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The Ethics of Late Ontogeny - Aging

The deaths of others are difficult for most people to live with. People are concerned that embryonic destruction might mean human murder, that doctors could be allowed to euthanize their patients instead of keeping them alive, that criminals are executed unfairly, wars fought unjustly, that suicides could be prevented. But regardless of the ethical positions held regarding these thanatological issues, death brought on by aging is accepted by most people as natural, and a good way of making room for following generations. The "common-sense" acceptance and professed goodness of aging is a moral position not often challenged, despite the widely accepted medical rationale that life should last as long and healthily as possible. This is because alternatives to aging and death threaten belief-systems and psychological succour. Nonetheless, the implications should be considered for the sake of every living person today and for those that might follow.

It is true that there can only be a limited number of human beings existing at one time in a way that is largely agreed upon to be good, and it is necessary for that general good to limit the numbers of people who are alive. As a result, people often undervalue longevity due to concerns of Overpopulation, just as they may over-value certain kinds of human existence, like that of a comatose person or an embryo. Does not such an inconsistency imply that human embryos or future generations have moral priority over those human beings already living? Should those humans already living be expected to always accept death, or life of lesser quality, so that unborn others can live? Or is it right and good for people today to use the rationale of medical science and try to postpone death through life-extension?

The right to a good life for those living in the present day is more important than the right to life of potential persons. You are more important than your germ cells and the state of your reproductive organs, you are more important than the viable cells of your body that can be reproductively cloned, you are more important than the embryo inside you, and you are more important than the children that you or other people might have in the future. If embryos were more than simply biologically necessary to the continuation of our species and more than simply potential human beings, if it was morally imperative that cells and cellular structures with reproductive potential must exist, then we would be obliged to organize a programme of mass-reproduction whereby we should harvest ova for mass fertilisation in laboratories, or clone cells from each person's body, or force pregnant women to gestate without regard to the circumstances of that woman's life and norms. Obviously though, it is not good to use all of our means to create as much human life as possible; eventually overpopulation and human rights abuses would impede everyone's lives to the point that living would be too limited and unhappy to allow a healthy amount of growth and progress. If such madness continued, mass death would probably ensue. Understanding the embryo in this way makes it clear that the embryo is nothing more nor less than a biological necessity and a potential human being.

In the case of abortion and other kinds of embryonic destruction, there is disagreement regarding the selfhood or human being of the embryo; but there can be no disagreement that a pregnant woman is a human being, or that a person needing therapeutic cloning treatment is a human being. At the very least, the reason for the moral priority of those who actually live over those who might live is the simple fact that without the present generation there would be no future generations. The present generation must safe-guard their own existence and make it good for their own sakes and then for the sakes of those who might follow. This is fundamental to intergenerational justice, the idea that we must take future generations into account when we make decisions that could affect them.

Although they do not yet exist, future generations will most probably exist and the most immediate generations are the most likely to exist. Future generations will remember us and use what we have now to build on and progress. Without this optimistic continuity, there is little reason to be concerned about the future - including one's own future. In this sense, future generations are a sort of "afterlife" for people currently alive; they may live in a future that we hope will be better than our present. It is for this reason that people are willing to work hard and even die for that vision of a better future - a future that they do not necessarily expect to be living in. The wish for a good future and the desire for children is strong in many people, so much so that it often needs to be limited to avoid the unnecessary suffering of people in the present. Such suffering is often caused by poorly planned reproduction, or through the espousal of the idea that aging and dying will or should always be inevitable, even good - because it is natural and efficient. But the aging and death of human beings (like the creation of human life) is not necessarily good, efficient, nor certain. This is because everything that is a part of the universe, including artifice, is essentially natural - only if we profess a belief in the supernatural can we claim that something is unnatural and therefore wrong. The naturalness of aging is no more or less natural than the human manipulation of nature that improves the quality and quantity of human life (i.e. through medical advances). A longer, youthful life would lead to more chances for increasing a person's experience, education, and skills. This means that, in these ways at least, death is inefficient and wasteful because it destroys an agent of knowledge, wisdom, and experience. Finally, it is increasingly possible that medical science could postpone death, perhaps indefinitely, through slowing, stopping, or reversing damage to the cells of the body, thus maintaining youth and health.

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