Well, the first time I came on this board was to ask for some help concerning a work I was to hand in for one of my university classes...
It turned out not so bad after all so I decided I'd let you all take a look at the finished paper, even though it contains no new material. It is mostly a reorganization of some ideas so do not believe you will find anything revolutionary in this.
I couldn't really deal with Immortalism openly as it's still a sensible matter and I had to follow some guidelines so I apologize if some sentences seem not very to the point and a bit too lenghty.
Last but not least, english is not my mother tongue so if you get stuck on some of my sentences, it is absolutely normal
Ok here goes "Rumble in the North (north = you, you crazy american people): Man's Future at Stake)
Rumble in the North: Man’s Future at Stake
by: Tarik Ladlani
Introduction
Most issues that our civilization faces either come from science making a step further, raising on that account new questioning, or from social changes induced by political forces (interest groups activity and institutional changes, to name a few).
Life extension technologies that we propose to examine in this paper belong to the first category.
It is useful to note here though, before we start, that, as with every moral issue, we will have to delve into subjective approaches as, per definition, morals do not report to objectivity.
In June 2000, the human genome was finally sequenced after twelve years of work on a planetary scale. With this extraordinary tool and with the aid of ever growing supercomputers capacity, scientists can now begin to unravel the secrets behind aging; what is its exact process.
So how is aging triggered? In short, the responsible behind our degenerative evolution is the damage dealt to our body over time. There are several converging causes that ultimately lead to our decay – from free radicals to the shortening of our telomeres – but getting into this would be too technical and not relevant to our issue. What bears interest is that scientists are starting to get a clear view on the why of senescence (the state of aging).
The purpose of life extension science is to fight the underlying cause of almost all serious diseases: aging. It is commonly known that the incidence of cancer and cardiovascular diseases increases with the passing years as the immune system declines and as the body wears out.
However, life extension is not only about, as the cliché goes, just adding years to your life, but also more life to your years.
The discipline incorporates four basic subdivisions : health maintenance (sports and avoidance of risky behaviors), disease prevention (getting tested regularly to check for disorders), a curative medicine and, finally, the control of aging. The latter is of utmost importance because no significant gains can be made in the previous categories without its development, and it is, therefore, the topic that we will discuss here.
It would seem at first that prolonging our existence would be a shared goal to Man and that it would unanimously be accepted as it would benefit us all one way or another. More, it looks like the natural progression of medical science, like its rightful heir as it aims to cure people. But things are not that easy.
Pros and Cons
As in every technological issue, the proponents are counterbalanced by direct opponents who express opinions and views in total contrast with theirs.
Who are these people, what is their position and how do they defend it?
In Favor
Pro-longevity people affirm that according to human basic instincts, staying alive is engrained deep inside our core. Trying to push the envelope, to allow death to take its toll on us as late as possible seems then like a genuine preoccupation.
As with wine, people only get better as they age, so if we could preserve an alert and dynamic mind all our life long, humanity could greatly benefit from all that built-up wisdom and experience.
But, why live longer?
Here is a little rundown on some notable individuals to support both sides of the issue at hand, with, for each of them, a summary of their take on the subject.
On the pro-side, we have Ray Kurzweil, inventor and futurist, honored by three American presidents and who received the highest distinction in technology development (the National Medal of Technology from the hands of Bill Clinton).
Kurzweil believes in the feasibility of extending our lives to numbers of years yet unheard of. He expects that, now that we have the genome sequenced, we can re-sequence all the genes in anybody for a fraction of the initial billion dollar price and that, within a decade, “would get us down to $1000” which would open the door to “fully personalized medicine” able to “focus more on preventing disease, rather than just treating it”. Coupled to emerging technologies that bear potential to treat degenerative processes that account for the majority of deaths, this breakthrough should allow us to live past the hundred years.
Aubrey de Grey, biogerontologist working to solve the mystery of senescence, seems to agree : “In the past few years, it has become possible to enumerate a comprehensive panel of technically feasible interventions that, if applied jointly, seem likely to constitute real anti-aging medicine”, he says. These techniques should be performed on mice within a decade and then translated to Man some dozen years later.
To this end, he co-founded the Methuselah Mouse Prize that promotes research by giving a financial motivation to research in that area. In order to win the contest, teams must break the record of producing the oldest mouse (the record for now is at almost 5 years, the equivalent of 150 years for Man).
De Grey states that aging is now sufficiently well understood at a molecular level and that it’s just a matter of time before interventions to retard it come up.
To get a feel of why these people seek to fight aging, let us turn to Nick Bostrom, founder of the WTA (World Transhumanist Association).
The WTA is an organization that works to encourage “the discussion of the possibilities for radical improvement of human capacities using genetics, cybernetics and nanotechnology” .
Should we categorize pro life extension individuals, we could label them all as transhumanists. It is often useful, even if it introduces some bias in the research, to arrange single units into groups to get a clearer view of the situation.
A Transhumanist desires for humanity to improve as he knows that its condition is perfectible. Human nature can therefore be transformed by “developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical and psychological capacities” . Its motto: Freedom through Technology.
For Nick Bostrom, ideally, each of us should have the final word on our existence by “choosing when and how to die”.
Transhumanists love life and all it carries of amazing feelings and wonders to experience.
In the works of geniuses like Beethoven, Newton or Goethe, we feel the underlying maturity that they attained by their long, rich and eventful lives. Then, just imagine such individuals enriching our world not only for decades, but for centuries. Arts and science would receive invaluable additions to their patrimony from such minds working at their full potential for dozens and dozens of years without having to degenerate once they would reach that particular creative state.
If we all lived to be 150, while still remaining fresh and fast “up there”, wouldn’t we all eventually get a taste of genius or, at least, benefit from some relative wisdom, currently lost to senility?
Asking why life extension, is a bit like asking why live at all suggests Ben Best in an article . To answer such questions, one needs to get subjective and imply his beliefs as no objective answer would suffice. It ultimately relates to the meaning that we affix on life itself. We get to form our own value of life. And as many people there are on earth, as many different values we will get.
Centuries might seem like an awful lot of time. What would we do with so much time ahead of us?
For the bookworms amongst us, they could at least have the time to explore a portion of all the greatest novels ever rather than only getting the chance to skim over one or two authors; you could also go back to school to learn new disciplines and earn new diplomas. What about learning new languages and traveling to meet new cultures? Or learning to play all the music instruments that exist? The options are endless…
It seems that the will to live longer is a direct byproduct of enthusiasm towards life. As Susan Ertz put it: “Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon”.
Ben Best explains that when people ask him why he wants to live forever, he answers back “and why do YOU want to die?” He wonders whether their lives are that uninteresting and tasteless that they’re almost happy to put an end to it. It is true that, as he mentions it, “many people complete the goals of social programming, i.e. education, marriage, family, career, retirement” and then feel there’s nothing left to do but slowly fade away.
This order of steps sound like the way one’s life has to occur, but it doesn’t have to BE like this. As Nietzsche claimed, we have to build our own values.
Yes, the majority of people are apathetic and they drift with the currents, afraid to take a stand, which often makes things worse. They live with the certain truth that the hundred thousand or so deaths per day is in the Nature of things, unaware that aging is a medical condition and that it can therefore be fought against.
This potential existence of bliss, continual learning and happiness for everyone, sound a little too good to be true. Some might even call it a utopia or a fake utopia at that. Not everyone shares the aforementioned opinions.
Welcome to the anti-longevity proponents.
Against
One of the most respected “deathist” is none other than the chairman of the US President’s Council of Bioethics: Leon Kass. This Council advises the President on biomedical science and technology issues, and highly influences US legislation and policy. It follows that this organization holds a lot of power as they enjoy the confidence of the world’s most powerful man.
Amongst the topics of concern to the Council, we note cloning, stem cells research, genetic enhancement… and life extension .
In a paper written by the staff, the focus is put on the moral challenges that age-retardation brings to light.
The Council acknowledges that age-prolongation seems like “a goal we are all at first strongly inclined to welcome” but that it is without thinking further the initial problem.
Let us envision what we could be facing should that goal be met. But first of all, how is transhumanists’ way of seeing aging perceived by their opponents? Is it really a disease and, as such, needs to be treated? This would mean that our predecessors just blindly endured this omen and that life as we know it is sick and perverted. They wonder: “Is human life, as our ancestors understood it and as our faiths and philosophies describe it, really just a problem to be solved?”
They bring forth the argument that we should not look to perfect ourselves as “it is that very imperfection that give rise to our deepest longings and our greatest accomplishments”. Then, with age-retardation technologies in the making, we should ask ourselves whether the purpose of medicine is “to let us live endless painless lives of perfect bliss, or is it rather to let us live out the humanly full span of life within the edifying limits and constraints of humanity’s grasp?”
The kind of reasoning the Council adopts relates more to religion and faith than science stricto sensu. One could therefore question the relevance of their view but, after all, isn’t the role of a bioethics comity to restrict research, based on moral grounds…?
The legitimacy of investing a lot of money in that sort of venture is questionable. It requires a pretty high sum of money to develop high longevity and one could argue whether that is moral to pursue it while the Third World struggles in death and poverty.
What other issues might follow from an extension of our life expectancy?
One of the first objections that come to mind concerns the risk of overpopulation. If everybody lived till 150, those old people wouldn’t free up room fast enough for the new comers and this could also lead to a possible shortage on natural resources.
It is true, overpopulation might become a problem in the coming decades but isn’t it unethical to oppose extended life on this sole concern?
Population control will maybe become a necessity but to limit one’s lifespan seems absurd; it would be like giving up on a cure for cancer as, anyway, why bother, because it’s mostly old people who suffer from it and they would better be off dead.
There’s only one sound way to control the growth of population and that is through birth control. At the end of the day, growth rate is determined by the children that are conceived, not by how long we live. If you add this to the fact that life extension, in its first developments, should benefit primarily westerners who already do not have a lot of children (compared to developing countries), the fear of overpopulation by allowing Man to live longer seems less well-founded.
According to the United Nations, the lack of natural resources that might occur, does not necessarily relate to overpopulation.
The issue of food is an economic and political problem. “While the worldwide birth rate is on the decline, hunger continues to increase” , says the UN. Overpopulation leading to hunger is nothing but a myth.
The increase in the production of food would solve nothing, as the people who suffer from hunger just don’t have enough money to buy something to feed their family.
Kofi Annan, at the World Food Summit in 2002, declared that the world production of grain alone was “more than enough to meet the minimum nutritional needs of every child, woman and man”. Several countries, like Zimbabwe, possess enough food to satisfy their people but they hold it to starve them as a way to keep them under control and as a way to gain political leverage on their opponents
Another threat that life extension might induce concerns the Social Security system, as longer life spans would mean larger costs for them.
Throughout history, our lifespan increased steadily and Social Security adapted with the changes though. Why wouldn’t it do it once more?
Then there is the issue of all those old centenarians. What would we do with them all? If being an old man in the future resembles being an old man of this day, meaning being cast aside and not being a part of active life anymore, then it might be problematic. However, old people are the source of knowledge and experience. They shouldn’t be treated as a burden or as irresponsible. Life extension, as explained earlier, is not looking to add years for people to spend them in nursing homes, like human furniture, but rather to keep them alert and mentally fresh. In such case, they would stay busy and engage more in fulfilling endeavors, which would result in a substantial economy for the government.
Knowing that retired inactive men and women cost a lot to the community, to help them stay autonomous and healthier would save Social Security a few good millions that could be invested in further scientific research. This would create a spiral of ever improving health feeding on itself.
Another genuine inquiry, expressed briefly before, relates more to the individual and his approach towards life as to know whether life wouldn’t just get plain dull if we had the opportunity to live longer.
Is there a finite amount of things to learn and to experiment? Is it possible to imagine a time when you would have accomplished everything on your to-do list?
To answer this question is to answer if longevity would suit you well. Let us get back to Leon Kass and his take on mortality.
In a paper entitled “L’Chaim And Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?” , he claims that it is our very mortality that defines us, that defines humanity. Looking to extend our finitude, trying to reshape our mortal condition, is going against our true nature.
“Technique to conquer aging poses challenges to the very meaning of our humanity”, he says. The main worries of Kass are of social and – let us not forget his role in ethics propagation – moral bases. According to him, life extension would further amplify the injustice between the wealthy and the have-nots as only the first could afford the heavy price such new technologies would demand. Should we then embrace our death and accept it as a natural component of our existence? Because, when you think about it in terms of opposites, would there be life if there was no death? Is it death that provides life with meaning? In any case, Leon Kass believes so.
He advances several key elements which prove the necessity and desirability of death.
Four main categories regroup the benefits of nowadays existence.
The first group that is distinguished is interest and engagement. He wonders, “If the human lifespan were increased even by only 20 years, would the pleasures of life increase proportionally?” In short, adding more years to one’s life, ok but for what? As it would only be more of the same old routine.
Second point is seriousness and aspiration: it is by its limited characteristic that life bears so much importance. We know that life is so short and so valuable that we wouldn’t want to waste any moment, and experience it to the fullest. A very long life could take that passion and eagerness away.
Number three in the list concerns beauty and love. Death, as a great finale, provides life with beauty. In all its poesy, life needs its sunset to reach its full splendor. Same thing with love: could we really give ourselves at a hundred percent to another person if we were not pressed by time?
Virtue and moral excellence is the last benefit that Kass picks out. “The immortals cannot be noble”, he says, “as to be mortal means that it is possible to give one’s life in many ways in which we are able in action to rise above attachment to survival”.
Kass then proceeds to answer why then people long for a longer lifespan. He does not believe that it is to learn and be able to do more. Man searches for wholeness and godliness but cannot grasp them in his present condition, so he tries to fight death to gain completion. But this quest is delusive and deceiving as “we would still lack God’s presence and redemption”.
In order to get a fuller picture of bio-conservatives position, it would seem preferable to analyze other anti-life extensionists’ point of view.
Francis Fukuyama, author and professor of international political economy, advocates death as he perceives three main worries that would surely result from an extended lifespan ; namely: the fear of a nursing home planet, the undesirable social consequences, and finally the undermining of our human nature.
The fears that Fukuyama expresses fit in with Kass’ position and they represent in their majority the take of “deathists” on the issue at hand.
We are now in possession of the main views of both the transhumanists and bioconservatives. As it seems, the issue is not ready to settle. No group is willing to make any concession. So what is to come? Only time will tell… but we can always embark in some conjectures.
Evolution of the Issue
In this particular case, the situation might become aggravated as, for the United States anyway, the President’s science administration is getting violently criticized.
A group of scientists, including twenty Nobel laureates, say “Bush’s government has systematically distorted and undermined scientific information in pursuit of political objectives” . It seems that, contrary to past administrations, Bush’s favors politics over science, which infuriates researchers. Add to that fact the tendency that this government has to substitute troublesome elements with friendlier supporters (Bush recently replaced prominent advisors who were in favor of therapeutic cloning by conservatives clearly against cloning) and the result becomes very hazardous. But are politics going to dictate the way things turn out? Even if the administration curbs the development of certain technologies, ultimately, what or who decides the settlement of issues in our society?
Well, the Washington Post Principle tells it better than anything else: Follow the Money!
As the saying goes, money rules the world. So if we want to guess the final fate of life extension science, we have to analyze, economically speaking, what would be the most advantageous situation, and for whom.
First of all, we should determine who the actors in the manufacturing and development of anti-aging techniques are.
The top players are represented by private companies, international corporations and, more specifically here, pharmaceutical industry. Would it really be in their best interest to put such medicine on the market?
Pharmaceutical companies are a billion dollars market which explains the power they hold.
“Drug companies spend the most of any US industry on lobbying to keep the government at bay” , affirms Mike Hall in a paper entitled “What Drug Companies Aren’t Telling YOU”.
Their lobbying team consists of 625 people (including 23 former members of Congress) whose only task is to make sure legislation will not limit their profits nor will it decrease their power by allowing, for example, new drug prescription drug benefit for seniors (anyway, if they were refused some research, they could always just move to some place more flexible). Old people consume the biggest piece of the total drugs and rest assured that pharmaceutical industry likes it that way.
Aging deteriorates one’s body, making it more prone to any kind of pathology. Should the goal of life extensionists be attained, yes people would still age, but they would remain mostly healthy.
Would this menace the earnings of the world’s most profitable industry? Let us not forget that it is business, they’re not into this for charity or to make the world a better place: they make money out of people’s sickness. This is quite a harsh view but let us not be fooled by philanthropic looks. Generally, when industries invest in research, it is a psychological and economical strategy; it is not to help cure diseases (for example, tobacco industry investing in research for lungs cancer).
The LEF, Life Extension Foundation, is one of the many victims of pressure tactics perpetrated by the FDA (the FDA, for Food and Drug Administration, regulates what products may enter the US market) but the matter of conflict here concerns the overpriced drug policy pharmaceutical industry adopts. As this does not pertain to our subject, we will not go deeper into this but it is useful to be aware of Drug companies’ weight in today’s society.
At first sight, it looks like pharmaceutical industry would not allow anti-aging medicine for the reason that it could lower their income. However, are they actually developing such kind of products at the present time?
The answer seems to be affirmative. One illustration that corroborates this thesis can be found at CereMedix that is on the verge of introducing a new product called Protandim which particularly targets one main cause of aging: oxidation .
These kinds of products, even though they enhance one’s health, do not promise a stopping of all illnesses yet so they’re no real threat to drug companies. We are still far from the universal panacea… but then are they really looking to find it? And if they are, the magic pill to cure aging could still bring them a fortune. This is all just pure speculation.
Drugs are not the only option to reach high life expectancy. Genetic therapy and stem cell research are two other very promising possibilities. A lot of research is in progress in colleges and universities all around the globe which are related to aging. Even though the researchers may also potentially be the target of lobbying, a breakthrough might still come from that direction.
Life Cycle of Life Science
The problem of life extension is still in its infancy. In what part of its life cycle does it exactly stand now?
The issue has already been identified and clearly defined. From the moment this field was seen, not as science fiction anymore, but as a viable possibility, interest groups were formed. As stated above, those who work towards its accomplishment belong to the transhumanists who are opposed by Neo-Luddites (in reference to the Luddites whose movement against technology in the beginning of the 19th century remains famous), as they call them.
The next step in the life of an issue is of legal concern: it settles down the legal outcome. With regard to our matter, we find ourselves right in this phase. Some activists in favor of life extension fear that the result might end up in a prohibition as “writers, intellectuals and journalists display a negativity towards radical life extension that often shades into horror or disgust” and that “there is every sign that this backlash could grow into a widespread political struggle to ban life-extending technology and research”. But we must not forget the essential role played by lobbying groups like the ones discussed earlier that bear an enormous influence on political moves. They know how to convince.
As this issue doesn’t call for a fast act to solve it like, for example, mad cow crisis did, it is not highly publicized. Rarely do we hear on the news about the prospects that life extension might open in a near future.
The media do not deal with it much as anti-aging technology appears real low on both political and public opinion agendas. Political forces have no urgency to move it up in their agenda because a sensible breakthrough has yet to be made. It would have to be a new discovery that would call for an immediate answer to anticipate the worries of the public and their need for information and reassurance.
Public opinion on this issue remains quite cold and indifferent for several reasons. First, most people doubt the efficiency of most products that have already made it to the market. Their effects are not staggering enough to go mainstream. Second, people have a propensity to be skeptical. Because no one ever made it to, say, 150 years old, people believe it will never happen. Or if it does, it won’t be in their lifetime. Like flying was seen as a dreamer’s fantasy before the Wright brothers, the overcoming of aging disabilities to allow us to be centenarians sound unreal.
Ray Kurzweil wrote in “Accelerated Living” that “people, when examining the impact of future technology, often go through 3 stages: awe and wonderment at the potential; dread about the new set of grave dangers; and finally, the realization that the only viable path is to set a careful responsible course that realizes the promise while managing the peril”.
But wait, do people even care about this?
Generally, we are mostly interested in what could affect us directly. We think short term.
People mainly pay attention to two kinds of information: sensational news (as an entertainment factor) and what they perceive as an impending risk for them or their relatives.
Terrorism and health threats (global warming, dioxin, etc) are good examples of issues that are/were covered because of their potential danger.
Does our issue belong to that category? Is it possible to envision life extension as a threat?
To answer our question, we must determine two variables that relate to any issue. Risk perception depends on people’s perception of the control – they think – they have on the issue, and on their understanding of the matter. We’re talking about perception here and not facts, as facts do not matter much. It is how people see those events that is important. Perception is reality, and as such, even a totally twisted vision of things will appear real to someone if that’s how he understands it.
So do people have a good understanding of our issue? There are two kinds of understanding that need distinction. On the one hand, there is the goal of life extension technologies. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out as the name is self-explanatory. On the other hand, there is a kind of understanding much harder to apprehend as it requires an active involvement. To understand how life science works, one ought to look for that information and do some research as the media do not deal with it.
It results that this kind of understanding is rather on the lower level. However, concerning the “control” item, it reaches pretty high as people have the choice whether to take the drugs or not; they’re in total control here.
We see that this brings us in a not-so risky zone as life extension is not envisioned as a doom-like scenario.
If it ever makes it to be highly publicized, morals and ethics will be the major points to be addressed. And except for religious people, moral problems, despite their potential for debating, never rhyme with doom (unlike physical threats). Therefore, it is not being too presumptuous to say that it is highly improbable that we will ever enter a crisis over this issue.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, let’s get a little overboard and extrapolate over this upcoming technology, its promises and possibilities.
As we begin this transgression, we leave the realm of our issue and get positively biased towards the benefits of human enhancing science. We believe that our going astray, now that the topic of this paper has been dealt with, may be allowed as it could be of use to comprehend what are the real stakes.
The goal hiding beneath all this research is none other than man’s most crazy and unconfessed dream: immortality!
That our lives might be stretched to hundreds of years already seems quite hard to envision, then what should one say about man reaching for eternal life (and not in the “other” world)? This could become reality in the near future. Once every mechanism of aging will have been deciphered, it will become possible, with the help of stem cells research and nanotechnology, to “reverse age” and maintain our selves in the desired state, be it 20, 30, 40, whatever.
Nobody will ever regret the time they were twenty anymore because you will have the choice to keep your physical appearance as it suits you. Along to this, cures to treat other plagues of modern society should come up such as pills to regulate our weight and permit the eating of anything and everything without any adverse consequences by, for example mimicking the effects of caloric restriction (one of today’s only solution believed to increase our lifespan).
The emergence of this “holy grail” would provoke a huge paradigm shift so big that all our society and organizing models would have to be rethought.
Immortality might well be within our grasp. To think that we might belong to the last generation of men to die “involuntarily” is the ultimate irony. So how could we increase our chances to “last” until then? Observing the obvious like practicing sports and eating healthy while avoiding hazards such as smoking is all we can do for now, unfortunately. Should we die before any breakthrough was made, there is still one solution of last resort. Some would call it a desperate and illusionary final attempt to reach for the impossible. Some others have faith and already contracted with firms to allow them to dispose of their dead body to apply that “Star Trekian” technology: cryogenics! As the saying goes, “Cryogenics is the second worst thing that could happen to you”.
By preserving man’s neural system integrity, cryonics pause the existence of the just deceased until a time in the future where it will be feasible to start it back.
But this topic is an issue as hot as – if not more than – life extending science, and therefore deserves to be treated in its own paper .
We live in fascinating times. However, the prospects that lay before us appeal to our interests as much as they bring up questions and uncertainty. The fear of the unknown is maybe what holds us back. By acting as a defense mechanism and favoring the stalling of our civilization, it avoids that we get hurt but, at the same time, prevents us from life changing discoveries. Is it playing God to tinker with such sacred concepts as life and death? And if it is, are we to keep a low profile and not take steps forward by pure modesty; or are we to go on whatever the cost?
We will soon possess the tools, but do we have the will…
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oops lost all the endnotes with copy/paste, I'm not so good at editing so I'll just add them here without pointing to what part of the text they refer to
Synopsis – Life Extension Science, in: www.fis.org/public/synopsis.html
Kurzweil, Ray, The Future of Life, in : http://www.kurzweila.....0554.html?m=5
De Grey, Aubrey, An Engineer’s Approach to the Development of Real Anti-Aging Medicine, in: www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/manu16.pdf
www.transhumanism.org/about.htm
Nick Bostrom, The Transhumanist FAQ, in : http://transhumanism...ex.php/WTA/faq/
Best, Ben, Why Life Extension? or Why Live at All ?, in: www.benbest.com/lifeext/whylife.html
www.bioethics.gov
Salleh Mohd Nor, Globeglance: We Can Have Enough Food, in: www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2001/issue3/0103p44.html
Itano, Nicole, Zimbabwe’s Political Tool : Food, in : www.csmonitor.com/2002/0819/p06s01-woaf.html
Kass, Leon R., L’Chaim And Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?, in: http://www.catholicc...cfm?recnum=4149
Bailey, Ronald, Loving Death, in: reason.com/rb/rb022603.shtml
Mooney, Chris, The Science Wars, in: http://www.csicop.or...out/sciencewars
Fox, Maggie, Bush Replaces Advisers on Cloning , Medical Issues, in: http://www.planetark...24038/story.htm
Hall, Mike, What Drug Companies Aren ‘t Telling YOU !, in: http://www.aflcio.or...0503_bigfix.cfm
www.lifelinenutraceuticals.com
Blackford, Russel, Live Long! Live Free, in: http://www.longevity...=1&article_id=5
Romain, Gabe, Researchers Home in on Molecule that Activates Life-extending Enzyme, in: http://www.betterhum...03-11-06-4.aspx
Arizona moves to effectively ban cryonics, in: http://www.livejourn...sch/212549.html
