12 replies to this topic

[Mind]

Coming up on Tuesday May 26th, I will be interviewing Dr. Laurie Zoloth of Northwestern University, a professor of religious studies, medical humanities, and bioethics, and past president of the American Academy of Religion.

 

Read more here: http://www.religion.northwestern.edu/faculty/zoloth.htm

 

This will be a great opportunity to hear about the philosophical and ethical side of technological progress as it relates to modern medicine.

 

Please post any questions you have in advance here in this thread.

 

 

[caliban]

Nice one! I met her a few times, and while we did not always agree, I came to like and respect her a great deal. Her courage, civility, insight, humanity, and ethical imagination are a true asset to the American bioethics scene.    

 

Please make this a good one Mind and don't be shy about challenging her! 

 

As far as questions go:

 

she has sometimes (I think mistakenly) placed into the camp of 'life extension-nay sayers' for two reasons:

 

1) she has gone on record about being skeptical regarding the 'billionaires want to live forever' notion, urging a more social awareness. This has drawn criticisms from the Randian/libertarinan corner.

Perhaps you could ask her to develop her argument. Does she really mean to say "lets fix premature death and starvation first before we tackle life extension"?  Should billionaires not want to live forever because they are billionaires?        

 

2) She is known as an "orthodox Jewish" bioethicist. Could she develop how she sees an Jewish perspective on extending life, that differs e.g. from the well documented view of Leon Kass?

 

Lastly, maybe you could ask her what she recommends reading on the topic, that goes beyond the best-known sources?      

[Danail Bulgaria]

If she is against life extention, then ask her when does she intends to die? I can see from her photo, that she is not in her wildest youth. 

[Mind]

The interview is finished. I am rather busy for the next couple of days, so this podcast might not be availble until the weekend. I apologize in advance for a bit lower audio quality in this podcast. All that was available was a landline and Dr. Zoloth is a rather fast speaker. The combination is not good for high quality audio.

[Mind]

File Name: LongeCityPodcast_Zoloth2015_A01.mp3

File Submitter: Mind

File Submitted: 11 Jul 2015

File Category: Podcasts

Guest: Dr. Laurie Zoloth

An interview with biomedical ethicist Dr. Laurie Zoloth from Northwestern University. A discussion about how life extension research should proceed, mainly from a socio-economic standpoint.

Click here to download this file

[Mind]

I guess the overall theme of Zoloth's position could be equality over anything else. Dr. Zoloth is particularly passionate about wealth inequality, specifically stating that the ONLY reason there are extremely wealthy people in the world is because of unjust tax laws. It is not because people are more clever or more talented, ONLY because the system is rigged in certain people's favor. She is worried that the wealthy will be the only ones getting life extension therapies. I tried to press the point that technology/progress has never been equally distributed anywhere in the world throughout human history (yet we have progress and life extension none-the-less). She disagreed, even as I pointed out that it is physically impossible for any new technology (or life extension treatment) to be distributed instantaneously to everyone in the world. I finally suggested a random lottery as the only way treatments could be distributed "fairly", and she agreed.

 

She is very much in favor of medical progress and life extension, just that it should be done by governments and be distributed equally/fairly (random lottery if necessary).

[shadowhawk]

This is a great topic.  The real issue is more basic than this because life is a great value to most humans.  Given the most fundamental realities of our existence is it reasonable that we can choose not to die?  Live longer, yes, but not to die?  The entire cosmos is dieing.  Money also has many short term issues when it comes to even short term human health.  There are many ethical issues here.

[corb]

This is a great topic.  The real issue is more basic than this because life is a great value to most humans.  Given the most fundamental realities of our existence is it reasonable that we can choose not to die?  Live longer, yes, but not to die?  The entire cosmos is dieing.  Money also has many short term issues when it comes to even short term human health.  There are many ethical issues here.

 

The ethical thing is letting everyone chose whether they want to live or not and giving them the protection they might need if they are a part of a religious or political group that disagrees with life extension.

 

Coming up with random number for the "perfect length" of human life is authoritarian, not ethical.

And as Aubrey de Grey has already pointed out at the current accident rate people won't live much over a thousand so even if we're completely ageless, there's always that car crash/climbing accident/choking on food/falling on the stairs/etc.

 

 

She is very much in favor of medical progress and life extension, just that it should be done by governments and be distributed equally/fairly (random lottery if necessary).

 

I can see science fiction book in this - a man goes on a serial murder spree because he's not chosen for life extension, and kills until he kills enough that his number is called out in the life extension lottery. In the end the police walks into the room while he's getting his procedure and informs him he will have to spend 4000 years in jail for murder. ~The End~

 

 

But on a serious note - I don't see the point of trying to politicize an already dividing subject.

Our aim should be to make governments accept radical life extension AS A CONCEPT, talking about regulations and taxes before we even get to that point is not only meaningless, it's toxic and harmful to the undertaking.

[shadowhawk]

Who has to pay for it?  It needs to be equitable for all.  Who pays for the concept?

[niner]

Who has to pay for it?  It needs to be equitable for all.  Who pays for the concept?

 

I can understand that basic health care should be available to all, but as medicine becomes able to take us to heretofore unimaginable, and thoroughly unnatural heights, does it remain a "right"?   We could already spend more money on health care than we have to spend.  When the sky's the limit on health care costs, at some point, we have to say "no".  The scary totem of "rationing" gets waved around a lot, but we have been rationing health care for years, and will continue to.  We can't not do that, unless we redefine health care.   Is life-extension health care, or is it something else?  If we decide that it's a right, then we'll give it to everyone, at least in our national tribe.  Other tribes will have to fend for themselves, I guess.  (By what ethics do we justify this?)  If we decide that it's not a right, then it will be priced at whatever the market will bear.  Historically, medical procedures that make you better than normal, like cosmetic surgery, have not been considered a right, and the cost has been the responsibility of the patient.  The repair of aging makes you better than "normal", but then so do antibiotics, in that it would be "normal" to die from a bacterial infection.  These are difficult questions.  It's not obvious that all medical procedures need to be equitable for all.  In a world where a procedure might cost millions of dollars, we don't have the resources to make it available to everyone on Earth, or even everyone in the country.  (I'm posting from the US, but this applies to any country, at some level of expense.)  We could enforce equity by preventing anyone from having a procedure unless everyone could have it, but that would slow the progress of medicine and be unfair to those who could afford the procedure, and would probably cause people to get care out of country or on the black market at any rate.

[shadowhawk]

Good points, I am sure this will be a big issue considering competing needs and values.  Lots of things kill us and to mitigate them cost time and treasure.  A system to pay for longevity interests needs to be created by those interested.

[Danail Bulgaria]

Among all the usual background noise, Prof. Zoloth lied herself to say only one truly sensible thing, and as usual, the crowd neglected it, and focuesd its entire energy in the crappiest possible thing in the entire interview, which by the way, is typical for the mindless crowd (neglecting the correct, and rushing into the nonsence). The only thruetfull thing was, that the rich have to pay for the development of cures for the diseases, that they will die from, or that they will be invalidized from. Thus all of the diseases, that you also may die from will be cured. Why? Because the rich are people like you, and have the same anatomy and biochemistry. The cure for them is also a cure for you.

Edited by seivtcho, 20 July 2015 - 06:04 AM.

[corb]

Who has to pay for it?  It needs to be equitable for all.  Who pays for the concept?

 

Before the therapies are developed to the point they can be translated to the clinic no one will be able to tell you how much they will cost. So if you can't know how much they will cost, how do you know they won't be equitable?
If they start of as extremely expensive they can't be equitable of course that's obvious.
If the price is artificially inflated that's a different topic.

But the whole inequality debate is fear mongering above anything else right now.
And just bad press for us in general.