Fight Aging!

Anders Sandberg provides a transhumanist perspective on the problem that plagues aging research, as well as other fields of medicine - a phobia of vision and directed goals: "Senior scientists and technologists are often asked about their visions and views about the future [but the] economics of research favours talking about means rather than ends, and the allowable ends will be short-term generally agreed on goods. Grants applications dutifully mentions cures for Alzheimers and increased economic competitiveness ... the biotechnology debate has become impoverished: professional competition has shifted the debate away from a 'thick' substantively rational debate about the ends of genetic engineering to a 'thin' formally rational debate about the means to achieve a few predetermined ends like safety, efficiency and health. That has left a lot of people (both for and against) disaffected and unable to participate in the mainstream thin debate since they really want to discuss thick issues. This is why I think the 'shut up, you are scaring the grant bodies' approach the wrong one. They should be scared. Otherwise we will have a science and technology where acceptable research is determined by unaccountable minorities setting 'proper' goals, rather than by a society where numerous wildly different views need to coexist. The big, dramatic and far-fetched transhumanist visions have a place here as values and ends to aim."

Link: http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2008/06/dont_scare_the_kids_and_grant_bodies.html