All of these objections have been responded to at length by David Wood in his book The Abolition of Aging, Aubrey de Grey in his book, Ending Aging and David Sinclair in his book, Lifespan and on blogs such as FightAging.org and Lifespan.io.
Anyway, I plan to write a Part 2 post covering the main ethical arguments including the three you reference, but will provide a short summary here:
(1) ‘Death or aging brings meaning (or happiness) to life’
My point is this: Age and suffering give meaning to our lives. Technology slowly but surely eliminates both. Without any struggle—and as close to paradise as ever—where will we find meaning? In continuous progress? In “higher” quality of life?*
While chronological aging gives meaning to our lives, as existing over time allows to experience reality for longer (allowing for self-actualisation, building friendships and relationships, pursuing passions and so on) biological aging—that is, our slow and fatal physiological decline by the 9 hallmarks of aging that are slowly killing us, that currently accompanies chronological aging—doesn’t. If you think people get happier as they get more frail, weak, lose their sight, hearing, and have higher chances of cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and type 2 diabetes just take a closer look at depression statistics—the highest rates of depression are among the elderly, who account for the most DALYs of any age demographic, from depression.
The attempt to ascribe ‘meaning’ to the suffering that accompanies biological age-related decline and the diseases it is associated with (cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes etc.) is just a manifestation of the naturalistic fallacy coupled with lazy conservatism inherent in human nature.
The reality is: biological aging f*cking sucks, and no person who is experiencing the decline associated with aging (frailty, heart problems, signs of cancer etc.) would give up the opportunity to take therapy to bring them to a more youthful state of being biologically 20-30 years old with complete physical and cognitive function, given the opportunity. If you have compelling evidence on the contrary, please provide it.
For more about deathism, the pro-aging trance and ‘death brings meaning to life’ arguments, read articles, here, here and here. Also consider reading Aubrey de Grey’s book, Ending Aging David Sinclair’s book, Lifespanand David Wood’s book, The Abolition of Aging.
(2) Distributional justice (i.e. ‘only for the rich’)
Will the “anti-aging cure” (considering aging as a disease still rings a bit weird to me) be available to all strata of society? Or will it only enlarge the cleft between haves and have nots?
I covered this in another comment in this thread, but will copy and paste the response for your convenience:
Anti-aging therapies are in principle no different from existing medical treatments such as anti-viral or anti-cancer therapies. For example, there is little philosophically difference between a cancer therapy (e.g. molecules that kill cancer cells) to extend healthy lifespan and a senolytic drug (e.g. molecules that kill senescent cells) to extend healthy lifespan. In the same way that few would object to the development of better cancer therapies today (e.g. CAR T-cell therapies) that only the rich can afford (and are not, for example, currently available to people in Africa), few should object to anti-aging drugs that extend healthy lifespan, even if only the rich can initially afford them too. Basically, many lifesaving medical interventions are initially expensive, and therefore only available to the rich, but this isn’t a reason to inhibit research. An additional point: if you support current medical research—which functions essentially to extend healthy lifespan, you should also support anti-aging, which also aims to extend healthy lifespan, though through prevention rather than cures. The only difference between the two is the approach, and the likely effectiveness—anti-aging is likely to be more effective at accomplishing the goal. Hence, we should be more enthusiastic about this approach, if anything.
Therapies are unlikely to stay expensive for long. When patents expire after 10-20 years, drugs usually become ridiculously cheap, and so any distributional inequality is unlikely to last long. Metformin, a life-saving diabetes drug (that is also being studied for its anti-aging properties) is a good example—it was initially expensive but the price has now plummeted to 31 cents per tablet in 2013. There are numerous economic forces that will drive low prices—governments are incentivised to subsidise these therapies, to populations healthy and stave off the diseases of old age that cost healthcare systems trillions of dollars worldwide annually (e.g. dementia alone costs over $1 trillion), which is otherwise set to grow due to an aging population. Insurance companies will similarly be incentivized to subside these therapies, to keep their clients healthier and able to avoid the chronic diseases of old age for longer. A good analogy is car sales—cars used to be too expensive for most people but are now ubiquitous and largely affordable. Since the market size for anti-aging therapies (i.e. all humans on Earth) is huge, as it is for cars, we would expect the huge demand to result in lower prices. Food technology is another, more recent example. In 2013 the first lab-grown burger was $325,000, and two years later the cost fell to $12.
Not developing anti-aging technology doesn’t help the poor. Anti-aging technologies only available for the rich would not help the poor, but not having these technologies available to the rich—that is, allowing the rich to age and die like the rest of us—also wouldn’t help the poor. What matters is not only that the gap between rich and poor is closed, but also how it is closed. For example, those in Western countries could give up all their comforts and wealth to be economically equal to the lowest African countries. But this is not the goal—the goal is to bring the African countries up in wealth, not bring economically prosperous nations down. The same applies to anti-aging: the goal is to bring everyone’s healthspans up (even if it means there will exist some inequality, initially), not keep everyone’s healthspans down for the sake of equality.
(3) Overpopulation and resource constraints
The initial question is purely pragmatic: more people on Earth living longer lives would mean more energy expenditure, more space needed to accommodate them. Even if this could be technologically solved with higher efficiencies (which themselves would not be offset by behavior adaptation), what will it do to the fabric of society?
Demographics The Earth’s population today is not expanding in an uncontrollable, exponential way and in fact in many parts of the world population is either now or soon will be declining (e.g. European countries, Japan, China etc.). The only regions of population growth are south-east Asia and Africa, both of are predicted to at around 11 billion in 2100 in line with the demographic transition model and then fall. In many parts of the world, underpopulation is likely to be a bigger problem than overpopulation in the near future due to dangerously low birth rates.
Aging population A much bigger problem than overpopulation is the ‘aging population’ and carrying capacity (i.e. the proportion of individuals over 65+ and frail etc. due to age-related decline) which is increasing globally and will immensely burden the healthcare system, and the younger workforce, in the absence of anti-aging technologies. However, anti-aging technologies allow those in their 60s and beyond to remain in a healthy, functional state and able to work and remain free of chronic diseases for much longer.
Neo-Malthusian collapse: The notion of overpopulation is common misconception that is completely unsubstantiated by empirical literature. Neo-Malthusian concerns have been touted since the 18th century but have not held up since as populations expand, so too does the technology to support larger populations. The whole notion of ‘carrying capacity’ assumed there was no possible way to (for instance) increase crop yields, fortify foods, significantly increase population density via taller buildings and so on.
Won’t a larger population exacerbate climate change? Climate change is a huge problem and while population size is a multiplicative factor in environmental impact, developing technology to decrease carbon intensity and increase and recycling effectiveness, as described by MIT economist Andrew McAffee in his book, More from Less, is feasible and the rational solution. As David Wood says in my recent interview with him: ‘if we are serious about solving aging, we should not fetishize population size (as a factor), we should be working elsewhere’. Interestingly, many of the technologies that will make rejuvenation biotechnology possible can also assist with transforming agriculture to claim back land that is currently being used inefficiently, such as synthetic biology (lab grown meat) and nanotechnology (repair and recycling). Additionally, geoengineering solutions (green energy—solar/wind), space tech, and policy changes may help to reduce emissions. So although the world is already transitioning to renewables, (for example, the UK recently passed the benchmark of 50% renewables) and the rate is not necessarily fast enough, restricting population size by allowing the widespread suffering and death from aging is not the most ethical nor effective way to manage climate impact. In the same way that allowing COVID-19 to kill millions of people is not an ethical solution to climate change (which, by the way, is primarily an age-related disease that would benefit greatly from anti-aging, as I will discuss in a future post).
We won’t run out of space? In 2012, the team of the project “Per Square Mile” led by Tim de Chant produced an infographic to show how big a city would have to be to house the world’s 7 billion people. If populated as densely as New York, the entire world’s population could fit into an area the size of Texas. So there is more than enough space on Earth to accommodate a vastly greater population of many trillions.
Won’t we run out of food? If we compare the food supply in 1965 and in 2013, we can clearly see that overeating is more of a global issue than undernourishment, as in most countries, the calorie intake has increased significantly. If we compare the food supply in 1965 and in 2007, we can clearly see that overeating is more of a global issue than undernourishment, as in most countries, the calorie intake has grown significantly. This means that a population explosion during this time of over 4 billion people has passed relatively unnoticed – all thanks to the “Green Revolution” (rapid development of new agriculture techniques, such as fertilizers, irrigation and selection). The concern that there will be a food shortage in the future neglects further technological advances such as aquaponics, hydroponics, aeroponics, vertical farming, 3D-printed housing, algae farms, and many other technologies that could provide enough food for all.
Negligible senescence: Now, eventually if we completely abolish death (i.e. achieve ‘negligible senescence’), then yes population size will continue to grow, assuming populations continue to reproduce. But this population growth is 1) not as rapid as people imagine 2) not a concern that is unlikely to be solved by technological advances and 2) not a reason to deny those alive today access to life-saving anti-aging therapies.
Final comment: Anti-aging is basically just today’s medicine, but better (and preventative)
It’s worth noting that all of the above objections also apply to current medicine too (which similarly aims to extend healthy lifespan) albeit to a lesser degree due to the ineffectiveness of this approach. The philosophical difference is that anti-aging is potentially more effective at accomplishing medicine’s goal—to extend healthy lifespan—by targeting the root cause of the problem (hallmarks of aging) rather than allowing the damage of aging to accumulate and then only targeting the ‘symptoms’ (i.e. diseases of aging—cancer, heart disease etc.). It seems strange to me that you would support (I assume) the less effective approach to healthspan extension of today’s medicine, but not support the more effective approach of anti-aging. Ultimately, the two approaches service the same goal, but one intervenes earlier, when the damage has accrued but before symptoms emerge rather than when damage has accrued to an even greater level that causes symptoms to emerge. ‘Prevention is better than a cure’ as they say, and this certainly looks to be the case with anti-aging.
Note: if you found some of these arguments more/less compelling than others, please let me know as it will help to inform my second post :) thanks.
Your comment alludes to 3 exceedingly common objections to anti-aging:
(1) ‘Death and aging bring meaning to life’
(2) Distributional justice (i.e. ‘only for the rich’)
(3) Overpopulation (resource overconsumption, environmental impact etc.)
All of these objections have been responded to at length by David Wood in his book The Abolition of Aging, Aubrey de Grey in his book, Ending Aging and David Sinclair in his book, Lifespan and on blogs such as FightAging.org and Lifespan.io.
Anyway, I plan to write a Part 2 post covering the main ethical arguments including the three you reference, but will provide a short summary here:
(1) ‘Death or aging brings meaning (or happiness) to life’
While chronological aging gives meaning to our lives, as existing over time allows to experience reality for longer (allowing for self-actualisation, building friendships and relationships, pursuing passions and so on) biological aging—that is, our slow and fatal physiological decline by the 9 hallmarks of aging that are slowly killing us, that currently accompanies chronological aging—doesn’t. If you think people get happier as they get more frail, weak, lose their sight, hearing, and have higher chances of cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and type 2 diabetes just take a closer look at depression statistics—the highest rates of depression are among the elderly, who account for the most DALYs of any age demographic, from depression.
Honestly, ask yourself—do you think there is any meaning associated with neurodegeneration, and Alzheimer’s disease? Because as a neuroscientist I can tell you that it is impossible to age without neurodegeneration, which leads to extremely high rates of Alzheimer’s disease in the elderly. Neurodegeneration involves losing one’s memories, cognition and other mental faculties, which also predisposes to depression, so it’s unclear how this process would be valuable for improving wellbeing, as you suggest.
The attempt to ascribe ‘meaning’ to the suffering that accompanies biological age-related decline and the diseases it is associated with (cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes etc.) is just a manifestation of the naturalistic fallacy coupled with lazy conservatism inherent in human nature.
The reality is: biological aging f*cking sucks, and no person who is experiencing the decline associated with aging (frailty, heart problems, signs of cancer etc.) would give up the opportunity to take therapy to bring them to a more youthful state of being biologically 20-30 years old with complete physical and cognitive function, given the opportunity. If you have compelling evidence on the contrary, please provide it.
For more about deathism, the pro-aging trance and ‘death brings meaning to life’ arguments, read articles, here, here and here. Also consider reading Aubrey de Grey’s book, Ending Aging David Sinclair’s book, Lifespanand David Wood’s book, The Abolition of Aging.
(2) Distributional justice (i.e. ‘only for the rich’)
I covered this in another comment in this thread, but will copy and paste the response for your convenience:
Anti-aging therapies are in principle no different from existing medical treatments such as anti-viral or anti-cancer therapies. For example, there is little philosophically difference between a cancer therapy (e.g. molecules that kill cancer cells) to extend healthy lifespan and a senolytic drug (e.g. molecules that kill senescent cells) to extend healthy lifespan. In the same way that few would object to the development of better cancer therapies today (e.g. CAR T-cell therapies) that only the rich can afford (and are not, for example, currently available to people in Africa), few should object to anti-aging drugs that extend healthy lifespan, even if only the rich can initially afford them too. Basically, many lifesaving medical interventions are initially expensive, and therefore only available to the rich, but this isn’t a reason to inhibit research. An additional point: if you support current medical research—which functions essentially to extend healthy lifespan, you should also support anti-aging, which also aims to extend healthy lifespan, though through prevention rather than cures. The only difference between the two is the approach, and the likely effectiveness—anti-aging is likely to be more effective at accomplishing the goal. Hence, we should be more enthusiastic about this approach, if anything.
Therapies are unlikely to stay expensive for long. When patents expire after 10-20 years, drugs usually become ridiculously cheap, and so any distributional inequality is unlikely to last long. Metformin, a life-saving diabetes drug (that is also being studied for its anti-aging properties) is a good example—it was initially expensive but the price has now plummeted to 31 cents per tablet in 2013. There are numerous economic forces that will drive low prices—governments are incentivised to subsidise these therapies, to populations healthy and stave off the diseases of old age that cost healthcare systems trillions of dollars worldwide annually (e.g. dementia alone costs over $1 trillion), which is otherwise set to grow due to an aging population. Insurance companies will similarly be incentivized to subside these therapies, to keep their clients healthier and able to avoid the chronic diseases of old age for longer. A good analogy is car sales—cars used to be too expensive for most people but are now ubiquitous and largely affordable. Since the market size for anti-aging therapies (i.e. all humans on Earth) is huge, as it is for cars, we would expect the huge demand to result in lower prices. Food technology is another, more recent example. In 2013 the first lab-grown burger was $325,000, and two years later the cost fell to $12.
Not developing anti-aging technology doesn’t help the poor. Anti-aging technologies only available for the rich would not help the poor, but not having these technologies available to the rich—that is, allowing the rich to age and die like the rest of us—also wouldn’t help the poor. What matters is not only that the gap between rich and poor is closed, but also how it is closed. For example, those in Western countries could give up all their comforts and wealth to be economically equal to the lowest African countries. But this is not the goal—the goal is to bring the African countries up in wealth, not bring economically prosperous nations down. The same applies to anti-aging: the goal is to bring everyone’s healthspans up (even if it means there will exist some inequality, initially), not keep everyone’s healthspans down for the sake of equality.
(3) Overpopulation and resource constraints
Demographics The Earth’s population today is not expanding in an uncontrollable, exponential way and in fact in many parts of the world population is either now or soon will be declining (e.g. European countries, Japan, China etc.). The only regions of population growth are south-east Asia and Africa, both of are predicted to at around 11 billion in 2100 in line with the demographic transition model and then fall. In many parts of the world, underpopulation is likely to be a bigger problem than overpopulation in the near future due to dangerously low birth rates.
Aging population A much bigger problem than overpopulation is the ‘aging population’ and carrying capacity (i.e. the proportion of individuals over 65+ and frail etc. due to age-related decline) which is increasing globally and will immensely burden the healthcare system, and the younger workforce, in the absence of anti-aging technologies. However, anti-aging technologies allow those in their 60s and beyond to remain in a healthy, functional state and able to work and remain free of chronic diseases for much longer.
Neo-Malthusian collapse: The notion of overpopulation is common misconception that is completely unsubstantiated by empirical literature. Neo-Malthusian concerns have been touted since the 18th century but have not held up since as populations expand, so too does the technology to support larger populations. The whole notion of ‘carrying capacity’ assumed there was no possible way to (for instance) increase crop yields, fortify foods, significantly increase population density via taller buildings and so on.
Won’t a larger population exacerbate climate change? Climate change is a huge problem and while population size is a multiplicative factor in environmental impact, developing technology to decrease carbon intensity and increase and recycling effectiveness, as described by MIT economist Andrew McAffee in his book, More from Less, is feasible and the rational solution. As David Wood says in my recent interview with him: ‘if we are serious about solving aging, we should not fetishize population size (as a factor), we should be working elsewhere’. Interestingly, many of the technologies that will make rejuvenation biotechnology possible can also assist with transforming agriculture to claim back land that is currently being used inefficiently, such as synthetic biology (lab grown meat) and nanotechnology (repair and recycling). Additionally, geoengineering solutions (green energy—solar/wind), space tech, and policy changes may help to reduce emissions. So although the world is already transitioning to renewables, (for example, the UK recently passed the benchmark of 50% renewables) and the rate is not necessarily fast enough, restricting population size by allowing the widespread suffering and death from aging is not the most ethical nor effective way to manage climate impact. In the same way that allowing COVID-19 to kill millions of people is not an ethical solution to climate change (which, by the way, is primarily an age-related disease that would benefit greatly from anti-aging, as I will discuss in a future post).
We won’t run out of space? In 2012, the team of the project “Per Square Mile” led by Tim de Chant produced an infographic to show how big a city would have to be to house the world’s 7 billion people. If populated as densely as New York, the entire world’s population could fit into an area the size of Texas. So there is more than enough space on Earth to accommodate a vastly greater population of many trillions.
Won’t we run out of food? If we compare the food supply in 1965 and in 2013, we can clearly see that overeating is more of a global issue than undernourishment, as in most countries, the calorie intake has increased significantly. If we compare the food supply in 1965 and in 2007, we can clearly see that overeating is more of a global issue than undernourishment, as in most countries, the calorie intake has grown significantly. This means that a population explosion during this time of over 4 billion people
has passed relatively unnoticed – all thanks to the “Green Revolution” (rapid development of new agriculture techniques, such as fertilizers, irrigation and selection). The concern that there will be a food shortage in the future neglects further technological advances such as aquaponics, hydroponics, aeroponics, vertical farming, 3D-printed housing, algae farms, and many other technologies that could provide enough food for all.
Negligible senescence: Now, eventually if we completely abolish death (i.e. achieve ‘negligible senescence’), then yes population size will continue to grow, assuming populations continue to reproduce. But this population growth is 1) not as rapid as people imagine 2) not a concern that is unlikely to be solved by technological advances and 2) not a reason to deny those alive today access to life-saving anti-aging therapies.
For a more detailed response to this objection, I recommend this long-form article.
Final comment: Anti-aging is basically just today’s medicine, but better (and preventative)
It’s worth noting that all of the above objections also apply to current medicine too (which similarly aims to extend healthy lifespan) albeit to a lesser degree due to the ineffectiveness of this approach. The philosophical difference is that anti-aging is potentially more effective at accomplishing medicine’s goal—to extend healthy lifespan—by targeting the root cause of the problem (hallmarks of aging) rather than allowing the damage of aging to accumulate and then only targeting the ‘symptoms’ (i.e. diseases of aging—cancer, heart disease etc.). It seems strange to me that you would support (I assume) the less effective approach to healthspan extension of today’s medicine, but not support the more effective approach of anti-aging. Ultimately, the two approaches service the same goal, but one intervenes earlier, when the damage has accrued but before symptoms emerge rather than when damage has accrued to an even greater level that causes symptoms to emerge. ‘Prevention is better than a cure’ as they say, and this certainly looks to be the case with anti-aging.
Note: if you found some of these arguments more/less compelling than others, please let me know as it will help to inform my second post :) thanks.