第三十七篇

Who Wants to Live Forever?

If your doctor could give you a drug that would let you live a healthy life for twice as long, would you take it?

The good news is that we may be drawing near to that date. Scientists have already extended the lives of flies, worms and mice in laboratories. Many now think that using genetic treatments we will soon be able to extend human life to at least 140 years.

This seems a great idea. Think of how much more time we could spend chasing our dreams, spending time with our loved ones, watching our families grow and have families of their own.

"Longer life would give us a chance to recover from our mistakes and promote long term thinking," says Dr Gregory Stock of the University Of California School Of Public Health. "It would also raise productivity by adding to the year we can work."

Longer lives don't just affect the people who live them. They also affect society as a whole. "We have war, poverty, all sorts of issues around, and I don't think any of them would be at all helped by having people live longer," says US bioethicist Daniel Callahan. "The question is ‘What will we get as a society?' I suspect it won't be a better society."

It would certainly be a very different society. People are already finding it more difficult to stay married. Divorce rates are rising. What would to marriage in a society where people lived for 140 years? 'And what would happen to family life if nine or 10 generations of the same family were all alive at the same time?

Research into ageing may enable women to remain fertile for longer. And that raises the prospect of having 100-year-old parents, or brothers and sisters born 50 years apart1. We think of an elder sibling as someone, who can protect us and offer help and advice. That would be hard to do if that sibling came from a completely different generation.

Working life would also be affected, especially if the retirement age was lifted. More people would stay in work for longer. That would give us the benefits of age - skill, wisdom and good judgment.

On the other hand, more people working for longer would create greater competition for jobs. It would make it more difficult for younger people to find a job. Top posts would be dominated by the same few individuals, making career progress more difficult. And how easily would a 25-year-old employee be able to communicate with a 125-year-old boss?

Young people would be a smaller part of a society in which people lived to 140. It may be that such a society would place less importance on guiding and educating young people, and more on making life comfortable for the old.

And society would feel, very different if more of its members were older. There would be more wisdom, but less energy: Young people like to move about. Old people like to sit still. Young people tend to act without thinking. Old people tend to think without acting. Young people are curious and like to experience .different things. Old people are less enthusiastic about change. In fact, they are less enthusiastic about everything.

The effect of anti-ageing technology is deeper than we might think. But as the science advances, we need to think about these changes now.

"If this could ever happen, then we'd better ask what kind of society we want to get," says Daniel Callahan. "'We had better not go anywhere near it2 until we have figure those problems out."