop thinking about just yourselves for 5 seconds.

Re:How long is long enough? Cause learning is hard

[ggwood]

In my opinion this is the most serious problem with life extension.

In physics it is generally termed "to stop working hard". When an old physicist stops being productive, reading up on all the current research, and starts talking about history, what should be done, what should be more funded, etc. If you've hung out at physics departments for any length of time you will find such people. They never retire, never leave, are always going to the talks, sharing knowledge of ancient unsolved problems (no progress in 30 years LOL).

Sure, it is great to have them around, but imagine if we lived to 300 years, but everyone stopped working hard around 60. Right now we work hard for 40 years and relax for the last 10-30, thus the majority still work hard. If we lived to 300, virtually all the faculty would be in the old, relaxed, historical stage. Remember you can't fire them they have tenure.

It is a full time job keeping up with new papers and discoveries in physics. Sure some older people do it. Paul Erdos (perhaps one of the greatest mathematicians of all time) did it until the day he died...but he also took stimulents see his biography The Man Who Loved Only Numbers. Exceptional in many ways, asking everyone to be Erods is not going to work on many levels.

Now in private industry, you can fire them and I think this would motivate people to keep up their skills, but honestly, what job could you do for, say 200 years without getting in a rut, ceasing to learn, and pining for the days when you used to program an IBM 360? Know any older programmers?

We already have a problem with discrimination against people who are 50. (Know any programmers in their 50's looking for work? Even at the height of the tech boom? I do and I did - very difficult for them). Think how far worse the problem would be at 300.

You might counter, but with new (drugs/gene theropy/ whatever) people will feel young, they will be physically healther, but I know physicists who are physically fine, but unable to keep up with all the burdons of research for even the 40 year career required of them now. To think of, say 140 or 240 year careers in physics seems outside the relm of possibility. What are these people going to do? Retire and burdon a tiny working class? Work and suppress the ideas of the younger people? This is already a serious problem.

Perhaps programming is not as intense as physics research (I think they are probably equally challenging) so more people can do good work for longer times, but how many? And how long? I'm sure the general youth and libretarian bent of the slashdot community will think they can hack forever. Perhaps you can. I don't know tons of hackers - in fact old hackers must be kind of rare. Perhaps hackers are so well compensated that they won't worry about money but in physics we are not well compensated. I know tons of physicists. Very few are productive past the age of 50 and most have very few new ideas after about 30.

In many fields technology changes quite rapidly and people have a hard time changing the way things are done. Imagine having to teach UNIX shell basics to someone who has been using windows for, not just 5 years but 50 or 100 years?

Such longevity is a recipe for stagnation.

Sure, America has plenty of resources. We could support people working 30 hour weeks or retiring at 50, but right now we have trouble tossing some food to starving people - I think we are a long ways from the kind of society needed to handle that level of stagnation.

And this gets to the central issue. Aging technology, if adopted, would destroy any retirement system such as social security or my retirement plan which pays out forever. And if a vast number of people have great difficulty working past a certain age (which is my contention) they will have to retire, take worse jobs, or stop taking the medication and simply die. Unless we become some kind of ultra socialist contry - which we are no where near doing. An

Re:They CAN'T

[phriedom]

This is such an ugly generalization that I really debated whether to answer or not. Perhaps you do work with old people, but it might be a poor sample of them, like the sick ones or something. Or are you in a "conservative" industry/community? I work in a smallish company, about 100 people, on the "bleeding edge" of technology, where the test equipment can't reliably evaluate our products. There are a bunch of smart guys, the CEO in particular, but the one guy that I think is irreplacable is The Chief Engineer. He doesn't manage anyone, he just solves problems and invents things. He started building crystal radios when he was a kid. IIRC, he turns 67 this year, and he looks like Santa Claus, but with a grey pony tail. Think about that: vacuum tubes, transistors, ICs, core memory, CRTs, lasers...and always pushing the leading edge. I'm not sure how many patents he has, but he got at least one more in 2000 that I know of. Everyone loves to work with him because he is like a fountain of knowledge and a year around him is like 7 years of experience in a regular company. Ingenuity is infectious.

Now I realize this guy is a one-of-a-kind gem, but there are lots of people who would like to stay strong, healthy, sharp, and productive. There are lots of people who yearn for progress, and love to do valuable work.