Toward Immortality: Ethical Dilemmas

Toward Immortality: Ethical Dilemmas by Brian Lottman

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Lottman, president of Lottman Financial Group Inc., is a Certified Senior Advisor. He is a graduate of Pomona College where he studied economics and history. His hobbies include running and playing classical guitar, piano, the ukukele and the harmonica. He can be reached at brian@lottmangroup.com.

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If scientists could capture youth in a pill, would you take it? That is, if you could live twice as long without disabilities? It is a very tempting choice to be able to spend more time with loved ones, try new careers or travel the world. However, the ramifications for our society are huge. Notions about marriage, family and work will change in fundamental ways, including attitudes toward the young and the old. According to interviews by LiveScience staff writer, Ker Than, we are feeling the effects on marriage, family and the workplace now.

Marriage and family

Richard Kalish, psychologist, predicted that as life spans increase, there will be a shift in emphasis from marriage as a lifelong union to marriage as a long-term commitment. Multiple, brief marriages could become common.

If multiple marriages become the norm, then half-siblings will become more common, said Chris Hackler, head of the Division of Medical Humanities at the University of Arkansas. If couples continue the current trend of having children beginning in their 20s and 30s, then eight or even 10 generations might be alive simultaneously. "If we were 100 years younger than our parents or 60 years apart from our siblings, that would certainly create a different set of social relationships," said Hackler.

Workplace

Competition for jobs would become fiercer as "mid-life re-trainees" beginning new careers vie with young workers for a limited number of entry-level positions. Especially worrisome is the problem of workplace mobility, Callahan said.

Callahan also worries that corporations and universities could become dominated by a few individuals if executives, managers and tenured professors refuse to give up their posts. Without a constant infusion of youthful talent and ideas, these institutions could stagnate.

Hackler points out that the same problem could apply to politics. "Justices sitting on the bench for a hundred years would have a powerful influence on the shape of social institutions," he said.

Daniel Callahan, a bioethicist at the Hastings Center in New York, does not view death as a bad thing. “The death of an elderly person is sad, because we lose them and they lose us, but it's not tragic," Callahan said. "One can't say this is a deranged universe to live in because people die of old age."

John Harris, a bioethicist at the University of Manchester, England, believes differently. "When you save a life, you are simply postponing death to another point," said Harris. "Thus, we are committed to extending life indefinitely if we can, for the same reasons that we are committed to life-saving."

Gregory Stock, director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at UCLA’s School of Public Health, said a doubled lifespan would "give us a chance to recover from our mistakes, lead us towards longer-term thinking and reduce healthcare costs by delaying the onset of expensive diseases of aging. It would also raise productivity by adding to our prime years."

The life expectancy for the average American is 77.6 years. Extending life spans will be an incremental process, most experts say. In a 1990 study at the University of Chicago, biodemographer Jay Olshansky and his colleagues determined that average life expectancy would increase by only 2.7 years even if the risk of death from cancer in the United States were reduced to zero.

If the risks from heart disease, stroke and diabetes were also eliminated, life expectancy would increase by another 14 years, the researchers found. In contrast, repeated experiments have shown rodents fed 40% fewer calories live about 40% longer. For reasons that are unclear, this "caloric restriction" regimen also postpones the onset of many degenerative diseases normally associated with aging.

If these effects can be replicated in humans, the average person could live to be 112 years old and our maximum life span could be extended to 140 years, says Richard Miller, a pathologist who does aging research at the University of Michigan.

This article is excerpted from the writings of LiveScience staff writer Ker Than: “Toward Immortality: The Social Burden of Longer Lives” and “The Ethical Dilemmas of Immortality” (May 2006). For more information, visit www.livescience.com.