Transcript of Thought For the World's thought for the day

A.C. Grayling

12th February 2008 Darwin Day

When we are young we feel immortal, but our first grey hairs bring the unpalatable truth home. We age from puberty onwards, and casnnot avoid paying the last due to time.. Although people in the West live longer than ever before, it is not only because the limits of age have been pushed back, but because we have conquered diseases that once struck early in life, such as smallpox and tuberculosis.

But are we ready for ever-increasing longevity? The very idea presents new ethical dilemmas. For though most of us wish to live long, we don't wish to grow old. Throughout history quacks have profited from our hunger for prolonged youth, or at least healthy longevity. Yet though most of us in the rich West stay healthier for longer, we have not yet conquered real the diseases and disabilities of ageing..

We might, for one obvious example, wonder whether living to 120 or 140 in a state of decrepitude is an attractive possibility, and if not, it raises the question whether we should legalise voluntary euthanasia. For in that state of affairs, many might legitimately desire an exit from what can only be an burdensome, or worse.

Or if we do indeed conquer the disabilities of ageing, so that ladies of all ages up to 120 can have babies, we might have to consider rationing child-bearing: but how? And to whom? The Chinese one-child policy has shown what a bitter thing such rationing can be.

These aren't idle speculations. Science has learned that there is nothing inevitable about ageing. Neither the timetables of life, nor its upper limits, are fixed anywhere in nature. Experiment has shown that the average life-spans of many different creatures can be hugely extended, and not in tottering dotage but in health and vigour. On this basis scientists say there will indeed be a "cure for ageing" one day.

They also say that it's still some way off. That's just as well, because we need time to consider what the world will be like when the majority of its human inhabitants are over 100 years old. We are already as concerned about how we die as when we die; in the future our problems might spring from the fact that when we have pushed far back the borders of death, we will need new understandings of how to live life.

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