Is more life always better? The new biology of aging and the meaning of life

Hastings Center Report

Volumn 33, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 31-39

  Gems, David ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 8544253356     PISSN: 00930334     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3528378     Document Type: Review

References (39)

1. A. Bartke et al., "Extending the Lifespan of Long-lived Mice," Nature 414 (2001): 412.
2. L. Partridge and D. Gems, "Mechanisms of Ageing: Public or private?" Nature Reviews Genetics 3 (2002): 165-75.
3. D.E. Martínez, "Mortality Patterns Suggest Lack of Senescence in Hydra," Experimental Gerontology 33 (1998): 217-25.
4. L.W. Buss, The Evolution of Individuality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
5. There are a number of good, popular accounts of the biology of aging, for example Why We Age, by S.N. Austad (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997),
6. The Time of Our Lives, by T. Kirkwood (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1999),
7. and Aging: A Natural History, by R.E. Ricklefs and C.E. Finch (New York: Scientific American Library, 1995).
8. ZA Medvedev, "An Attempt at a Rational Classification of Theories of Ageing," Biological Reviews 65 (1990): 375-98.
9. For an entertaining account of early theories of aging, see Roger Gosden's Cheating Time, Science, Sex and Aging (New York: WH. Freeman and Company, 1996.)
10. G.C. Williams, "Pleiotropy, Natural Selection and the Revolution of Senescence," Evolution 11 (1957): 398-411.
11. D.B. Friedman and T.E. Johnson, "A Mutation in the Age-1 Aene in Caenorhab- ditis elegans Lengthens Life and Reduces Hermaphrodite Fertility," Genetics 118 (1988): 75-86.
12. Y.-J. Lin, L. Seroude, and S. Benzer, "Extended Life-Span and Stress Resistance in the Drosophila Mutant methuselah," Science 282 (1998): 943-46.
13. H.M. Brown-Borg et al., "Dwarf Mice and the Ageing Process," Nature 384 (1996): 33.
14. R.A. DePinho, "The Age of Cancer," Nature 408 (2000): 248-54.
15. R. Holliday, "The Urgency of Research on Ageing," BioEssays 18 (1996): 89- 90.
16. "Why Italians Don't Make Babies," The Economist 9 May 1998, 56.
17. J.G. Evans, "A Correct Compassion: The Medical Response to an Ageing Society," in Increasing Longevity: Medical, Social and Political Implications, ed. R. Tallis (London: Royal College of Physicians of London, 1998), 113-38.
18. P.D. Kramer, Listening to Prozac (London: Penguin Books, 1993).
19. E. Parens, "Is Better Always Good? The Enhancement Project," in Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. E. Parens (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1998), 1-28.
20. L. Hayflick, "The Future of Ageing," Nature 408 (2001): 267-69.
21. K. Capek, "The Makropoulos Secret" (1922), in Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Capek Reader (Highland Park, N.J.: Catbird Press, 1990), 110-77.
22. For further discussion of this play, see Bernard Williams' essay "The Makropoulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality," in Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 82-100.
23. For a review of the many other fictional accounts of immortality, see G. Slusser, G. Westfahl, and E.S. Rabkin, eds., Immortal Engines: Life Extension and Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy (Athens Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1996).
24. M. Schlick, "On the Meaning of Life," in Life and Meaning, ed. O. Hanfling (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 60-73.
25. N. Saunders, Ecstasy Reconsidered (N. Saunders, 1997).
26. L. Kass, "L'Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?" First Things 113 (2001): 17-24.
27. G.P. Baker, Tiberius Caesar (New York: Cooper Square Press, 1929).
28. R.M. Sapolsky, "Open Season: Why Do We Lose Our Taste for the New?" The New Yorker 30 March 1998, 57-72.
29. This subject is reviewed in I. Stuart- Hamilton, The Psychology of Ageing (London: Kingsley, 1994), Chapter 5, "Ageing, Personality and Lifestyle," 110-31.
30. G.E. Robinson, "Regulation of Division of Labor in Insect Societies," Annual Review of Entomology 37 (1992): 637-65.
31. This similarity has been discussed by Matt Ridley in The Origins of Virtue (London: Penguin Books, 1996), Chapter 1.
32. The psychologist H.J. Eysenck has suggested that age changes in behavior reflect altered levels of excitation within the central nervous system. See "Personality and Ageing: An Exploratory Analysis," Journal of Social Behaviour and Personality 3 (1987): 11-21.
33. The question of whether death is an evil is discussed thoroughly in Williams, Problems of the Self, and Thomas Nagel's essay "Death," in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 1-10.
34. S. Grof and J. Halifax, The Human Encounter with Death (London: Souvenir Press, 1977).
35. C. Elliott, A Philosophical Disease (New York: Roudedge, 1999), Chapter 7. The role of narrative in making sense of our lives is discussed extensively in A. Macln- tyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981);
36. and M. Schechtman, The Constitution of Selves (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).
37. A number of other important issues relating to the ethics of life extension have been discussed elsewhere. See Kass, "L'Chaim and Its Limits," Hayflick, "The Future of Ageing," J. Harris, "Intimations of Immortality," Science 288 (2000): 59;
38. M. Gladwell, "The New Age of Man," The New Yorker, 30 September 1996, 56-67;
39. T.F. Murphy, "A Cure for Aging?" Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 11 (1986): 237-55; R.M. Veatch, ed., Life Span: Values and Life- extending Technologies (New York: Harper and Row, 1979).