Blackford on SENS
Russell Blackford, who should be familiar to the transhumanists in the audience, has the following to say about serious scientific efforts to cure aging, such as the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence: "de Grey believes that it is already possible in principle to 'cure' ageing, and that to hold back from doing so is to fail to save some lives that could have been saved if we'd acted otherwise. Saving lives is as important, morally, as resisting impulses to kill. Thus, we are in a position where failing to fund and conduct research on a cure for aging is morally comparable to killing, or so it will inevitably seem to us once we understand the situation clearly, and provided that we hold to our central moral convictions. It appears to follow that, if we are rational, we must accept that there is a moral imperative to quest for a cure for aging. Such an imperative coheres with central moral ideas so powerful as to override any imaginable countervailing considerations. To deny this imperative would involve a logical rupture within the structure of our morality."
Link: http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2006/04/scientific-quest-to-cure-aging.html