Part-ID 046 Max More, Ph.D. (Founder, Extropy Institute)
start 0:01:03 / 0:27:03
..one assertion that Dr. Kass makes is, he says that the immortals cannot be noble. Which a hilarious statement to make! For some reason he thinks that very short lived beeings were very stupid: ..don't have time to develop and cells become mature and then makes experiences before they die, like human beings. They can be noble apparently but beings who can live indefinitely, acquire wisdom, more experiences, learn from life; for some reason they cannot be noble, he says. So I think, he is absolutely backwards. My view is that when we live a few hundred years, a few thousand years, however long, we will look back on who we are today - these very primitive human beeings pretty biological. I would think, what callow shallow people those were. My goodness, They tried their best as poor creatures, by the very limited brains they had, driven by their genes and their hormones, really quite helpless poor beeings, but my goodness, we can do so much better now.
Part-ID 047 James Dale (Genetic Researcher)
start 0:01:49 / 0:27:52
Well in a sense Leon Kass is an advocate of youth denature, you know, encouraging people to believe that death is somehow good for them. And you know, the question I would pose is, you know, which is more noble, trying to convince people that death is somehow you know a good thing for you or somebody that's trying to actually safe people’s lifes?
Part-ID 048 Rafal Smigrodzki, M.D., Ph.D.
start 0:02:12 / 0:28:14
"Immortals cannot be noble.." Mr. Kass, what do you know about immortals? Right? I couldn't disagree more with this kind of approach,
I think that people like Leon Kass are missing missing what it is to be human. They claim that to be human you have to die, that’s .. death is what gives meaning to our lives. Another person quoted here William Hurlburt.. [comment: Dr. William Hurlburt is on the President's Council on Bioethics with Dr. Leon Kass ] Hurlburt says that "that dependency gives us a sense of meaningful connection within the journey of our lives." I really really don't agree, and it's as simple as that. It's a ??? disagreement. And I don't think I need to provide any special arguments. Any person who looks into his heart and sees appreciation of death, I think, is missing the point. I think life is: About beeing alive. About learnig more about the world. About cooperating with other people in beeing alive and Exploring the world and you know maybe even reaching for the stars one day. That is what it is to be human. That’s the meaning of life.
Part-ID 049 William Hurlbut, Ph.D. (President's Council on Bioethics)
start 0:03:43 / 0:29:45
What if, what if lifes meaning really does relay to working out your.. your salvation with fear and trouble as it's said in the bible. What if it does relay to something beyond physical existence. And many many people who have lived very rich physical lifes are joyful at the face of their death because they feel like those’s lives were about something even more for rich. What if it does? What if the very nature of life is such that.. that an infinite number of recreational trips, an infinite nuber of books, an infinite number of this or that does not lead to to any richer happiness. But that in fact being part of a drama of frailty infinitude where we actually give to one another our very substance and sometimes even die doing it What if that's what it's about? I mean, to me the scenario that is painted by infinite immortality of a physical type at least to the mode that I know the world doesn’t have nearly the ??? of drama and the power of significance that the story of those who sacrifice themselves for others does have.
Part-ID 050 Rafal Smigrodzki, M.D., Ph.D.
start 0:04:58 / 0:31:00
Well there are parts if you read Kass he sounds like apart???. But once you strip down all the flowery verbiage. It's very simple: Death is good, disease is good. And as a scientist, and as a physician it's something I simply disagree with.
Part-ID 051 William Hurlbut, Ph.D.
start 0:05:20 / 0:31:22
I'd be happy to step aside and and people have their three score and ten [comment: year long life-spans],.. rather they'd have four score or maybe six score. But all that starts to get a bit cheeky at that point. I think over a hundred starts to get cheeky. [comment: =unrealistic]
Part-ID 052 Natasha Vita-More
start 0:05:33 / 0:31:44
I think that individuals such as Dr. Kass, Dr. Fukuyama, Dr. Hurlbut are justified in much of the reasoning and I think that they seem to care about their lives and the lives of people around them and I think that they do believe that they are on a correct path, but their correct path is not the path for everyone. Their value system is not the value system for everyone and it's not saying that their value is wrong or bad or that those who are advocates of super longevity are wrong or bad, it is not saying that all. It's saying that the premise by which they base their values, the premise of believing in shorten life span and believing in death as being asynchron on??? are not the way of the future. They are simply not paying attention to all the advances that are going on and they are not paying attention to the fact that those of us who are involved in super longevity and life extension and working in organization such as the Immortality Institute, Alcor Foundation, Extropy Institute, 'Transhumanist Arts and Culture', are individuals who are very involved in our work, most of us have a strong career path, are educated, many phds, masters, individuals who - weather they are degreed or not - have spent a tremendous amount of time working on their field, that we have thought about these things, we have contemplated it, contemplated them to the degree that I think is is substantial, certainly we don't know everything but most of us have a pretty good spin on what's going on when you take : Dr. Michael West and Dr. Max More and Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey - Dr. de Grey and.. Michael Rose, and and.. just all those they are friends in our community and our colleagues in our community and think about the tremendous amount of work that they have put forward.. I.. there is.. It does not make any sense: It just doesn't make any sense that Dr. Fukuyama, Dr. Kass would make such rash and abrupt statements about all those of us who are transhumanists.
Part-ID 053 William Faloon
start 0:07:48 / 0:33:49
[ The FDA ('Food & Drug Administration') ]
The life extension foundation initial mission was to fund research and achieving physical immortality. Regret ably the FDA got on our way, they were interfering certain scientists who were doing research projects that were very critical. They were interfering with the ability of our members to access documented anti aging therapies. They even came in a raid to our facilities several times and see all the supplements we were operating. So we were forced to go to war with the FDA. Since then we have won numerous victories in court. We protected the first amendment right for supplement companies to tell the truth to the public about what dietary supplements may really do. Probably our biggest victory was getting enough supplement users in the United States, for talking about literally millions of millions of americans, to write letters to congress, to fax congress, to call congress and demand in 1994 that the 'dietary supplement health and education act' to be passed and that was passed by an overwhelming majority. And that single act has resulted in more dietary supplements beeing available never before at lower prices and in significant innovations in this unregulated area of health care as opposed to the regulated prescription drug market where you don’t have a lot of innovation, you've got a lot of side effects a lot of deaths and very high prices. We evaluate all the public scientific literature and then we do set into a lay format for publication into our one hundred and ten page monthly magazine, called 'Life Extension Magazine'. We also summarize our findings into a sixteen hundred page book called 'Disease Prevention and Treatment'. And we make that book available every other year to our members. And this essentially summarizes the best scientific methods of treating or preventing a hundred and twenty nine diseases that the medical community has overlooked. these ways that are documented in scientific studies but are not being applied in clinical medical settings.
Edited by Matthias, 05 August 2007 - 08:00 PM.
