Do we want to live to 140? - Bioethics - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), June, 2003

Faculty members from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, have called for a public dialogue about the social implications of antiaging research. Specifically, they urge the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to take "the lead in developing a sustained, widespread program of dialogues that will engage both the biomedical community and the larger public in policymaking conversations."

The NIH has been encouraging biogerontologists (biologists who study fundamental mechanisms of aging) to make substantial advances against aging through three models of intervention. The first is to prevent age-associated maladies by intervening in the underlying aging process. In this model, the researchers hope to increase the average human life expectancy, but not the maximum human lifespan.

The second hopes to decelerate aging, not only to increase the average life expectancy, but lengthen the maximum lifespan. Possible outcomes of this may be to have 90-year-olds who are as healthy and active as today's 50-year-olds, with an occasional person living to 140 years.

The most-radical model of research seeks to arrest aging. "Here the hope is to develop the ability to actually reverse the processes of aging as they occur in adults," note Eric Juengest, Robert Binstock, and Stephen Post of the university's Department of Bioethics.

Should any of these paths lead to success, they predict "radical societal changes would take place in the nature of politics and public policies, the law, labor, housing markets, family life, and virtually every social institution. Although the achievement of any of these biogerontological visions may seem improbable at present, history shows how the development in biomedical science like the cloning of mammals [sometimes] can catch society unawares by accomplishing the 'impossible.'"

"It's important that we begin now," maintains Juengest, "to undertake discussion of whether we really want to extend life so dramatically."