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A gerontologist's inner dialogue as advocate and opponent of life-extension technology.
When I began to prepare to write this article, I was clear and confident about my direction. Anti-aging technologies, I was sure, are a snare and a delusion-an appeal to vanity, to narcissism and denial of reality. Instead of techno-utopian delusions, I would argue for a more "ecological" vision of life where youth and age are both accepted as part of the natural life cycle. It is a line of thought I have held for many years, and what is more comfortable than familiar opinions?
But the more I thought about my skepticism and hostility to life-extension technology, the more uneasy I became. Gradually, as I reflected on my uneasiness, I found it more and more difficult to rationalize my strong rejection of life extension. This uneasiness came to a head when I was attending a high school reunion, after nearly forty years, and a classmate casually remarked that we didn't look much like our parents looked at the same age: That is, we didn't look as old. Glancing around the room, I realized it was true. I also realized that I was not unhappy about that fact: I would prefer youth, or at least indefinite middle age, instead of celebrating the condition of age to which I had devoted the bulk of my professional life in gerontology.
So there it is. The anti-- aging response was in me, undeniably. But I was uncomfortable with that response, actually of two minds about it. Emotionally, I liked the idea of looking young, being young. Intellectually, as a gerontologist, I knew all the reasons why I was opposed to anti-aging medicine. Out of my own ambivalence, then, came an inner dialogue between advocates and opponents of life-extension technology. What follows is a summary of that ongoing dialogue, followed by observations about why I believe anti-aging medicine and life-extension technology increasingly constitute an ideological crisis for mainstream gerontology today, a crisis likely to intensify throughout the twenty-- first century as new techniques for longevity increasingly become available.
In order to be clear about what is at stake in the dialogue that follows, let me first distinguish between two forms of life extension:
1. "Weak" life extension...