December, 2007

Precautionary Principle, Red in Tooth and Claw

Callahan complains that he has not seen specific descriptions from pro-longevists of how the world would address various of the more
obvious challenges that the elimination of aging might bring. He must not have read Bailey’s contribution in this series, nor the many essays I have written on the subject, because those pieces are replete with […]

Read: Precautionary Principle, Red in Tooth and Claw

The Mary Shelleys of Fearmongering

Daniel Callahan thinks prolongevists are frustrating! Then he accuses  pro-technology proponents of  “scientism.” And finally he pulls out the argument of the desperate and compares his opponents to Hitler and Stalin! At that point one wants to quote the great philosopher (and comedian extraordinaire) Steve Martin: “Puh-leese!” Since I am traveling and without internet connection […]

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The Elmer Gantrys of Scientism

Over a long career I have argued on all kinds of issues with all kinds of people. Aubrey De Grey and his colleagues are among the most frustrating to have a serious debate with. They are single-minded believers, and like the tribe of them, they paint their cause as splendidly noble. DeGrey, humanitarian […]

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The Immortals Won’t Have Alzheimer’s But They Will Have Forgotten Much

To de Grey’s last post: One can disapprove of all sorts of things without calling for the force of law against them. I would have thought that was a distinction familiar to libertarians.
Readers might find it more interesting if we were to engage in a consideration of the merits and demerits of the project to […]

Read: The Immortals Won’t Have Alzheimer’s But They Will Have Forgotten Much

The Distaste that Dare Not Speak Its Name

Diana Schaub’s latest contribution begins with an example of something frequently seen in the writings of conservatives when on
the ropes: a retreat from disapproval to mere withholding of approval, combined with an admonition of opponents for having made
the accusation of disapproval in the first place. Let us be quite clear: in her reaction essay Schaub […]

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Eros and Thanatos

Ronald Bailey closes his reaction essay by accusing a group of “well-meaning and intelligent people” (thank you, Ron) of wanting “to stop biomedical research.” So far as I know, no one has called for a ban or moratorium on anti-aging research. I know I did not. There are types of biomedical […]

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Making Death Optional

I begin by noting that Daniel Callahan at age 77 admits that old age “is not the best stage of life.” He also suggests—and I agree–that adolescence wasn’t so hot either. Of course, there is a difference—an adolescent can look forward to waxing powers and a future of hope. Being old is certainly “not the […]

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Long Live the Unreasonable Man

Ron Bailey has provided so thorough a reply to Diana Schaub’s piece that, at least in this first blog entry, I have decided to restrict myself to commenting only on Dan Callahan’s essay.
I must begin with Callahan’s title, which he repeats in his conclusion. At the risk of inviting the reciprocal retort, I would ask […]

Read: Long Live the Unreasonable Man

Nature Knew What It Was Doing

Daniel Callahan, co-founder of the bioethics think tank the Hastings Center, digs beneath Aubrey de Grey’s premises and fundamentally challenges the idea that radical life extension would be a good thing. The argument against aging and death, Callahan argues, is “utopian” and depends on speculative “fairy tales” about the nature of very long lives. In a world of radical life extension, we might find people are “forced to continue working unless society and their children were prepared to support them for hundreds of years.” And social mobility may be imperiled if the old do not make way for the young. “Nature knew what it was doing when it arranged, through natural selection, to have all of us get old and die,” Callahan maintains.

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Do We Need Death?

Ronald Bailey, Reason magazine’s science correspondent and author of Liberation Biology: The Moral and Scientific Case for the Biotech Revolution offers a vigorous and straightforward answer to this month’s question: “Do we need death? No. Next question.” But before turning to the next question, Bailey tackles some of the worries Diana Schaub raised in her reply to de Grey, and even addresses “pro-mortalist” arguments Daniel Callhan, our next commentator, has made elsewhere. “The highest expression of human nature and dignity,” Bailey claims, “is to strive to overcome the limitations imposed on us by our genes, our evolution, and our environment.”

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Ageless Mortals

In her reply to de Grey’s lead essay, Diana Schaub, a professor of political science at Loyola College in Maryland and member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, emphasizes our duty to think through all the consequences of much-longer lifespans. Can monogamy survive 1000-year lives? “What would the tally of disappointments, betrayals, and losses be over a millennium?” Schaub asks. If some societies now must wait for tyrants to die, won’t they have to wait a long time in an ageless world? And tyranny aside, “a nation of ageless individuals could well produce a sclerotic society, petrified in its ways and views,” Schaub submits.

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Old People Are People Too: Why It Is Our Duty to Fight Aging to the Death

In this month’s provocative lead essay, Aubrey de Grey, the Chairman and Chief Science Officer of the Methuselah Foundation and a leading proponent of radical life extension, examines the arguments and rhetorical stategies of those who oppose the effort to defeat death. Setting his sights on the “pro-aging trance,” the “Tithonus error,” “biomedical wishful thinking,” and two ways the “geronto-apologists” evade the real question, de Grey argues that reconciliation to death is a kind of discrimination, but that “old people are people too, so aging must be seen for what it is: a scourge that deprives far more people of far more healthy years than any other.”

Read: Old People Are People Too: Why It Is Our Duty to Fight Aging to the Death