Fight Aging!

The problem with ethics as a profession is exactly that it has become a profession: the salaried ethicist knows that his continued employment depends upon finding problems with research and development. Money, even modest amounts of the stuff, is a powerful incentive. So where there are no problems, there are still groups of people who are effectively being paid to invent problems - and you wonder why medical science isn't moving as fast as it might be.

This form of institutional corrosion is well entrenched throughout the Western world now, of course, and so you'll see plenty of things like this open access whine-slash-justification-for-a-paycheck:

Optimistic predictions of the feasibility and effectiveness of life extension should be critically reviewed in the light of their ethical and social implications. Some anti-aging scientists claim that arguments against anti-aging medicine will simply be dismissed by research outcomes. We would claim that the problem is not with the availability of results, but with defining the nature of what we consider "results".

The idea that life extension research will necessarily translate into what some judges interpret as a result (i.e. the cure of aging) is problematic, because the translational process from potential life extension interventions into reality is not only a matter of science. Suppose we have laboratory advances that are promising for the future translation of laboratory work to the clinic. This result would matter scientifically, but would not solve the ethical and social questions of life-extending interventions. Even if we should succeed in the laboratory, the problems of equitable access to such interventions, the impacts of the future implementation of life extension on health care systems, the risk of pressure to make use of life extension techniques - all these issues will still be with us. Here, more than ever, it must be stressed that the "nature" of what we consider "results" matters not only scientifically, but also ethically and socially. Ethical and social debate on these issues is therefore much needed, along with scientific research and discussion.

Roughly translated: "I don't actually know enough about contemporary longevity science to write about it comprehensively or well, but I do know how to write successful grants. Please pay me and my colleagues more money rather than putting those resources to work on actual research." The middle section of the paper is particularly offensive on that count, an incomplete overview that plays up the bad and the unknown while failing to mention important topics such as SENS, systems biology, tissue engineering, and so on and so forth. There are admittedly far worse things going on in the world these days than the efforts of a legion of minor parasites who've manage to redirect research funding to build an industry that actively opposes research, but the noisy parasitism of the ethics profession manages to be more aggravating than its cost should make it.

Strange things happen to cultures when they lose sight of what matters, begin to value abstractions such as "society" over real individuals, and empty talk over tangible progress. I'd say it's a form of collective cabin fever brought on by the shrinking world and the absence of a frontier: with no hard-to-reach destination for the best, brightest, and most motivated to head for when matters become less than tolerable, there is no escape valve to prevent a network of diverse cultures from nonetheless degenerating in lockstep. The only form of protest that really matters in the long term - when it comes to applying pressure for change - is emigration to a remote region in order to build better lives. The sooner that the next new frontier is opened by technological progress in orbital flight the better in my view.