This is the crux of the matter, really. Personally, I want to live as long as I want to. If life is worth living, I want to live it.
When I first became aware of the possibility of living a healthier longer life span, I was extremely excited and eager to share my optimism with others thinking that the news of imminent longer healthy life spans would be welcomed with enthusiasm.
Boy was I wrong.
Despite the nearly universal desire to live a long and healthy life, I've encountered amazing resistance to the idea of healthy life-extension. Flabbergasted, I attempted to understand what the main objections were and soon came to realize that the largest roadblock to embracing the possibility of healthier longer lives is that most people embrace at a young age, and with some fatalism, the idea that the aging process and death are inevitable and permanent fixtures of life. It seems that most of us leave our hope of escaping death and disease with the rest of our childhood dreams when we exchange them for more adult realities of bills and obligations. This deep seated acceptance of our eventual death and debilitation, is so strong that to suggest even simply altering either induces some interesting psychological gymnastics in the individual being questioned. It seems the response to the threat of having to reevaluate these long held assumptions is to justify why aging and death are necessary/inevitable despite acknowledging that life is fundamentally a good thing to be pursued. This ability to hold two opposing views within one individual is not unusual as we are dealing with emotional protective mechanisms, but it is a protection mechanism which has outlived its usefulness in the face of increasing scientific evidence that longer and healthier life spans are imminent.
From a purely ethical point of view, it is unthinkable, at least for me, to suggest that the suffering induced by the aging process as we know it, is a state of being which should be maintained or allowed to occur once the possibiltiy of its control is evident and perhaps proximate. I think that those who argue against its control are really arguing from a position of fear of disappointment in getting their hopes up. I don't believe that any of the arguments that one might bring up against an increased healthy life span can be properly defended when viewed from the perpspective that for most, existing is vastly superior than the alternative. Still, objections to healthy life-extension abound and the logical flaws in them must be pointed out in order to clear the way for progress so I will attempt to address the most prevalent.
Number one on the list of reasons that life-extension is undesirable, and one of the easiest to refute, is that it will increase the length of time a person is sick with age-related dysfunction.
We all have known individuals for whom aging is a less than graceful process. Individuals who have become suffering ghosts of the people they once were and yet cling to life, seemingly unable to die but wishing they could. One woman I know remarked at the age of 94, "If I'd known I was going to live this long I would have killed myself long ago." Not the picture of someone who is enjoying living. We see these poor unfortunates who go before us and cannot but help hope the same fate will not befall ourselves, that our own period of decrepitude and dependence in old age will be mercifully short or even non-existent. It is no surprise then that thoughts of increasing life span bring up fears of increasing the chances for experiencing the slow devouring the most unlucky of us face.
As understandable as these fears are, they are baseless.
Increasing 'unhealthy' life span will not happen, primarily because there is pretty much zero demand for extended lives involving more Parkinson's and Alzheimers etc.. Technologies which would result only in extended life spans without also increasing health will never be adopted thus effectively ensuring that the fate feared by opponents who hold to this view will never be realized.
This is assuming of course that it is even possible to actually increase life span without increasing health span. It is much more likely that "health span" and life span go hand in hand and that any interventions developed that are able to increase life span will do so at the expense of the onset and progress of age-related disease. Put another way, necessarily, if we are able to increase life span at all, it will be because we will have developed levels of biological control that will allow us to avert, perhaps indefinitely, the occurence and progression of the worst of the diseases associated with aging such as cancer, heart disease and all the rest.
One of the most popular objections to healthy life-extension, and one of the most pernicious despite evidence to the contrary, is that with increased life spans, fewer people would die, and the world would become overpopulated.
Aside from the ethical problems involved in suggesting that a generation has an obligation to die, at any prescribed time limit, to make way for new individuals, I have two issues with this argument. Firstly, overpopulation is not the problem this statement assumes and secondly, even if it were, overpopulation is much more a function of birthrate than deathrate and as we will see, the spectre of increasing global birthrates is simply that, without substance and quite the opposite being the reality.
The 'population explosion' of the 1960's and 1970's, predicted and popularized even today by the likes of Paul Erlich, has not materialized. Instead the reality is we are faced with a 'population implosion' where growth rates around the world are in rapid decline. Decreases in fertility are resulting in the reverse problem. Organizations such as the United Nations have been adjusting their global population predictions downwards since 1987 a trend which is discussed by Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation in his book "The Empty Cradle" which details the reasons and effects for declining population growth. He says that "no industrialized country still produces enough children to sustain its population over time" largely as a result of falling birth rates. He goes on to say that this is due to the fact that "although many factors are at work, the changing economics of family life is the prime factor in discouraging childbearing". In a recent article noted futurist Glen Hiemstra illustrates the effects of declining birthrates in that perhaps as early as 2025 the population of the United States will peak. A birth/fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman is the widely known statistic which maintains a steady state population. The current rate in the US is 2.08 while in Canada the situation is even more pronounced with a birth rate of 1.52. Even most second world countries we are seeing a rapid decrease in birth rates which will ensure that those countries, such as Mexico, have even larger populations of seniors in comparison to young people than industrialized nations.
Where overpopulation is still a problem, and it should come as no surprise, is in Third World countries where the cultures still see children as a form of wealth. In these countries, children are seen as commodities where child labor begins as early as five years old and the children can contribute to the economic well being of the family. Often even when contraceptives are available they go unused because of the benefits reaped by producing 'workers'. From this perspective, efforts to increase the economic well-being of individuals through education and business development would seem more effective at reducing birth rates than being under the impression that the problem is access to birth control. How healthy life-extension is able to help with this is discussed in a later section.
It doesn't take much research to refute and show how flawed the overpopulation argument against healthy life-extension is. Even a cursory examination of the latest data available shows the exact opposite; the need for interventions that can sustain our quality of life in the face of a rapidly aging global population so that we are more able to help others.
This is perhaps one of the most disturbing assertions because it is one which is held by many of the medical community who form the foundation of popular societal attitudes towards the value of combatting age-related disease.
Proponents of this stance against increasing the healthy human life span, such as aging pioneer Leonard Hayflick propose that aging is a result of the natural and inevitable breakdown of physical systems at a molecular level and as such is a multi-factorial process whose elimination is impossible. They cite that because the characteristics associated with aging are so diverse and show up at different times in different individuals, that it does not share the characteristic of reproducibility which is a hallmark of other identifiable diseases. I certainly agree with Hayflick's contemporary and equally respected Robin Holliday, who believes that aging does qualify as a disease and should be treated as such.
I have many objections to saying that aging isn't a disease but will only address the two main ones here. Firstly, is to the use of the word 'natural' to ascribe some kind of morality to influencing the aging process. As soon as I hear the use of the word 'natural' applied to the justification of any position, warning bells immediately sound in my brain. The reason for this is that 'natural' is a moving target and can be defined as pretty much anything one wishes depending on their motive, which is often to equate the word 'natural' with the word 'moral'. The word 'natural' is too often used to support the position that anything which is man-made is 'unnatural' and thus morally suspect, while anything which arises independent of our influence is 'natural' and thus by inference 'moral', or at least not immoral. From this we might assume that it is quite alright to allow a person to get eaten by a tiger or allow an infection to be cured, or not, by the 'natural' ability of an individual's immune system which is of course ridiculous to suggest. Persons holding this view forget that humans have evolved in a very natural progression in nature and our abilities to influence our environemnt and use technology to improve our lot in life are themselves quite natural.
If one holds the viewpoint that aging is 'natural' and should not be interfered with on that basis, one might argue that it is more natural to return to our historical life spans of thirty years or so which were enjoyed for the majority of human evolution. I think, perhaps more reasonably, that one could take the perpsective that what is 'natural' is for humans to use their intelligence and skills to increase the length and quality of life. If we define what is 'natural' according to historical fact, the evidence seems to land on the side of the latter. Certainly, to use the idea that because aging is 'natural' it should not be altered, is the kind of argument which can be applied to any interruption of 'natural processes' with man-made interventions. For instance this position would argue that we should refuse treatment to heart patients, cancer victims and anyone whose life we might extend unnaturally through the use of technology. Obviously, we aren't going to deny treatment to these individuals based on THIS definition of natural which then brings up perhaps a more relevant question.. "Who decides what interventions are natural/unnatural enough to warrant approving/denying their use for a suffering population?" This is a question with broad implications involving the allocation of resources and the value placed on life itself. It cannot be answered using 'natural' arguments which are by nature hard to define and more liable to be rhetoric meant to persuade rather than address what is a very serious issue.
Secondly, that simply because aging is multi-factorial, system wide and does not have a distinct progression shared by all, does not mean it isn't a disease. The last time I checked the dictionary, it listed disease as "an impairment of health or a condition of abnormal functioning". I would say that this is a fairly accurate description of the aging process. Even if one escapes the worst age-related land mines lying in wait for the majority of us, such as cancer or waste elimination problems (incontinence has been shown to be psychologically devastating over time), the progressive loss of function of the body such as the muscular degeneration, which is a primary cause of the loss of independence in the elderly, cannot be thought of as the functioning of a normal body', and this loss of function is what we are told by doctors is 'healthy aging'.
As much as the medical profession may wish us to believe otherwise, there is no such thing as 'healthy aging'. This is certainly a contradiction in terms as the aging process has a decidedly 'unhealthy' effect on the body. Perhaps the definition of health as applied by the medical profession to their patients is slightly different than that standard of health which the majority of people apply to themselves. In my view, the increasing dysfunction that accompanies even the 'healthiest' of aging progressions places it obviously under the definition of disease and as such it qualifies for all the attention we see lavished on its end results in conditions like Alzheimers, Parkinsons and all the rest. As the technologies have arrived where we can begin to address the root of these problems, aging itself, we must see the transition to more funding for basic research into the causes of aging.
Although on the face of it, this argument seems to have merit, it ultimately fails in the face of the fact that historically, any new medical technologies are initially expensive and both their potential benefits, and risks, are, at the beginning, only affordable by those who have accumulated the wherewithal to avail themselves of them. It should be noted that these treatments are usually at the outset, of questionable value and fraught with risks and side-effects with many early adopters suffering more than if they had forgone the opportunity. These people are not selfish. By and large, they are simply desperate and suffering. They are willing to pay exorbitant amounts and take tremendous risks even when a positive outcome for themselves is questionable. They blaze a trail to technologies which eventually become widely availabe to all.. To say that we should not have developed heart transplant technologies in the early 50's and 60's until they could have been made inexpensive enough to be made available to everyone would have been to effectively kill development making the technology available to none.
That aging interventions will be developed is a forgone conclusion, and the argument above, although not one that can be used against their development, should be used instead as one to advocate all possible speed in their realization so that they may be more quickly made as widely available as possible. The demand for real anti-aging technology, once it is available, will ultimately lead to the development of cheaper methods of distribution as can be seen in situations today regarding the demand for generic drugs and HIV medications in Africa.
This argument is related somewhat to that which says that aging interventions will be expensive and available only for the wealthy in that it has to do with the allocation of resources. It seems to impy that it is unethical to develop aging treatments for individuals who already enjoy a standard of living that a huge number of people do not.
I have to say I support very much the efforts to help third world countries where the majority of the suffering due to lack of the fundmentals of life occur. I am responsible for the support of six 'foster children' and am happy to be able to provide that care and support and encourage everyone to do what they can.
That being said, I do not believe that this is a valid argument for postponing the development of aging interventions which would eventually benefit untold billions. It's like arguing against the development of antibiotics because of a distribution problem. It is more likely that longer lifespans will allow the time necessary for humanity to 'grow up' as well as releasing billions of dollars from the care of the elderly that could be used to fund development in Third World countries.
There are two main reasons why I feel that this argument fails.
Firstly this argument fails logically in that the problem of aging is independent of the problem of sharing. That developed nations have trouble sharing is no reason to advocate abstaining from the development of anti-aging technologies from which everyone, including future generations, will eventually benefit. To advocate such is akin to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. If we were to wait for everyone to enjoy a minimum standard of life before applying any beneficial technologies to ourselves, no progress would ever be made. It is a VERY good argument, however, for the development of technology distribution mechanisms to ensure that these benefits are made as widely available as possible as quickly as possible as they are developed. That aging and sharing are independent is not counter intuitive, but one can have an effect on the other and not the one suggested by this argument, in fact the effect is quite the reverse as healthy life-extension would encourage sharing which is another reason why the argument fails..
In the second place, this argument fails in the face of current realities and evolutionary tendencies. People tend not to share because we have evolved to look after 'our own' before looking to the needs of others. Our genetics are, unfortunately, not far removed from a time when starvation and famine were normal fixtures of life. Ensuring the survival of our own genetically related 'tribe' is still very high on our list of priorities. In situations where hunger was a constant companion, altruism for strangers is a rare thing and fear of scarcity a strong motivating factor for holding one's resources close. The fear of scarcity, and its corrolary greed which is fear of scarcity in in the prescence of gross surplus, plays a big role in the development of wealth disparity in the world today. Recognizing the source of this disparity is essential in overcoming it. It should come as no surprise that countries with a perceived surplus are much more likely to feel capable of helping others while those who have the perception of present or future scarcity will not. Healthy life-extension can combat these realities and encourage "self-less" behavior in two ways
Firstly, it would free up an immense amount of capital that is currently being used to look after the dependent elderly..
Disregarding the monumental suffering and death aging inflicts, the sixty-five thousand individuals who die everyday from age-related disease usually have an accompanying period of varying levels of incredibly expensive dependendence, not to mention the fact that in being dependent, they are no longer productive members of society. The cost of looking after the dependent elderly in the US alone is expected to increase by 600% in the coming decades to ONE TRILLION DOLLARS per year. It is easy how this increase might impact the ability of the wealthier nations to help those less fortunate.
Secondly, individuals who have surplus resources are more likely to share them when they do not fear the future, either in terms of increasing scarcity or ill-health.
It should be self-evident that a healthy and wealthy population of older individuals are much more likely to be interested in sharing with others, especially if it means increased quality of life and safety for themselves by having educated and prosperous neighbors. If you look at the way drugs to combat HIV are being made available as a case in point, although the system is not perfect, it is proof of principle that wealthy nations really do want to help others less fortunate, and it is even a better example of how badly we need to develop systems for ensuring the effective distribution of the largesse of those who are otherwise skeptical that their donations actually make any difference to the individuals they are trying to help.
Plainly put, healthy life-extension will increase the quality of life of individuals and thus their ability and desire to help others.
This is as patently ridiculous as it sounds, but still brought up enough that I feel it needs to be addressed.
It is not really a big revelation that healthy individuals are usually interested in learning and exploring. The enthusiasm for the new and the novel only becomes tempered as we are introduced as adults to the harsher realities of the world including the increase in disease and dysfuction as we become more frail as we age.
For those people who come up with this as an argument who are not frail or suffering, I always have to ask what is it about their life as they know it today that they find interesting? What are they passionate about? When pressed many have to admit that they are disinterested in longer life spans largely because they are disinterested in life in general. They see a boring future because they are living a boring present. To these people I always urge an attempt to return to the a time in their childhood when the wonder of the world was new and to look through the eyes of that child at the world and perhaps they might see a few roads not taken and opportunities passed by which they might wish to revisit if they had the time. At worst, I must always say that it is unlikely anyone will force them to continue living past their boredom threshold, whereever it might lie.
Appealing to the romantic notion of what is 'natural', this argument implies that meaning of life comes from its brevity. It has the kind of fatalism attractive to those who have, with nodding sadness, come to terms with their mortality. These are also the individuals who see the frenetic pace of a life arising from the knowledge of an impending biological time limit, as desirable. Not only have these people made peace with the fact that death and disabilty are 'facts of life', but feel that with their abscence, our species would lose the desire to accomplish and succeed.
Firstly, the argument above seems to suggest that if a short lifespan of 70 years encourages us to succeed, then life spans of 60 and 50 years are likely to be superior and even more effective at encouraging people to accomplish. Historically, our natural life span was somewhere around 35 years, so perhaps we should cease all attempts at 'artificially' extending the natural life spans of individuals with medical treatments who would otherwise die in order that we might return to the accomplishments of our forefathers. This is obviously taking it to an extreme, but serves to illustrate that the basis for the argument is flawed at best..
Secondly, the argument discounts the reality that what drives us to succeed is hardly the knowledge that someday we must die. In fact, the majority of the advances in human cultures are accomplished by individuals during that time of their life when they are their most vibrant and feel that life is the most open ended... when young. The best most imaginative ideas are made in our careers before we reach the age of 30 and this is the group of people who are usually blissfully ignorant of the impending deterioration of their physical bodies. Certainly there are achievements by older individuals who are spurred to accomplish by knowledge of their impending demise, but I would argue that it is this very knowledge which leads many inviduals to creations based on short term perspectives. The old chestnut 'Haste makes waste' I feel is quite applicable to much of what we achieve in our later years with decisions made with a brain which has been shown to show evidence of deteriorating as early and probably earlier than forty years old.
No, we obtain much more our drive to succeed from the entirely human desire to discover, create and compete. It is these qualities, present at higher levels in the young, that play the key role in the best of our accomplishments, not the idea that we must 'hurry' which is more likely to lead to problems than benefits..
To say that life gains meaning as it is shortened, or its converse, that it loses meaning as it is lengthened, are equally invalid statements. Those who advocate such are in dire need of a reality check and might truly ask themselves if the people they know who are highly motivated would become slothlike should they happen to have an extra decade or two, or three. More likely dynamic and productive young individuals will remain so and all would benefit from their continued existence.
This argument is similar to the one about life losing its meaning with length and suffers from the same problem in that it is assuming that longer life spans will result in old people getting older. Perspectives are ossified when a person stops learning and growing as a result of new knowledge and experiences, and this occurs largely as a result of the aging process and the increasing knowledge of impending ill-health. Even the minds of older individuals show obvious impairment in the ability to process information at 40 years old, and this is with current imaging technology. It is likely that the decline in function actually occurs earlier.
A society comprised of elderly individuals who have the health and abilties of the young would not be one which was stagnant. Far from it. Youthful and interested people maintain open minds and are willing to accept and even search for change and new ways of improving life. We all know of healthy seniors today who exemplify this state. Health and optimism are what dictate flexibility of perspective, not age.
That individuals would hold onto positions of authority or jobs which 'by rights' should be made available to the upcoming generation is an idea which suggests that the individual holding the position should give it up regardless of their contributions or qualifications simply because they have an 'obligation' to 'get out of the way'. Do you see a parallel between the 'duty to die' and the 'duty to give up your job' for the new generation? I totally disagree that such obligation exists and suggest that it is the merit of the ideas of the individual, much as it exists in the marketplace today, which should dictate the suitability of a particular individual for a particular job.
The idea that people would not vacate long held positions itself is likely wrong. This perspective assumes that longer lived healthy individuals would be comfortable to stay in the same career to begin with and would jealously hold onto their seniority. This way of thinking is based on current social structures and limitations. Even today we can see how this idea is wrong as even with increased life spans of only 77 years today (male), we find individuals changing careers more often. Additionally, long gone are the days when job security allowed people to look forward to guaranteed positions of tenure in almost every aspect of human endeavor. No.. certainly in a world of longer life spans, the market will be the decision maker as to who is most qualififed for a position. The survival of companies today is dictated by the ability to adjust to changing times and it is unlikely that we will return to the days of 50 year careers. CEO's themselves are not immune to replacement and it seems that corporate longevity does not tolerate 'ossified' perspectives kindly.. In the future, corporations will be unikely to hold onto outdated modes of thinking regardless what age the person is who is holding them.
Certainly, waiting for people to die as a way of effecting change will be less likely in a world of extended life spans, but is waiting for death to remove a 'problem' really such a good strategy for dealing with situations where a more pro-active approach would be better? Taking responsibility for bringing about a better world by dealing with 'difficult' situations is one which faces us today. Political and corporate stagnation is not limited to a only a future of extended life spans. It is here now and we would do well to develop those abilities to deal with the situations arising from stagnation without having to resort to not doing anything at all and abdicating responsiblity for action.
I'm going to wrap up the idea of retirement being threatened with all the rest of the potential concerns that would require changes to the status quo of society that would be necessary with longer life spans.
Firstly, retirement was instituted in the 1950's and the retirement age was set at 65 when life expectancy was under 60 years old. "Retirement" was a euphemism for "Go home and prepare to die, you used up husk of a human."
Many of the jobs which were available to people around the time pension plans and mandatory retirement were instituted were physically demanding and by the time you reached 60, your body was worn out, making the health enjoyed by our 60 year olds today postively juvenile in comparison. A social institution meant to help the frail has become a source of vacation income for the largely healthy senior population of today, and one which many of those looking towards their senior years have come to look upon as a right, and this is wrong.
As the populations of the industrialized nations of the world live longer healthy lifespans with fewer young people working to support the economy and their pensions, it will become necessary to acknowledge the reality that healthy individuals should contribute something to society if they are able. This is not to suggest that there won't be the opportunity to take extended vacations, perhaps years, for those who have properly prepared themselves for it, much as retirement is viewed today... but the guarantee that you will be able to reap the publicly afforded benefits originally intended for frail and dysfunctional elderly without being frail or dysfunctional, will have to be put aside.
In other words, retirement will become a vacation from which a person would expect to return to some form of productive contribution to their community and likely this contribution would be something in which the individaul was interested rather than the hit and miss we play with our careers earlier on in life.
To the changes to the family structure caused by reduced fertility and occurence of children, I just have to say that this is already happening. As was noted previously in the section on overpopulation, children do not provide the same benefits to parents that they have in the past, with little guarantee that they will even look after their suffering parents as they age. For this reason children will continue to become fewer and rarer which is not necessarily a bad development.
There are an inordinate number of parents today who do not deserve the title and the individuals emerging from those damaging environments are hardly assets to our communities. A reduced birthrate would not only be good for the environment, but perhaps the children that are born might be spoilt rotten as they should be, by the multiple generations of an extended family of grandparents and great-grandparents and perhaps even great-great grandparents.. These generations of healthy elders would be able to pass on the wisdom they have acquired and serve the function of healthy grandparents since time immemorial, educating the young on how to be human. They may even be able to pass on the wisdom of preserving an environment and world so that their pupils might enjoy the beauty they have lovingly preserved for them. It is an interesting thought to contemplate a world where a great-great-great grandson might ask his 210 year old ancestor, the former CEO of Exxon during the Valdez crisis, how such events could occur that would poison a coastline for generations. Would problems which take generations to grow be more or less likely to occur in a world where those who planted their seeds felt they might be around to watch the poisonous fruit they bear affect their descendants?
Increased responsibility to our 'beloved' children might take on a whole new meaning.
I can imagine a myriad of other changes that will be necessary in the coming world of extended healthy life spans, but none of those changes are so dire that they would cause me to advocate preventing curing the immense suffering, hardship, and financial cost which the aging process inflicts. Not especially since we now have the technology to do something about it in a relatively short time frame.
If what I have written makes any sense, please consider the next question... What is healthy life-extension worth? As life usually follows from health, perhaps a more direct phrasing might be "What is Health worth?". To me health is priceless for without it, life becomes difficult indeed and in many cases, one may feel, not worth extending.
If you feel the same, please consider visiting the Methuselah Foundation. Consider if you will making a donation which will encourage research into extending the healthy human life span. Even better perhaps you might wish to join me and become one of The Three Hundred and enlist yourself in the ongoing battle against aging.. a battle whose tide has turned. Ever resourceful when faced with seemingly impossible obstacles, the human mind will see the demise of aging. If not during our lifetimes than certainly in the next, if we start now. With the luxury of increased time, perhaps our species might begin to address pressing social problems which defy solution while we live productive life spans sandwiched between the bookends of 30-60 years or less.
Maybe the human race will have a chance to grow up.
-Kevin Perrott-