I'm at the Chautauqua Institution this week where the theme is The Ethical Frontiers of Science.Today's speaker was Arthur Caplan Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. His topic was "Is it Immoral to Want to Live Longer, Be Smarter and Look Better?" The answer is no, it is not immoral. There's nothing wrong with wanting to take advantage of modern scientific advances to prolong life, enhance intelligence, and look better." I agreed with everything he said.
Caplan looked over the speakers for the rest of the week. Many of them are his friends and he's very familiar with their views. That's why he was able to congratulate us for coming to the first lecture. "It will be the highlight of the entire week," he said, "because all the other speakers are wrong." I suspect he's right but it will be fun, nevertheless, hearing what some of them have to say.
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It sounds like I would agree with everything he says too. Is the speech available to hear or to read somewhere?
It's not only about having a "cure" or an improvemnet"; it is also about who has and who hasn't got access to those improvements, and whether we want to evolve a sharper caste segregation or have other plans for the structure of future societies. It's an extension of the already quite sharp phenomenon of increasing inequality.
Consider simply this. Many diseases could be avoided if clean drinking water were made available in several human populations. We know perfectly well all the science of cholera. What is needed, as well as the science, is a political decision that the specific resources be allocated to take those advances to the people.
Maybe we want to get some water to those people before we devote much money to the "beauty" thing.
sanders says,
It's not only about having a "cure" or an improvemnet"; it is also about who has and who hasn't got access to those improvements,...
He addressed that point but pointed out, quite correctly, that it is irrelevant to the question he is asking.
We could decide, for example, that is is moral to want to live longer but not morally justifiable to invest in the technology when there are more pressing needs.
On the other hand, if it is morally wrong to use biotechnology to improve our lives, then the question of fairness becomes irrelevant.
"if it is morally wrong to use biotechnology to improve our lives, then the question of fairness becomes irrelevant"
No, the question of fairness never disappears...if it so happens some improvements are also inmoral on other grounds, it just adds to the problematic aspects.
Good, these questions needs to be addressed, preferably sooner than later.
the question of fairness
That would separate into two separate areas, I believe.
First and foremost we have the old question of fairness to the disabled. AFAIU some of them has resisted proactive treatment alternatives (say, for inherited diseases) because they feel it unfairly characterizes them as just disabled. They would probably feel another mechanism that seem to treat them unfairly.
My hope is that these sentiments will disappear as they get used to what one can do with modern medicine.
Second, we have the question of economical means. All of these proposals will probably be economically beneficial (healthier, longer and more productive lives) so it will likely repay investment. But not everyone can immediately benefit from this.
Now, as far as nations goes, the TED Gapminder talk statistics shows that the earlier unnatural bimodal economical distribution between nations are disappearing, with poorer nations catching up. So it will be fairer on the international level.
Likewise I believe there are statistics that shows that it is the poorest 20 % of a nations population that benefits most, though I don't have any references now. If so, it will be fairer on the national level.
My immediate concern are many medical insurance systems, which have lock out effects. If you are disabled you pay more. The same will happen here, it will be more expensive to have short and unhealthy life expectancy.
And that is not "fair", however you define something that isn't given in life. Worse, it will be an unnatural barrier against something that we will all likely benefit from.
How do we fix a broken system?
The extreme poor are not difficult to upgrade to "new poor": to have water, "even" a TV set. Still lives in shambles, though. Most education sucks unless you can buy it; your average neighborhood school sucks. You lead a vulnerable existence.
Despite recent reductions in extreme poverty, the disparity of income is on the increase, specially in "developing" nations.
disparity of income is on the increase, specially in "developing" nations.
I think this is an illusion, if you're talking about the distribution of wealth and education throughout the global population.
On the whole, afflu-cation has been disseminating throughout the history of Western civilization, thanks to technological advance. It has been moving from a handful of feudal nobility, to the emergent middle class, to the laborer classes.
"Western" afflu-cation has only just begun to spread beyond the sphere of the European population with the dawn of the globalized era. The illusion that the movement of afflu-cation down this concentration gradient has been created by the rather sudden collision of previously isolated "Western" European and non-Western European peoples and cultures.
Give the afflu-cation gradient some time to equilibrate. We haven't been living on a planet of total human interactivity for very long.
oops.
The illusion that the movement of afflu-cation down this concentration gradient...
Should say
The illusion that the movement of afflu-cation down this concentration gradient has been reversed, and that disparity is increasing, has been created by the rather sudden collision of previously isolated "Western" European and non-Western European peoples and cultures.
Hallo? I mean the filthy rich are now extra filthy rich. This is also true in the developed nations. The wealth is concentrating a lot only on some spots, and the distribution is increasingly uneven (despite upgrading from extreme poor to "new poor"... please also allow me to remind you (pffft) that we have the food crisis and impending drought, so many may be going straight back to extreme poverty.
Increasingly uneven distribution of wealth leads to a separation of "castes" that already has many effects, to which we may have to add the biotechnological.
is not the food crisis the result of the technology of biofuels, for instance? seems to make sense
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