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EMPIRICAL ETHICS AND THE DUTY TO EXTEND THE “BIOLOGICAL WARRANTY PERIOD”*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2014

Colin Farrelly
Colin Farrelly*
Affiliation:
Political Studies, Queen's University
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Abstract

The world's aging populations face novel health challenges never experienced before in human history. The moral landscape thus needs to adapt to reflect this novel empirical reality. In this paper I take for granted one basic moral principle advanced by Peter Singer — a principle of preventing bad occurrences — and explore the implications that empirical considerations from demography, evolutionary biology, and biogerontology have for the way we conceive of fulfilling this principle at the operational level. After bringing to the fore a number of considerations that Singer ignores, such as the probability that nonintervention will result in harm and the likelihood that different kinds of extrinsic and intrinsic harms can be prevented, I argue that the aspiration to extend the human biological warranty period (by retarding the rate of aging) is a pressing moral imperative for the twenty-first century. In the final sections I briefly address some standard objections raised against life extension and conclude that, while there may be some legitimate concerns worth addressing, they are not compelling enough to provide a rational basis for forfeiting the potential health and economic benefits that could be realized by extending the biological warranty period.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 30 , Issue 1-2 , January 2013 , pp. 480 - 503
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2013 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank the other contributors and the editors of this volume, as well as an anonymous referee, for their helpful feedback on an earlier version of the essay. I am also grateful to Bruce Carnes for taking the time to help explain to me many of the biogerontological concepts I employ in the paper.

References

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6 The proposal to pursue age retardation as a new model of health promotion is developed by the first director of the National Institute for Aging, Robert Butler, and colleagues in Butler, Robertet al., “New Model of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention for the 21st Century,” British Medical Journal 337 (2008): 149–50CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. I believe that there are many other routes, besides invoking the modified version of DA developed in this paper, to support the goal of age retardation. See, for example, Farrelly, Colin “Equality and the Duty to Retard Aging,” Bioethics 24, no. 8 (2010): 384–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 The claim that the moral duty advanced in this paper is stringent enough to entail public support, via taxation, of biogerontology requires a more detailed justification than I have space to detail here. I believe a persuasive argument can be made for this point, one that requires science to be construed as part of what John Rawls calls the “basic structure of society.” I cannot develop that argument in this paper. Instead, I will simply note that those who believe that justice can mandate public support, via taxation, for basic research on specific diseases of aging, like cancer, heart disease, and stroke, also ought to accept age retardation as a legitimate aspiration of justice worthy of (state enforced) public support.

8 Olshansky, S. Jay, Carnes, Bruce A. and Grahn, Douglas, “Confronting the Boundaries of Human Longevity,” American Scientist 86, no. 1 (1998): 52–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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10 Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” 231.

11 The duty is applicable, at least, to those harms that are not self-inflicted—that is, to harms that are not the result of the free and voluntary decisions of those who now require aid. There is much debate concerning the role personal responsibility plays in determining the demands of the duty to aid. I do not take a definite stance on this issue here, though I am inclined to take the view that the duty to aid still applies in those cases where those in need of aid are responsible for their own plight. Regardless of the view one takes on how sensitive or insensitive the duty to aid ought to be to harms that are self-inflicted, the intrinsic limitations of our biology, which are the result of the evolutionary and life history of our species, are not things any person can be considered responsible for. So the duty to retard aging can be supported by an account of the duty to aid that is responsibility-sensitive (i.e., the duty to aid weakens when those in need are responsible for their own misfortune) or responsibility-insensitive. Condition (6) could be refined further to be compatible with a responsibility-sensitive or responsibility-insensitive stance. As (6) is currently stated, I have opted for a responsibility-neutral position.

12 Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” 232.

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28 Carnes, Olshansky, and Grahn in “Biological Evidence for Limits to the Duration of Life,” Biogerontology.

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32 This is a summary of the account of the disposal soma theory provided by Carnes, Bruce. See Carnes, “Senescence Viewed through the Lens of Comparative Biology,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1114, (2007): 14–22CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

33 “Since in poorer countries most health-care costs must be paid by patients out-of-pocket, the cost of health care for NCDs [non-communicable diseases] creates significant strain on household budgets, particularly for lower-income families” World Health Organization, Global Status Report on Noncommunicable Disease 2010 (Geneva: WHO Press), 3Google Scholar.

34 Boston University's New England Centenarian Study at: http://www.bumc.bu.edu/centenarian/overview.

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40 See, for example, Paola Sebastiani et al., “Genetic Signatures of Exceptional Longevity in Humans,” PLoS ONE 7(1): e29848. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029848.

41 Singer, Peterhimself raises this objection and argues that we should not favor the development of an anti-aging drug. See “Research into Aging: Should it be Guided by the Interests of Present Individuals, Future Individuals, or the Species?” in Life Span Extension: Consequences and Open Questions, ed. Ludwig, Frédéric C. (New York: Springer, 1991), 132–45Google Scholar.

42 Buchanan, Allen (See Beyond Humanity [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011], 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar) makes a useful distinction between a concern about an enhancement and an objection to the enhancement. The former is merely a “con,” a reason against it. But an objection to an enhancement is a much stronger claim. An objection is an “all-things-considered” judgment that an enhancement is undesirable because the cons outweigh any pros. As Buchanan notes, “all objections are concerns, but not all concerns are objections” (71). While I do not dispute the point that age retardation would raise concerns pertaining to population growth, I do not think these are likely to provide a decisive objection to the case in favor of preventing chronic disease.

43 Flory, James and Kitcher, Philip, “Global Health and the Scientific Research Agenda,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 4, no. 32 (2004): 36–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.