My counter to "There are enough people already" is, as mentioned in a
recent thread, that we may or may not experience an overopulation crisis
in the future but that doesn't matter, because the choice we have today
is whether to condemn people to death in the future by delaying the
development of a cure for aging, and condemning people to death is bad,
worse than anything else we might do like condemning people to birth
control.
My counter to "It won't happen in our lifetime" is the same: that saving
lives is a worthy pursuit, whether or not we are among those whose lives
are saved. Giving someone the option to live indefinitely when otherwise
they would live a max of 120 years is saving their life, just as giving
a 10-year-old surgery that lets them live to 80 is saving their life.
(Conversely, not doing so is condemning them to death, otherwise known
as executing them.)
I am currently at the Gerontological Society of America conference in
San Diego and have had some interestsing discussions about the curious
absence from ethical debates about life extension of any mention of the
rather easily understood concept of human rights, and in particular of
the most basic human right of all, the right of the living human to keep
on living as long as they choose. Once it is seen that opposing curing
aging equates to advocating that humanity perpetrate an entire holocaust
every two months, quite a few arguments against life extension seem to
fall bby the wayside.
Let us know what your mother says in resopnse.
Aubrey de Grey
