It's Wonderful, But Let More People Die First
A look at one particular type of objection to healthy life extension in this New American Media piece: the person who agrees with the goal of defeating age-related suffering and death, but nonetheless feels that even wonderfully positive change must be slow and socialized - discussed, debated, funneled through the polical and regulatory sausage machine. "It deserves a long and wide-ranging effort of serious deliberation - not just debates, which rarely change anybody's mind, but dialogues in which people actually listen to one another and consider deeply all the issues and scenarios. Such an effort will take time and money, but certainly no more than it will take to figure out how to turn old geezers into young geezers. It could run concurrently with life-extension research, and it would inevitably deepen our understanding of the complexities of human life." To which I usually respond: "well then, just how many people - at the rate of 100,000 lives lost each day - are you willing to condemn to death by aging for the sake of your delicate sensibilities?" There is no other moral choice beyond as much freedom of research as possible, and as great a speed as can be mustered.
Link: http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=b82a7c11af6c6f98260e35034ee0c8d5