"There are probably people alive today who will have unlimited life spans." Aubrey de Grey, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge, in England, quoted in Saturday's New York Times story on the quest for immortality. From the article:
- Mr. de Grey compared the cellular and molecular damage that aging causes to what happens to a house. Houses keep going, he said, not because they are built to be immortal, but because people keep repairing them. Science should take the same approach to the human body, he argued; many, if not all, of the techniques for making such repairs are already available. To get this whole process going, Mr. de Grey established the Methuselah Mouse Prize in September. The prize is drawn from a fund - Methuselah Mouse - now open for donations.
Said Mr. de Grey: 'Aging really is barbaric. It shouldn't be allowed. I don't need an ethical argument. I don't need any argument. It's visceral. To let people die is bad.
If someone actually had a fix for aging and dying, all the big-time ethicist-bloviators who are appalled at all this would be the first in line, have no doubt.
Article comments
1 - Tom Johnson
The problem, of course, is what happens when everyone lives forever, but we also keep on having more children? Population would skyrocket if we didn't have a death toll. Then again, maybe I wouldn't want to stick around anyway. Can you imagine how people would act without the threat of eventual death hanging over them? I think I'd rather not have to witness that forever.