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.