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

[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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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

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!