Anti-aging research aims to develop treatments that can decelerate the aging process. Such treatments could extend human lifespan and life expectancy significantly beyond current limits. However, the prospect of dramatically slowing aging raises ethical concerns.
On one side, decelerated aging could help prevent and alleviate devastating age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis. This may preserve human dignity, reduce healthcare costs, and lessen caregiving burdens on families. Interventions like caloric restriction in animals and genetic manipulations in various species demonstrate the possibility of lifespan extension.
On the other hand, fundamentally altering the human aging process disrupts the natural generational cycle and transition from one generation to the next. It challenges traditional notions of human nature’s boundaries. Two opposing philosophies exist: Those who view modifying human nature as a potential improvement, and those who believe existing human contours should be accepted.
The dilemma weighs the benefits of reducing age-related suffering against the profound existential and social implications of drastically extended lifespans. Perspectives on whether to pursue decelerated aging are divided between individual desires for a healthier old age and wider concerns over humanity’s core identity.
Anti-posthumanists caution against developing treatments to decelerate aging and extend human lifespan significantly beyond current norms. They argue such interventions would disrupt the natural cycle of generational turnover and challenge traditional notions of human nature’s limits.
Thinkers like Hans Jonas and Leon Kass raise concerns that tampering with aging processes could preempt the role of youth, disrupt the balance of death and procreation that motivates us to make life count, and lead to a distancing from core creative and nurturing human capacities oriented around rearing the young.
Francis Fukuyama warns that radically extending lifespans could exacerbate socioeconomic divides, disrupt demographic balances between young and old, and represent a hubristic disregard for human dignity rooted in our evolved nature.
Anti-posthumanists argue human nature, shaped by millennia of evolutionary forces, should be respected rather than cavalierly re-engineered. They believe perfecting humanity lies in cultivating inner qualities like compassion and virtue, not modifying the human form.
Finitude and mortality give preciousness to our limited time and spur self-examination of whether life’s meaning was achieved. Removing existential constraints could promote wasteful immortality lacking creative drive.
In essence, anti-posthumanists urge caution about impacts on core humanity before fundamentally altering processes like aging through technological mastery of nature.
Anti-posthumanists raise concerns that radically extending the human lifespan through technological interventions could exacerbate socioeconomic divides, creating a wealthy youthful elite class able to afford life extension technologies versus an aging underclass denied access.
They question whether the quest for individual immortality should take precedence over cultivating virtues like compassionate love innate to human nature. Since we are spiritual, immortal souls anyway, anti-posthumanists argue the focus should be on inner development rather than corporeal modifications.
Drawing from natural law traditions, anti-posthumanists warn that arrogantly departing from human nature’s evolutionary confines will spawn new unforeseen perils worse than current challenges. They urge caution, arguing the burden of proof rests on proponents of radically re-engineering humanity.
Anti-posthumanists criticize the agenda of decelerated aging and life extension as undermining the intergenerational renewal and perpetuation of youth that underpins core human drives and societal investments. Aging cultivates wisdom and ontological humility by reminding us of our finitude and marginality amidst a universe of equal centers of value.
From religious perspectives, they posit everlasting life as the province of the divine, not humans prone to solipsism. Mortality spurs spiritual creativity and liberates from self-obsession. Embracing finitude allows transcending the constraints and dissatisfactions of embodied existence.
Posthumanists embrace an ambitious vision of fundamentally re-engineering human nature through technologies like genetics, nanotechnology, and cybernetics to create superior posthuman beings freed from biological constraints like aging. This techno-utopian agenda seeks nothing less than taking control of human evolution to achieve radical morphological freedom and perfectibility.
Critics argue posthumanism stems from an uncritical “religion of technology” rooted in Western beliefs linking technological progress to human redemption and salvation. Since the Renaissance, secular hopes for immortality and perfectibility transferred millennial religious expectations from the afterlife to this world through science.
Historically, influential thinkers from Francis Bacon to modern biogerontologists have viewed conquering aging and death as integral to mankind’s biological mandate, stemming from theological ideas that aging/mortality resulted from sin and the Fall rather than nature’s intent.
While some modern theological perspectives have naturalized death, others like Jewish thought deem it an enemy to be defeated through embodied immortality if possible, seeing this finite life as intrinsically valuable and precious to God.
Posthumanists posit radical life extension as part of remaking humanity into a superior posthuman form. But critics charge this hubristic vision discounts human dignity rooted in our evolved nature and disconnects from authentic human values and experience.
In the context of rapidly aging societies grappling with rising prevalence of age-related chronic diseases like Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis, decelerated aging research may offer a rational solution where conventional medicine has fallen short. Slowing the fundamental aging process could prevent or delay the debilitating effects that burden individuals, families, and healthcare systems.
However, the cautionary tale of Jonathan Swift’s immortal Struldbrugs raises concerns over potential negative consequences. Swift satirized achieving embodied immortality without wisdom, resulting in a future of deeply demented, decrepit near-immortals devoid of human faculties – a horrific outcome worse than accepting natural mortality.
The challenge is WHETHER decelerated aging therapies, if developed, could compress morbidity and preserve cognitive vitality throughout an extended lifespan, rather than merely postponing dementia to later ages after outliving one’s brain. Quality of extended life, not just longevity, is paramount.
While anti-aging researchers aim for enhanced prolongevity coupled with sustained health, skeptics worry their efforts could lead to a future of highly aged but profoundly diminished individuals, lacking purpose or wisdom – the antithesis of human dignity.
Proponents argue only by targeting biological aging itself can we prevent age-related diseases that conventional medicine cannot cure. But ethical dilemmas remain over upending evolved generational turnover and potential societal disruptions.
The author acknowledges the rich debate between posthumanists advocating using biotechnology to fundamentally modify human nature, and anti-posthumanists urging caution and acceptance of our inherent limits and finitude. However, anti-aging research is driven more by the pragmatic goal of alleviating age-related chronic diseases straining healthcare systems, rather than radically remaking humanity.
While critics like Leon Kass argue that finitude confers important benefits like seriousness, beauty, and virtue, the author contends decelerated aging could provide a solution to the modern scourge of diseases like Alzheimer’s by targeting their root cause – biological aging itself. This contrasts extending life merely to prolong dementia, which would undermine human dignity.
As biotechnologies rapidly advance, the author calls for extreme caution in determining which developments will enhance the human condition versus diminish our dignity and virtue. The possibility of creating an elite ageless class looking down on the naturally aged raises concerns over equality and humility.
Ultimately, while urging great prudence, the author leans toward pursuing decelerated aging research where therapy and enhancement intersect. However, he advocates a humble stewardship seeking to sustain human nature through ethical therapies, not an arrogant remaking into a radically transformed posthuman species divorced from our evolved identity and values.
The goal is to responsibly extend healthspan alongside lifespan without sacrificing core human virtues or creating new injustices – a delicate balance requiring careful moral consideration as biotechnology leaps ahead of societal wisdom.
References:
- Chapter 3: Decelerated Aging: Should I Drink from a Fountain of Youth? (The Fountain of Youth: Cultural, Scientific, and Ethical Perspectives on a Biomedical Goal)