Anti-Aging and Overpopulation

>I have been engaged in a dialogue with a scientist who is doing anti-aging research. He worries that anti-aging technologies, including the possibility of physical immortality, may lead to overpopulation and ecological destruction. (A concern often invoked by my former students.) In other words while it may be best for individuals to live forever, it might be collectively disastrous, since communities need a “stable, predictable death rate to avoid overpopulation and subsequent population crashes.” Readers may recognize this situation as an instance of the “tragedy of the commons.” Acting in their apparent self-interest, individuals destroy a common good. For instance, it may be convenient for individuals to pollute the air, earth, and water, but in long run this is catastrophic for all.

His research suggests “that aging is controlled by biochemical signals. If we wish to be younger, we don’t have to repair everything that goes wrong with the body, one by one, with a bio-engineering approach.  All we have to do is to tamper with the body’s signaling chemistry … But the message also contains a warning: the increase in human life span from ~40 years 200 years ago to ~80 in advanced countries today has been accompanied by a devastating global overpopulation … The rate of extinctions is far higher than during the great extinction events of the past, 65 and 250 million years ago. Never before has a single species adapted to every climate and habitat.  Never before has a single species systematically mined the biosphere as if it were a disposable trifle.”

While I am unqualified to assess the worthiness of these scientific conclusions, I can comment on whether concerns about overpopulation and its attendant problems should give a researcher in this area pause. I do not believe they do.  Here are some brief replies to the “don’t overcome death or there will be overpopulation and environmental destruction” argument.

Consider that if we have conquered death we may live as transhumanists, perhaps after a technological singularity. Beings in these worlds–perhaps immoral cyber beings–may not even want to propagate, since achieving a kind of immortality is a major motivation for having children. Such beings may be relatively independent of the physical environment too–they may not even have bodies at some point. Thus these concerns may turn out to be irrelevant. I am not saying that they will be irrelevant, I’m saying that the tragedy of 100,000 people dying each and every day from age-related causes is a huge price to pay for speculative hypotheses about the future.

Of course I don’t know how the future will unfold, but preserving the educated consciousness that now exists may be a better survival strategy than allowing it to die and educating newer ones. After all, in the future we will probably need all available mind power. Given this unknown future I’d argue that we should try to eliminate death, the problem in front of us, and cross the next bridge–if we even have to cross it–when we come to it. (Remember predictions are for global population to start declining around 2050.) My suggestions may be considered reckless but remember there is no risk-free way to proceed. If we cease developing technology we will not be able to prevent the inevitable asteroid strike that will decimate our planet; if we continue to die young we may not develop the intelligence necessary to design further technology. Given all these considerations, I wouldn’t let hypotheticals about the future deter my research into defeating death.

Note too that this objection to life-extending research could have been leveled at work on a germ theory of disease–don’t cure diseases because it will lead to overpopulation! I think most of us are glad we have a germ theory of disease, and that life expectancy has almost more than doubled as one of the results. Or consider a pediatrician. Should she refuse to cure a child because that child might have too many children in the future? No. Our responsibility is to help people live long, healthy lives. Note also that you can critique any technology in this way. What will happen when we have airplanes, computers, antibiotics, and heart transplants? Such concerns are valid, but they don’t imply rejecting technology–most of us are glad to have technology. 

Most importantly I believe it is immoral for us to turn our back on anti-aging research and the technologies it may produce, thereby forcing future generations to die against their will. We are certainly glad that our ancestors didn’t decide a twenty-five year life span was good enough for us. After anti-aging technologies are developed the living should be free to choose to live longer, live forever, have no children, or whatever else they decide. As I argued previously, death is like a bomb strapped to our chest waiting to go off. We should not let hypothetical concerns about imagined worlds and potential beings deter our removing these explosives from actual existing persons.

(For a more detailed discussion about these issues and a plethora of arguments for life-extending therapies see “Superlongevity Without Overpopulation.”)

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