Should Scientists Really Be Working to Extend Human Life?

The simple answer, of course, is yes.  Why shouldn’t scientists be working to make our lives longer?  After all, who doesn’t want Uncle Jim and Aunty Mable to live happy fulfilling lives deep into their nineties and beyond?  I certainly want my parents, my wife, my friends, and myself to live long healthy lives.  That’s only natural.

But is it smart?

Should we really be trying to make lives last even longer when the human population is growing at its current accelerated rate?  Should we be actively attempting to better our own lives at the expense of our race’s future?   And what of the planet?  And its resources?  Isn’t this all really being done for selfish reasons when you get down to it?

Sorry, heavy stuff here.  Sorry to hit you with it like a frying pan to the face.  So, let’s slow down here.  Relax.  And see what Charlton Heston has to say about this.

Soylent Green.  One of Heston’s dark future trilogy of films with The Omega Man and Planet of the Apes filling out the ranks.  If you haven’t seen it, don’t worry.  I’ll spoil it for you here, with a little help from Charlton himself.  Basically it posits that in the future the world will be a very overpopulated place.  A place where piles of living people are scooped up in bulldozers.  And where real food is scarce and nearly priceless.  You think you’ve drooled over a steak before, you ain’t seen nothing like what these people would do for that juicy red meat.  Since meat and vegetables are so scarce in this movie most people are forced to eat colorful crispy squares called Soylent.  And while there are many varieties (red, yellow, etc) everyone’s favorite is Soylent Green.  It’s the tastiest.  And it’s at the end that Mr. Heston discovers exactly what it’s made out of.  Here, take a look:

Yup, people.  People eating people because there’s nothing else to eat.  Because there are just too many damn humans.  It’s a stretch, I know.  And science fiction.  But the fear of future overpopulation is a real one, and one I can’t help but worry about, especially when I hear about scientists manipulating genes and researching hibernation in an effort to extend human life.

Where’s all this coming from?  Why am I all worked up?  Well, I was watching me some PBS last night and Nova came on discussing the many different ways science is looking to not only improve human life, but make it last longer.  In one of the segments, scientists were shown having discovered the gene that appears to act as a bodily “superintendent.”  In other words, this gene actively repairs the various parts of the human body and keeps it in good shape.  A very small percentage of people have this, and they typically live very long healthy lives. It’s science’s hope to utilize this discovery in a way to turn on that gene in everyone, so that we all live well into old age, but in a healthy, active manner. 

The whole time I’m watching this I’m seeing these scientists so excited about their work and its future uses.  Meanwhile I’m finding myself growing more and more concerned.  Very little did I hear about the possible negative side effects of such work.  Such as, what effect will this have on the human population?  And, in turn, Earth’s natural resources?  We’re already scrubbing the oceans clean of life.  We’ve also made meat processing an extremely mechanized and cruel process.  And, the current population has already done a fantastic job of dooming our not too distant future with higher sea levels.

Basically we’re talking more people, less food, and less land.  This is a bad mix, yes?

The problem here is that we’re thinking small.  We really are.  We’re thinking about our families and ourselves and how we want them to live as long as they can.  But isn’t that really a selfish point of view?  If we really cared about people, shouldn’t we examine more carefully the future ramifications of these decisions?  Are we not dooming our entire species just so Grandma and Grandpa can use more precious natural resources cruising around the seas looking at melting glaciers off Alaska in their old age?  And then there’s medical care to consider too.  Our health care is already messed up as it is.  And this is only going to make it worse.

The next logical jump to make here is that should this all take place and humanity grows too big for its britches, we’re going to have to move off planet.  Or die.  That’s about it.  And does it look like we’re going off planet any time soon?  We still haven’t sent people to freaking Mars yet, what makes you think we’re going to find Pandora any time soon and fly around with blue-skinned natives?

To me a better approach is to live our short, seventy-year-long lives to the fullest.  Maximize the years we do have instead of maximizing our number of years.  Because if we continue down this path and keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to doom our entire race.

Modern day humanity is all about mass consumption, and it appears our lifespans are no exception.  I fear what we think is a right and just cause will only turn out to be very wrong decades or centuries in the future.  We have to start thinking about this now instead of when it’s too late.

Because I don’t want to eat Soylent Green.  And I sure as hell don’t want to be scooped up in a bulldozer.

–Cap’n Blackjack