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The latest Rejuvenation Research is available online; I'm interested to note the contribution of another "social justice"-style bioethicist. Regular positive engagement with the ideas and goals of longevity science is a fairly recent phenomenon for that portion of the social studies crowd; while their ideas are just as contemptuous of freedom as the root of progress here as everywhere else, I view diversification as progress. There is some truth in the view that libertarian cliques get things started, but their goal only becomes a movement when the socialist masses finally join in with a clamor of "you must," "we should," and "there ought to be a law!"
It is usually the case that you will see sentences containing "should" and "we" in this way when you're being sold up the river. There exists some group of people who think you should live your life a certain way, regardless of your opinions on the matter, and this is a little of the manner in which they build up a rhetoric to justify their eventual use of force and constraint of law. Assumptions of inclusion and unity via "we" and assumptions of authority via "should." Neither are true; you're not a member of their little group unless you choose to be, and there is no authority beyond that which you grant them of your own choice.
Here's the social science paper that prompted this line of discussion:
The Normative Dimensions of Extending the Human Lifespan by Age-Related Biomedical Innovations:
The current normative debate on age-related biomedical innovations and the extension of the human lifespan has important shortcomings. Mainly, the complexity of the different normative dimensions relevant for ethical and/or juridicial norms is not fully developed and the normative quality of teleological and deontological arguments is not properly distinguished.
This article addresses some of these shortcomings and develops the outline of a more comprehensive normative framework covering all relevant dimensions. Such a frame necessarily has to include conceptions of a good life on the individual and societal levels. Furthermore, as a third dimension, a model for the access to and the just distribution of age-related biomedical innovations and technologies extending the human lifespan will be developed. It is argued that such a model has to include the different levels of the general philosophical theories of distributive justice, including social rights and theories of just health care. Furthermore, it has to show how these theories can be applied to the problem area of aging and extending the human lifespan.
It is unfortunate that human cultures seem so hardwired for inefficiency and waste - so much time spent on trying to justify coercion of others to attain your personally favored goals. Human nature is what it is, for now at least: best to keep plugging away at the problems you care about and do your best to hold up a decent set of standards by persuading rather than coercing.
Even if we could draft the masses to work to defeat aging, we should not do it; that would make us no better than those deathists who would set the agency of government to block research and mandate age-related death to their schedule.
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Posted by Reason
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