Life Span Extension

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Should genetic technology be used to extend the average human life span by decades, or even by hundreds of years? Or would a drastically increased life span cause more problems than it would solve?

Supporter: If humans can postpone death, they should. Groundbreaking scientific technology will likely allow people to live longer, healthier lives, without the disabilities and general frailty that have been traditionally associated with old age. With greater longevity, humans will be able to enjoy a better quality of life, since they will be able to spend more time pursuing private interests and enjoying the company of family and friends.

Opposer: Manipulating humans’ genetic makeup for the sake of increasing life expectancy is tantamount to playing God. If life span extension became a reality, overpopulation and competition for natural resources would become bigger problems than they already are. Humans should use genetic technology to improve the quality of life for the elderly, but not to extend life indefinitely.

At the dawn of the 21st century, the human life span varies widely around the planet. In some industrialized nations with advanced health-care infrastructure, such as the U.S., the average life expectancy is currently in the upper 70s, with many people living into their 80s, 90s and beyond. However, many of the world's poorer nations have not benefited from recent advancements in medical technology. For instance, in several sub-Saharan African countries, civil war and disease have resulted in an average life expectancy below 40 years.

Eric Cabanis / AFP / Getty Images
Jeanne Calment of Arles, France—shown here celebrating her 119th birthday—died in 1997, at the record-breaking age of 122.

For centuries--and perhaps longer--scientists have been pushing the boundaries of science and medicine in an attempt to increase humans' longevity. Such efforts had captured the public imagination of many early societies in Greece, India, China and the Middle East, among other places. Today, it is scientists working in the U.S. and Great Britain that represent the vanguard of the so-called life extension movement; through their work they seek to extend the average human life span by tens, if not hundreds, of years.

However, their work is not without controversy. While there is a wide consensus in the scientific community that humans may eventually be capable of increasing their life expectancy to 130 or 140 years, fewer scientists agree that humans' life spans could be--or should be--extended beyond that point. Indefinite life extension, critics warn, is dangerous because it could lead to overpopulation and pose a number of ethical problems for humanity in the coming centuries.

Aubrey de Grey, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge in Britain, has been one of the most outspoken proponents of using new scientific technology to drastically increase humans' average life span. Though his published reports on life extension have been widely criticized in the global medical community, de Grey says he is convinced that humans may soon be able to lengthen their life spans by hundreds of years. Some humans, he suggests, may one day even reach the age of 1,000.

While his predictions are considered somewhat extreme, de Grey has attracted some support for his work in the field of genetics. By using various techniques known collectively as Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS), damage to the human body generated by the aging process can be limited, or stopped altogether, de Grey and his supporters say. The SENS approach, which relies heavily on genetic engineering, essentially calls for replacing damaged or worn-out cells in the human body with young, healthy cells that can help maintain the body's vitality for a potentially indefinite amount of time. Currently, de Grey and his team are engaged in extensive clinical trials, using mice, to test the SENS process.

As humans harness medical technology to extend their life span further and further into the future, public debate on life span extension has focused on the effects that greater human longevity would have on global society. Will health-care systems be capable of supporting the needs of an ever-aging population? Who will be able to afford to use the genetic engineering that could make life span extension possible? In general, is life span extension a step that will contribute positively to human evolution, or is it a temptation that humanity should resist?

While scientists, doctors and bioethicists disagree over the answers to those questions, nearly everyone involved in the controversy surrounding life span extension agrees that is a good idea to debate the issue now, before the technology promoted by de Grey and other supporters becomes a reality. "If this could ever happen, then we'd better ask what kind of society we want to get," says Daniel Callahan, cofounder of the Hastings Center, a New York-based bioethics research institute. "We had better not go anywhere near it until we have figured those problems out."

The opportunity to extend human beings' longevity should not be bypassed due to ethical concerns. Humanity as a whole will benefit economically and culturally if humans are able to live longer. As workers, humans would be able to be productive for decades upon decades. In countries that have social security systems, such as the U.S., the perpetually active workforce would subsidize medical care for the nonworking elderly via taxes.

Without the time constraints of contemporary life spans, long-living humans would also be able to spend more time with friends and family, travel around the world or pursue new interests. With more time to fulfill personal desires and goals, long-living people would lead more fulfilling lives. Since the genetic technology needed to extend human longevity would likely be in high demand once it was introduced to the general public, costs of utilizing the technology would drop, allowing both rich and poor people the world over to take advantage of life span extension.

Extending human longevity would likely have a negative impact on the human race. With people living longer, overpopulation and competition for natural resources would become more extreme problems than they already are. Also, life-extending technology would be prohibitively expensive for people living in wide swaths of the developing world, such as in Africa and South America.

Artificially increasing human longevity through genetic engineering, humans would essentially be "playing God." By interfering with the laws of nature--which regulate birth and death--the human race is disrupting the evolutionary process and courting disaster. The world's scientific and medical communities must exercise caution as they begin to use technology that could increase humans' average life expectancy.

[ikky]

Why would you want to live longer? seriously nature runs its corse for good reason.

Personaly, im happy with 60. Prehaps at that time i will assess the situation better but living long and becoming a vegtable because of a stroke ect... i'd rather live a normal life and die.

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The study of the aging process--a field referred to today as "gerontology"--has been going on for several millennia. Written historical records, coupled with oral histories passed down from one generation to the next, are rich with accounts of scientists, philosophers, magicians and ordinary people who have attempted to unlock the secrets of aging.

For example, there is speculation that Alexander the Great, a military leader from Macedon (near modern-day Greece), invaded India around 325 B.C. in part because he was searching for a natural spring that bestowed perpetual youth to those who visited it. Also, according to some historians, Ponce de León, a 16th century Spanish explorer, allegedly pursued a "Fountain of Youth" as he traveled through modern-day Florida. Whether real or not, such stories have contributed to the lore surrounding humanity's age-old quest for longer life.

Unlike scientists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, youth seekers of past eras did not have advanced medical technology at their disposal. Instead, they experimented with less-scientific ways of maintaining their youthful vigor; they would rub supposedly life-giving lotions on their skin, follow odd diets or drink an "elixir of life," a mythical potion that reportedly maintained youth in those who consumed it.

While attempts to achieve physical immortality were consistently unsuccessful, advancements in medicine during the 18th and 19th centuries did allow human beings to live progressively longer lives. With better sanitation and new vaccines to combat disease, infant morality rates dropped, life expectancy increased and people generally lived healthier lives. As a result, the documented number of "centenarians"--people who live 100 years or more--increased around the globe.

During the 20th century, the international scientific community made major advancements in the field of genetics. As doctors and researchers became increasingly knowledgeable about genes, some people began to speculate that in the future, genetic manipulation might allow humans to stave off deadly diseases such as cancer. A few scientists even theorized that genetic engineering might eventually allow humans to fulfill the dreams of perpetual youth and drastically increased life spans that had motivated youth-seekers during centuries past.

In 1997, a French woman named Jeanne Calment died at the age of 122. Born in 1875, Calment had attracted a great deal of public attention during the 1990s due to her status as the world's oldest documented living person. Proponents of the burgeoning life extension movement, who believed that genetic technology could allow humans to lead longer, healthier lives, cited Calment as evidence that humans were becoming increasingly adept at postponing death.

Lured by the prospect of greater life expectancy, private investors began contributing large sums of money to fund the research of de Grey and others who were conducting trial experiments on life span extension. During the early 2000s, de Grey publicly advocated his SENS plan at medical conferences around the world, making him a divisive force within the scientific community. His assertions that human life spans could be theoretically extended by hundreds of years attracted some, but disgusted others.

Nevertheless, observers have credited de Grey with sparking a wide-ranging public debate on the merits and drawbacks of drastically increased life spans. As humans gain a progressively detailed understanding of their genetic makeup, the ethical aspects of using genetic-engineering technology to increase humans' longevity have been subjected to intense scrutiny.

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Humans should use new medical technology to stave off the frailty and health problems traditionally associated with old age. By utilizing the SENS approach and replacing humans' aging cells with younger cells, humans not only can improve their quality of life in old age, but can also eventually expand their life expectancy "by many hundreds of years," according to de Grey.

Emerging genetic-engineering technology has the ability to redefine global society by allowing people to live longer. Referring to age-related health issues, de Grey remarks that "for the first time in the history of humanity, there is confidence that civilization's greatest scourge [growing old] will soon be conquered."

Kevin Perrott
Aubrey de Grey, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge in Great Britain, claims that humans can use genetic technology to extend the average life span by hundreds of years—or even longer.

Extending human life span through the use of the SENS process represents the next major step in humanity's evolution. During the past several centuries, humans have made use of new technology to develop vaccines, cure diseases and create more sanitary living conditions. Viewed in a historical context, those innovations have allowed successive generations of human beings to live healthier--and consequently, longer--lives. Genetic engineering should be viewed as an innovation that continues that trend.

"The evolutionary picture of the human being is quite an interesting one, because what we've managed to do is create an environment for ourselves that is much safer than anything we've lived in before," says Steven Austad, a member of the University of Texas Health Science Center. "So even in the absence of medical advances, with just evolutionary change, in the foreseeable future one would expect humans to age at a slower and slower and slower rate."

Drastically increased life spans will have a positive impact on society. For example, without the time restraints imposed by current life expectancy, people would be able to spend more time with loved ones and friends, travel around the world, or pursue new hobbies.

Also, if most people lived to the age of 140 instead of 70--a feat considered possible by many members of the scientific community--economic productivity would increase noticeably. With a longer life span, workers would extend their professional careers by years or decades, allowing them to earn money for a longer period and pay taxes that would support the nonworking elderly via social security systems. Not only would widespread life span extension "raise [economic] productivity by adding to our prime years," but it would also "reduce health care costs by delaying the onset of expensive diseases of aging," according to Gregory Stock, director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at the School of Public Health at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

Opponents of life expansion are misguided in their criticism of SENS and other forms of life-extending technology. After life-extending genetic engineering becomes commonplace, it will become progressively less expensive. Consequently, the technology will become available to rich and poor alike.

Critics' concerns about some of the ethical implications of life span extension must be rebutted; even among critics, those concerns are not considered valid. For example, some opponents have suggested that people living for hundreds of years at a time could no longer be considered "human beings" because their life span would be so much greater than that of earlier generations. But the Hastings Center's Callahan, a critic of life span extension, insists that no matter how long humans live, they will always belong to the same species. "I don't think one can make our humanity dependent on the length of our life," he says. "Even if we live to be 500, we'll still be human beings."

It must be asserted that at some point in the future, the human race will remember the 21st century as a time when science revolutionized public attitudes toward aging, longevity and death. But at the moment, too many people are mired in a "pro-aging trance" whereby they become "apologists for a phenomenon that [kills] 100,000 people every day," according to de Grey. Once people come out of that trance and begin using genetic engineering to lengthen their life spans, proponents assert, the human race will take control of its destiny.

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A genetically enhanced life span would create more problems than it would solve. While I concede that the concept of a longer life span has some public appeal, I insist that society is better off if average life expectancy for the human race is below 100 years.

Knowing that death cannot be perpetually postponed through genetic manipulation allows humans to live more meaningful lives. For example, if an individual is aware that he or she will live for 80 years--as opposed to, say, 500 years--then that person will make better use of his or her time on Earth on a day-to-day basis. In that sense, mortality gives people's lives purpose and direction. "The finitude of human life is a blessing for every individual, whether he knows it or not," comments Leon Kass, a bioethicist at the University of Chicago who regularly advocates the "virtues of mortality."

The longer life span promised by de Grey and others within the life extension movement might not be as appealing as it sounds. If a person lived for hundreds of years, what quality of life could that individual expect? Would a longer life be a more rewarding one, or would it instead be plagued by long stretches of boredom and idleness?

A human using genetic technology to extend his or her longevity may be "eager to continue his or her mediocre life for as long as possible without worrying about some of these higher questions about what life is used for," remarks Francis Fukuyama, a professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.

People living for 300 or 400 years may no longer be consider "human." Living for such a long period of time would certainly change the physical, mental and emotional nature of being a human. Consequently, long-living humans may need to be classified as a separate group altogether.

Aside from the dubious quality of life that long-living people may experience, Life extension should be avoided due to the impact that longer life spans would have on the planet and global society. If death rates rapidly decrease in the future, overpopulation and increased competition for natural resources will likely become more problematic than they already are.

Furthermore, despite supporters' assurances to the contrary it is unlikely that genetic-engineering technology would be affordable to people from poor nations. Consequently, they say, while the rich would be able to live longer lives, the poor would not--which would be no different from how things are at the present time.

Rather than invest money and effort in pursuit of life extension, people should work to solve more pressing problems. "We have war, poverty, all sorts of issues around, and I don't think any of them would be at all helped by having people live longer," Callahan says. "The question is, 'What will we get as a society?' I suspect it won't be a better society."

In terms of American society, extending life span indefinitely will cause government agencies, businesses and health services to focus on the older segments of the population, at the expense of the younger segments. By becoming increasingly inattentive to the needs of the nation's youth, the country will create a society plagued by crime and social delinquency. In a 2003 "working paper" released by the U.S. President's Council on Bioethics, council members predicted that "the nation might commit less of its intellectual energy and social resources to the cause of initiating the young, and more to the cause of accommodating the old."

Finally, life span extension should be avoided because humans would essentially be playing God by exerting control over the aging process. Rather than manipulate what has essentially been a natural process during all of human history, people should view death as an inevitable fate that must be accepted, rather than a phenomenon that can be avoided.

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The ongoing debate surrounding life span extension has led some people to wonder about the feasibility of physical immortality. Though genetic engineering is a relatively new field, experts from around the world agree that it will never be possible to use genetic manipulation to achieve immortality. In fact, any theoretical life span that exceeds a few hundred years in length is automatically dismissed by most members of the scientific community. "There is no research into extending the [human] life span thousands of years," says Richard Miller, a pathologist at the University of Michigan. "That's fantasy."

Others respond to the prospect of immortality with a dose of sarcasm. "What do the ancient purveyors of physical immortality all have in common?" asks S. Jay Olshansky, a professor at the School of Public Health at the Chicago Campus of the University of Illinois. "They are all dead."

But, as recent centuries have demonstrated, humans are gradually becoming more adept at increasing their average life spans. By manipulating the world's physical environment to suit their needs and using technology to improve their health, humans have shown their determination to exercise their will over nature in order to ensure their survival. Will humanity's next step in that campaign be the manipulation of the inner workings of the human body?

Since it will be very hard to curb the use of genetic-engineering technology once it becomes commonplace, analysts say, it is good for scientists and bioethicists to be discussing the topic now. That dialogue, they say, could result in official policies or informal moral guidelines that might govern the use of life-extending technology in the future. Despite all the attention generated by de Grey and other members of the life extension movement, experts say that major changes in average human life expectancy will not occur in the near future, since the SENS approach has not yet been tested on humans. But in the meantime, they say, life spans will continue to increase in monthly or yearly increments, just as they have for much of recent human history.

[SUNNIE]

No, No, No, No.

Opposer: Manipulating humans’ genetic makeup for the sake of increasing life expectancy is tantamount to playing God. If life span extension became a reality, overpopulation and competition for natural resources would become bigger problems than they already are. Humans should use genetic technology to improve the quality of life for the elderly, but not to extend life indefinitely.

This cancels out

Supporter: If humans can postpone death, they should. Groundbreaking scientific technology will likely allow people to live longer, healthier lives, without the disabilities and general frailty that have been traditionally associated with old age. With greater longevity, humans will be able to enjoy a better quality of life, since they will be able to spend more time pursuing private interests and enjoying the company of family and friends.

that

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Question 1

Do you think that if humans lived for hundreds of years, they would still be considered human beings? Or would they be something else?

[Nebacudnezar]

Ide love to live to be a hundred like but i am not asking any thing farther so calm down ye , dont have me hit by a double decker bus . Lol

[Nebacudnezar]

Originally Posted by Xx CRaZeee xX

I hope you have a receding hair line, and smell like mothballs and lavender if you were to live that long. But- I'd have to see it.

And- Good call. *Scribbles off hitting you with a double decker bus.*
NEEDS SOMETHING A LITTLE MORE ORIGINAL AND PAINFUL. Damn capslock. No, it wasn't, it was CAPITALISED for dramatic emphasis and annoyingness.

That's not a word, and I'm typing to myself. LOL.

LMFAO what are you going on a bout that just made me wet my pants you CRAZY biatch.

Ile give you points if it lets me.