Ethics of Longevity

As a general matter, anything that leads to longer life and/or better health is ethically good, but the steps that will lead to especially long lifespans may have some ethical problems for some people.

It has been suggested to me that the matter of transplants has ethical pitfalls, but transplants are a stopgap measure. The long-term solutions all involve using an individual’s own DNA and culturing new parts with the same DNA, but there are people for who that is not an option, because they have genes that promote cancer or other dangerous medical conditions.

There are a few way around this, but none are safe and effective as producing replacements from the individual. If there were no effort to have longer life spans, then over the long run these genes would die out. Yes, there is an ethical dilemma, but it will solve itself over the long run. Just as Heidelberg Man is no longer around and the genes of H. sapiens Neanderthalensis have been distributed around the world, the genes of those who would not be able to use their own DNA for replacement part would eventually be lost as sets; although there would still be remnants of the genes spread among other people.

The history of hominids, and all evolution, has been a matter losing those genes that prevented the species from evolving and the spread of genes that improved the species in some way. While that may seem cold blooded, rather like breeding cattle for better tenderloin, but that is how evolution works; the bad genes are lost, and the good genes replace them. It is hard to determine it for sure, but it appears that longevity has been one characteristic that has spread among humans, and that tendency seems to be accelerating. While average life span has risen greatly in the last couple hundred years, the increase has come from lower infant mortality, and the typical lifespan has stayed around the three score and ten of the Bible. (Yes, life span does vary drastically from country to country.) 

Another trend, at least in urbanized countries, has been a tendency to defer children until considerably later than the historical norm. This is breeding for people who will be fertile at later ages or for a longer time, and that suggests that life span might lengthen to accommodate that, or humans could return to the earlier state and women might retain fertility throughout their lives, as is the case with chimpanzees and gorillas.

Regardless of which ways in which humans will change, change we will. The human genome has been in flux since humans first split off from other great apes, and the change will continue. Whether there is any ethical problem with that would depend on one’s ethics. I see no problem with saying to some people that they are incapable of undergoing certain medical procedures that would lengthen the lives of some, while it probably would lead to the deaths of these others.

As a hypothetical example: If twenty percent of humans can gain the ability to turn telomerase on and off without developing cancer, as sea squirts can, while the other eighty percent develop multiple cancers that are terminal in most cases when this process is done to them, then is it ethical to allow people to have this treatment, assuming that there is a screening test to determine in advance who will probably die from the procedure and who will have a greatly expanded lifespan?

It is my opinion that the procedure should be allowed, and the procedure and screening test do not yet exist, so I am just hoping. Evolution will continue whether we want it to or not, and changes in lifespan is just one of the many changes that probably will happen within the next few centuries. I suppose that some would say that this is an example of medical care being “rationed”.

Where do you stand? Do you want more chances to live for a very long time, or do you want no one to have that chance? Or do you want the human genome to be untouched by human nature?

Yes, there are some interesting questions.

How Long Will You Live?

I don’t often think about it anymore, but lifespan is one of my many interests. A few months ago I wrote a blog about how people perceive time, and that is only one aspect of the matter. I have noticed that people seem to have a good idea of how long they will live. I have known some people who pretty much predicted their own deaths. I am also interested in the research that is being done in longevity, and I posted a link to the Wikipedia article on Aubrey de Grey, a British longevity researcher who has said that he thinks that the first person who will live to be one thousand years old is alive now. I hope to prove him right, but we will have to wait and see.

Much of the research that de Grey and others are doing concentrates on DNA, both cellular and mitochondrial. I am not as familiar with mitochondrial DNA, but the time limit on cell nucleus DNA is a matter of the telomeres deteriorating. Telomeres tend to deteriorate with each division of a cell, so slowing cell division can be helpful for longevity, and there is an enzyme, telomerase, which will build telomeres back into shape. Alas, telomerase is very carcinogenic. We are hoping to find a way to restore telomeres without causing other damage.

Telomere Lengths Predict Life Expectancy in the Wild, Research Shows

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121119213144.htm

“Don’t be surprised if your doctor asks you to sit on the floor at your next checkup. A new study says testing a person’s ability to sit down and then rise from the floor could provide useful insight into their overall health and longevity.”
http://health.yahoo.net/experts/dayinhealth/weird-test-predicts-longevity

Then there’s palmistry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQbshEeuq6U

600 to 1200 years, but this is just a wild claim
http://www.paklinks.com/gs/philosophy-and-spirituality/202918-human-life-span-can-be-jacked-up-to-600-to-1200-years.html

I was kind of wondering again about potential human lifespan. It looks like the predictions are about the same, and Aubrey de Grey’s thousand years are the upper limit of predictions that have any credibility. (I like the idea about sitting on the floor. I can sit and get up from the floor without using my hands, but even when I was a skinny teen ager I preferred to use my hands on my knees getting up, because it impressed some easily impressed people.)

My lifeline goes into my wrist without any breaks, but I don’t think that’s significant. I suspect that we are genetically programmed to live a certain range of years, and I think that we are pretty much aware of this; although most people would say that it’s just “a feeling”; although it may be well known at some level of consciousness.

Time travel might make long life spans more common and interesting. If one can live for thirty years in the eighteenth century, another fifty in the thirty-second, and hop back to the third millennium BCE for a century of research on the Indian subcontinent before the Indo-Europeans, then back to the twenty-ninth century for a vacation, then one might lose track of how many years one had lived. That might be even a bigger problem after effective space travel becomes available. Or would it be a problem at all? Even General Relativity says that simultaneity is rather meaningless. Long lives and space travel would bring that home to humans, and it provides material for science fiction writers now, and provides more material for writers of romances in the future.

I expect that longevity will turn out like Quantum Mechanics; there will be a huge advance that I won’t notice until a few years later.  If that does happen, then it will be more evidence that there are many worlds or that a time traveller came around and updated the knowledge of this era. At present, the finger of blame is pointed at DNA, and that fits with what kills people. People don’t kill people; DNA kills people. There are evolutionary reasons for DNA to have a built-in expiration date, so the obsolete models will not continue to take up space. There are some species of animal that appear to be immortal; they activate telomerase, and the cells become young again, but those are relatively simple animals, jellyfish, sea squirts, starfish, etc. Those have the ability to regrow parts also. The possibilities are out there. Some say that human evolution ended with central heat; they probably are mistaken, but evolution will end, if people start being immortal. At present, the best indicator of longevity is to look at how long a person’s ancestor’s lived in the times before antibiotics. I had an uncle who was born in the 1780’s and died in 1893, and others who had similar lifespans. They haven’t done as well since antibiotics and other modern inconveniences came into use.

A more accurate questionnaire for determining how long someone will live should include the terminal ages of ancestors, because that is an inheritable trait. Sometime we will have to look at making humans females fertile for their entire lives. That is a characteristic that would also lead to a longer lifespan.