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Do you want to live forever? The Ethical and Social Implications of Life Extension

NEW YORK (December 5, 2007)— If you could live forever, would you want to? If ground-breaking research to cure diseases and reverse the aging process succeeds we could live much longer, healthier lives…perhaps even living as “immortals.” Is society ready for this prospect? Intimations of Immortality: The Ethics and Justice of Life-Extension Therapies, a new report from the International Longevity Center-USA (ILC-USA), explores the implications of indefinite life extension.

Based a lecture given by Dr. John Harris, philosopher and founding director of the International Association of Bioethics, Intimations of Immortality outlines the ethical issues involved in life extending therapies. We are all programmed to age and die, says Harris, but maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. If cells weren’t programmed to age, our bodies could repair damage due to disease and aging from within.

If we do succeed in creating successful life extension therapies, should there be a new definition for a “complete life”? Harris asks whether there is a period of lifetime that is either a fair share of life or period sufficient to live a complete life. For example, he says, “fair share version might say 70 years is a fair allocation of life and that people should be supported in their attempts and desires to live up to 70 years, but after that threshold is reached they should be considered to have had their complete life.”

Among his provocative questions, are: Will immortality be the end of reproduction? If people live thousands of years, will there be a point we have to purposely kill them? Is there a moral obligation to bring new generations to the world?

“There are advantages of fresh people, fresh ideas, and the possibility of continued human development,” says Harris. “If these reasons are powerful, and I believe they are, and if the generational turnover proved too slow for regeneration of youth and ideas, we might face a future in which the fairest and most ethical source might be to contemplate a sort of ‘generational cleansing.'”

Impact of Potential Life-Extending Therapies Still Hundreds of Years Away

How should we view the prospect of “writing immortality into the genes of human race”? Harris argues the technology required to produce immortality will be expensive. Once created, the availability of life-extending therapies will be limited and the risk largely unknown. The number of people availing themselves to such therapies will be a tiny proportion of the world’s population. Because of this, large impact on the increasing world population will be limited for hundreds of years.

Ultimately, Harris asks would substantially increased life expectancy or even immortality be in fact a benefit? While most people fear death and want to prolong their own life as long as possible, individuals do not contemplate a world of increasing numbers of immortal people as people would have to “compete indefinitely for jobs, space and everything else.”

To download the full report or purchase a hard copy visit www.ilcusa.org/publications. Intimations of Immortality is based on the 2002 Harold Hatch Lecture on Longevity and Publication Aging sponsored by the ILC-USA and the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development of Mount Sinai School of Medicine.