I posted this at an older post, I meant to post it here. Sorry! :-)

I must say I read everything Kass said and I don't see anywhere where he says he will ban "live extension". In fact, he even specifically states we should use our own caution and judgement, and not impose bans.

The closest position of his is the banning of cloning. Which I think he should put in the same category with "banning is too crude" but instead have us think about the consequences.

I think he raises interesting points. If we reach the point we can live for hundreds of years, what would we do? I don't think that means we should not strive to, but we should think about the implications. For instance, the more I read on the nature vs nurture debate, the more I think we do strive on competition, and survival and sexual reproduction is an important part of our existence and behavior (not the act of reproducing but all the things we do in order to be able to do it).

We already see negative population growth rates in Japan and most of Europe. Would that get worse as people live longer? Is that bad? Would someday far in the future, we be like many aliens in science fiction, who have forgotten how to reproduce and are dying off?

These are all important questions to address. But just because we want to think about them doesn't mean we are against life extensions. Science fiction writers such as Phillip K Dick may be written off as luddites, but really they point out the problems we may face and need to work around. But just acknowledging those problems may exist and advocating caution is not saying we should not proceed.

We should not be ostriches yes, avoiding the future. But neither should we put blinders on and hope for the best and not examine the consequences of our actions and prepare for them.

I think that is all he is saying.

as an aside: I read "The First Immortal" and thought it was horrible, the author completely wimped out of all the hard questions, with his "truth machine" that solved everyone's problems. And in order to introduce something for humanity to strive for, instead of making it internal, it had to come in the form of an external stimulus, i.e. the asteroid. I was interested in reading about what kind of struggles we might face if death was no longer to be feared, and instead he chickened out.

[Posted by: Pluto's Dad at March 17, 2005 1:00 PM]

Whatever you might think of The First Immortal (and I confess I wasn't all that sold on it myself), it's worth noting that Halperin, the author, does donate generously to worthy non-profit healthy life extension community efforts like the Immortality Institute film project.

http://www.imminst.org/film/

It is interesting to note that there are few books "about" life extension per se. As a subject it is essentially absorbed into mainstream science fiction - there are no books about life extension for the same reason there are no books about directed energy weapons; it's assumed, a given, part of the background rather than the story itself.

[Posted by: Reason at March 17, 2005 2:52 PM]

Pluto's Dad,

If you are pro-life, should you not want to defend it from the ravages of aging and death?

Your life, my life, and anyone elses life?

Societal problems? Do you honestly think that I should allow concerns about "societal issues: force me into giving up my life and vitality?

As long as I am "youthful" and vital, I can deal with any kind of "societal problem" that might occur and get in my way. I have personal experience with dealing with problems before.

[Posted by: Kurt at March 18, 2005 10:00 AM]

http://dfmoore.mu.nu/ Daniel Moore's website and whatever article of his is being replied to seems to be down. Have they been conserved elsewhere?

[Posted by: Tyciol at September 2, 2006 1:32 PM]

Such is the way of the web: here one day, gone the next. I suggest trying either the Google Cache:

http://www.googleguide.com/cached_pages.html

or the Wayback Machine:

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

[Posted by: Reason at September 2, 2006 1:38 PM]

As an additional reply to Pluto's Dad, I very much doubt we'll forget how to breed. Assuming we all became celibate today and all literature regarding sex destroyed, and disallowed to be printed, I still think it might take thousands of years to annihilate the knowledge. I wonder who would do that.

[Posted by: Tyciol at September 2, 2006 1:46 PM]