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Longevity, Economics and Other Motivations
(Thursday April 12 2007)
 | Thoughts from Anne C.: "It might be necessary, at times, to invoke primarily economic arguments when dealing with people whose own main argument in opposition to healthy life extension is that "older" old people will decrease the amount of resources available for activities not related to health crisis management. Here, the economic argument is appropriate in the sense that it corrects what is more than likely factually untrue from an economic standpoint -- it is obvious that if a person doesn't get heart disease, nobody is going to need to spend any money to treat heart disease in that person, which means that money is free to be used elsewhere. But the reason we want to prevent heart disease -- at least, the primary reason -- isn't an economic one, but one that I hope stems from compassion. Heart disease left untreated will most likely kill you. Aging left unaddressed will definitely kill you, whether indirectly or directly. So of course I'm in favor of things like longevity research -- because it has tremendous potential to save many, many innocent lives. Sure, it might end up having a particular economic effect that will make some people happy, but even if there was no chance of that, I would still support such research." |
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