[extropy-chat] TechnologyReview joins anti-transhumanists
David McFadzean
david at ideoware.com
Thu Jan 13 17:00:04 UTC 2005
title: Do You Want to Live Forever?
source:
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/02/issue/feature_aging.asp?p=0
author: Sherwin Nuland
quote:
If we are ever immolated, it will be by the efforts of well-meaning
scientists who are convinced that they have our best interests at heart.
We already know who they are. They are the DNA tweakers who would
enhance us by allowing parents to choose the genetic makeup of their
descendants unto every succeeding generation ad infinitum, heedless of
the possibility that breeding out variety may alter factors necessary
for the survival of our species and the health of its relationship to
every form of life on earth; they are the biogerontologists who study
caloric restriction in mice and promise us the extension by 20 percent
of a peculiarly nourished existence; they are those other
biogerontologists who emerge from their laboratories of molecular
science every evening optimistic that they have come just a bit closer
to their goal of having us live much longer, downplaying the
unanticipated havoc at both the cellular and societal level that might
be wrought by their proposed manipulations. And finally, it is the
unique and strangely alluring figure of Aubrey de Grey, who, orating,
writing, and striding tirelessly through our midst with his less than
fully convinced sympathizers, proclaims like the disheveled herald of a
new-begotten future that our most inalienable right is to have the
choice of living as long as we wish. With the passion of a single-minded
zealot crusading against time, he has issued the ultimate challenge, I
believe, to our entire concept of the meaning of humanness.
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