Anti-life....? bioethics... irrationalism?

[zidane1strife]

And then you could have China Redux. 1 Kid only? Ok let's make sure we kill the baby if it's a girl so we can have a boy.

Well, I believe reproductive control can be achieved in far more humane ways, sterilizing the whole population through gm in the far off future, and relying on technology, controlled technology, for reproduction wouldn't be too bad.

Also, the rights of children, gm + memory enhanced, should be exponentially increased. NO longer will children be priviledged possessions(as some still consider...), but persons, a adults(remember gm + exp/mem.) in their own right, with full legal, financial, moral protection from the gov.

Of course, I don't know if Koss/Kass/whatever the hell his name is took that into consideration. If he didn't, then his theory is pretty much full of holes as you stated.

kass, IMO seems opposed to life extension, not because of the problems that might arise, but because of his beliefs. Immortality seems to deviate us from our supposed purposed, and is a selfish wish in his eyes. He seems to think that to seek it is wrong, and that it simply shouldn't be done.

Examples:

If this is correct, there follows a decisive corollary regarding the battle against death. The human taste for immortality, for the imperishable and the eternal, is not a taste that the biomedical conquest of death could satisfy. We would still be incomplete; we would still lack wisdom; we would still lack God’s presence and redemption. Mere continuance will not buy fulfillment. Worse, its pursuit threatens—already threatens—human happiness by distracting us from the goals toward which our souls naturally point.

Biological considerations aside, simply to covet a prolonged life span for ourselves is both a sign and a cause of our failure to open ourselves to procreation and to any higher purpose.

For the desire to prolong youthfulness is not only a childish desire to eat one’s life and keep it; it is also an expression of a childish and narcissistic wish incompatible with devotion to posterity.

...

How, then, might our finitude be good for us? I offer four benefits, first among which is interest and engagement.If the human life span were increased even by only twenty years, would the pleasures of life increase proportionately?

Second, seriousness and aspiration. Could life be serious or meaningful without the limit of mortality?Is not the limit on our time the ground of our taking life seriously and living it passionately? To know and to feel that one goes around only once, and that the deadline is not out of sight, is for many people the necessary spur to the pursuit of something worthwhile.

A third matter, ­ beauty and love. Death, says Wallace Stevens, is the mother of beauty. What he means is not easy to say. Perhaps he means that only a mortal being, aware of his mortality and the transience and vulnerability of all natural things, is moved to make beautiful artifacts, objects that will last, objects whose order will be immune to decay as their maker is not, beautiful objects that will bespeak and beautify a world that needs beautification, beautiful objects for other mortal beings who can appreciate what they cannot themselves make because of a taste for the beautiful, a taste perhaps connected to awareness of the ugliness of decay.

Fourth, there is the peculiarly human beauty of character, virtue and moral excellence. To be mortal means that it is possible to give one’s life, not only in one moment, say, on the field of battle, but also in the many other ways in which we are able in action to rise above attachment to survival... We free ourselves from fear, from bodily pleasures, or from attachments to wealth—all largely connected with survival—and in doing virtuous deeds overcome the weight of our neediness; yet for this nobility, vulnerability and mortality are the necessary conditions. The immortals cannot be noble.

What the? This is, IMHO, complete and utter BS.

Honestly, this man should not be in any meaningful bioethics committee. Who knows how far he may go... maybe he'll try to recommend not just getting rid of e-stem cell research, but all stem cell research. Any research that might help cure many a disease might be threatened by this man, if he feels it might have the potential to be used as an anti-aging measure.

ed

 

[DemoCoder]

Kass is also against medical science we have already achieved. For example, he has campaigned against using cadavers to train doctors, study anatomy, and diseases!!! We've been doing this since the 16th century!