Back of the Envelope

John Zimmer at Letters from Babylon has some thoughts on using technology to extend life expentancy:

Unlike de Grey, Kurzweil imagines that human aging will be defeated before today's newborns have graduated from college. Another striking difference is that Kurzweil's immortal man sounds more like a cyborg than a marvel of biology, equipped as he is with intelligent `nanobots' flowing through his blood, making repairs and even enhancing normal cognitive performance to levels well beyond that attainable by any member of the species so far.
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And finally Princeton biologist Lee Silver says: "[To achieve Kurzweil's ideal of a united humanity] I think it would require a change in human nature, and I don't think people want to do that."

My take? We fear death and we treat one another badly. No amount of cultural or technological development will ever change that. Nor is it our choice to alter or not to alter human nature. These views are not cynical, but rather are supported by the entire historical record as well as virtually everyone's personal experience and observation. There is hope, but it is not found in us.

I happen to think nanotechnology is cool, but I also think that the technology to do what Kurzweil wants is farther away than he does.

As I said in John's comments, I don't just want to live forever--I fully intend to. I don't intend to do it in this world or in this body, though--I'm not a masochist. This life extended indefinitely is not my idea of paradise.

I installed a TiVo system last night. I've spent some time playing with it. The first thing I noticed is that it takes forever to get up and running. For the most part it doesn't require my input, but last I checked (around 7:30 pm), it said that it wouldn't be able to record anything for 4 to 8 hours. I'm assuming that it needs this time to download the television information.

I'll be playing with it over the next couple of days and I'll let you know what I think.

That's the title of the AP article. The details are simple enough to follow:

LONDON - The scientist who attracted the world's attention by cloning Dolly the Sheep is about to take another major step for medical research: cloning human embryos and extracting stem cells to unravel the mysteries of muscle-wasting illnesses like Lou Gehrig's disease (news - web sites).

Ian Wilmut, who led the team that created Dolly at Scotland's Roslin Institute in 1996, was granted a cloning license Tuesday by British regulators to study how nerve cells go awry to cause motor neuron diseases.

The experiments do not involve creating cloned babies, but the license has nonetheless stirred fresh controversy over the issue and prompted abortion foes and other biological conservatives to condemn the decision.

"Are we supposed to be appeased by Professor Wilmut's declarations that the human embryos will be destroyed after experimentation and that his team has no intention of producing cloned babies?" asked Julia Millington of the London-based ProLife Alliance.

"All human cloning is intrinsically wrong and should be outlawed. However, the creation of cloned human embryos destined for experimentation and subsequent destruction is particularly abhorrent."

Wilmut, speaking after the announcement in Edinburgh, Scotland, defended the move.

"We all take for granted the very much healthier life that we have now compared with people 100 years ago," he said. "I think that the majority of people support this type of research and hope it will be successful in helping to bring useful treatment for diseases like motor neuron disease."

The license is the second one approved since Britain became the first country to legalize research cloning in 2001. The first was granted in August to a team that hopes to use cloning to create insulin-producing cells for transplant into diabetics.

I consider cloning-for-destruction to be abhorrent. I fail to see why people consider creating a human clone that lives worse than creating one that's destroyed. My protestations against creating a living human clone are actually technical: clones tend to have poor health and to die young. I haven't thought about it in enough detail to make an argument, but I don't see any inherent wrong in making a genetic duplicate of a person, although it's hard for me to think of a noble motivation to do so. However, I strongly believe that a cloned individual is a living person with the same inherent and legal rights as anyone else, and this applies just as much in the earliest stages of development as to a living, breathing infant.

Doc has a great post today:

Alyssa Ford suggests that "bioconservatives" --conservatives who are anti-cloning, and anti-hi-tech abortion-- are going to align with leftists luddites (link from Instapundit).

This is just silly, but it reflects a common conceit of humanist technophiles. Glenn Reynolds himself has referred to people that oppose stem cell research as luddites, but the charge is baseless. Luddites are opposed to technological change due to fear of change. By contrast, when religious conservatives oppose new technology, it is simply a natural extension of pre-existing stands.

What do you expect them to do when technology infringes on their sense of right in a novel way? Suspend their moral judgment because this is a new thing? Does it take a luddite to oppose a new technology for murder or torture?

Religious conservatives defend innocent life. They oppose cloning, stem cell research, and similar things because they view these technologies as just more advanced ways of killing or mutilating helpless human beings. When they have fought for thirty years for the proposition that a fetus has a right to life --even while it is only a few cells-- then do you expect them to suspend this view when that fetus is used for medical experiments rather than just discarded? Where would the moral logic be in that?

Conservative religious objections to new biotechnology have a strong foundation in ancient and stable principles of respect for human life and the processes that produce human life. Fear of technology has no part in the explanation. And in fact the technology is not really a part of the issue so the term "bioconservative" is not appropriate. They don't oppose biotechnology in general, just that technology that harms what they see as innocent human life. I've never met a religious conservative who was particularly concerned about genetically-modified foods.

It's a brilliant and long post. Read the whole thing.