On Aug. 29, bioethicists Margaret Somerville and James Hughes came to U of T to debate the merits of human life-extension, genetic engineering, and cloning. Hughes foresees only positive consequences, provided all individuals get an equal share of the benefits. Somerville, by contrast, had a lot of reservations. Justin Trottier and Joanne Tang take up the debate where they left off.
Benefits of biotech outweigh yuck factor
by Justin Trottier
What is really at issue here is Margaret Somerville’s belief that nearly all these new technologies are “inherently wrong” and should be banned at the outset and I take issue with a number of inconsistencies and seeming hypocrisies on her part.
She calls cloning inherently wrong but then finds no problem when nature produces its own form of clone, the genetically identical twin, giving some ad hoc explanation that it’s only ok when both people are alive at the same time.
She calls it inherently wrong to tamper with the germ cell line, but has no problem with someone changing their own genes during their life and then procreating and mixing their new genes with the gene pool of the community, thus altering the germ cell line, if only indirectly.
She is arguing along quasi-religious lines, sometimes falling back on an indefinable “human spirit,” other times calling upon the “secular sacred” and, without regard to consistency, throwing anything that might upset society or produce the dreaded “yuck factor” into the unnatural list. She of course also seems to forget the existential argument; there is no immutable definition of the natural. We as a species have been continuously redefining what it means to be human and just what is natural through 50,000 years of artificial selection of mates and through 10,000 years of technology.
She also explains that we may want to ban nanotechnologies because of the possible future catastrophic dangers they may present. Yet when told that such technology could also build devices to protect this planet from catastrophes like impacting asteroids, she explains that this, being naturally occurring, doesn’t count. She is so obsessed with the sacredness of the natural and a colliding asteroid happens to fall in that category.
I think it is time we remove the sacred from the natural and realize that what occurs “naturally” is not necessarily what is best for us as a species now. If we have short life spans, it is undoubtedly because evolution would naturally have us procreate and die quickly. Is that a good reason to continue to accept short life spans now? Should we step in and stop parents who would like to use genetic engineering to keep natural defective genes out of the DNA of their offspring? Shouldn’t we risk an unlikely nano-induced catastrophe if we can stop an asteroid from hitting this planet? Such a natural impact would be the most likely end of our species, since impacts have naturally wiped out over 2/3 of all life that has ever existed on Earth. Not using our natural intelligence to benefit ourselves just seems, well, unnatural.
Do you really want to live that long?
by Joanne Tang
Hughes believes that many who are born today will live to be 200 or 300 years old. Cambridge researcher Aubrey de Grey, friend of Hughes and champion of radical life-extension, estimates that treatment which doubles the remaining life expectancy for today’s 70 year-olds would be available in 15 to 100 years. He also thinks treatments that could do a lot more would follow suit. By putting more money into researching the mechanisms of aging, scientists would be able to reverse the process. The number of people that suffer from age-related disabilities and diseases would be greatly reduced, and we’d all have an indefinite lifespan.
If we no longer need to expect to die any time soon, we would free ourselves from inevitable deterioration. We’d also free ourselves from the tyranny of time. We could start (and finish!) all the things we had ever wanted to do. And it would never be too late to become what we might have been.
But really, do we need to live that long? Shouldn’t we take caution against such radical alteration of the human lifespan? Life as we know it, in its variety of forms, has a beginning and an end. That’s part of its beauty; it’s what makes it precious. We value life because it will go away: human beings attach emotional importance to that which is significant yet transient.
You may say this all sounds very romantic and not scientific, as if it’s taken from a book of popular philosophy. We get weary of things that seem too soft.
But that’s not the point. Is science really our only answer to everything? We’ve had such emphasis on the physical and on what’s quantitative research, but many of the most important things about being human are not physical and they’re not quantitative,” Somerville reminded me in an interview before the debate. As a civilized and technologically advanced people, we have forgotten other ways of knowing.
And I think this has partly to do with our determination to conquer the mysterious. We are able to make weather forecasts and see our babies through ultrasound. But the apprehension that many of us feel about living beyond 200 years, the anxiety we have about reproductive cloning, or the doubt we have about genetically engineering the “perfect baby,” are there for a reason. It is anxiety, in addition to knowing that slacking off gets you nowhere, that kick starts you into studying for an exam. Emotional reactions have an adaptive function – and yes, they are distinct from what many call the “yuck factor.” Pay close attention, our feelings may be trying to tell us something.
