Clinical Immortality
August 23rd, 2008
Let’s speculate about immortality for a bit. It’s something that’s been on my mind a bit recently because… well, what with stem cell research and leaps in medical science, the problem of human mortality could reasonably be solved in our lifetime. I’m no doctor, and I haven’t done research on the actual progress being made, but frankly I’m far more fascinated by the potential long term ethical and social impact that this might cause. So let’s just lie back with something vision-inducing (I recommend running 20 miles) and try to glimpse the future.
Undoubtedly, the first procedures that can extend the human lifespan will be clinical in nature and sinfully expensive. I envision large, electronic devices that do all sorts of interesting things, making the prospective immortal little more than a bedridden cyborg brain. Why would anyone be interested in this? Well, people have done stranger things, like flash-freezing themselves until medical science can revive them. If the prospect of living on machines for just long enough for just long enough to be released from the machines is even remotely possible, someone will shell out the millions it takes to actually do so.
This will create a huge uproar, because… well, who doesn’t want to live forever? Limiting this benefit to those that can afford it is going to create a whole new concept of class separation, which most democratic societies will censure almost immediately. As we can see with Stem Cell research, countries that hamstring medical advances of a particular type find themselves well behind the times, and the nascent immortal population will find that they’re strapped to machines far longer than their budgets had originally projected. Expenses will rise, and only the extremely-super-rich will be able to sustain themselves… unless everyone emigrates to more lenient environments.
Yet even here there’s an interesting benefit. While the parent’s amassed fortunes would previously have gone to their heirs, they’ll now be spent on keeping them alive for long enough for medical science to advance to the point of no consequence. A trust fund only goes so far- chances are the first two or three generations of immortal offspring will be forced to fend for themselves or join the dirt with the rest of us.
Sooner or alter we’ll then reach the point of no consequence. This is the point where life-sustaining procedures no longer requires hospital time, and immortals can continue their normal lives with only token effort on their part. While this may sound great, it really is just the first step in the commoditization of these procedures. Privatization of the industry will occur, prices will come down, and soon enough immortality will be accessible to everyone.
This will really set off the simmering ethical battle, where the religious and the evolutionists will find themselves to be strange bedfellows: On one side, those that choose immortality will be cheating God’s plan, while on the other they’ll be halting evolution. Once again there will be cries for both social and legal limits on immortality, yet now the deck will be stacked against them vis.a.vis numbers. The funny thing is that it won’t really matter, because those that choose immortality at this point will eventually realize they’ve paid the price of genetic obsolescence.
Consider: 100, 200, even 1000 years from now, human intellect and physiology will have evolved significantly, and immortals will A) have all the money, but B) be unable to compete with the newer generations. This will either create a rich aristocracy begging for a revolution, or a zoo-like environment where the ‘spoiled little rich kids’ are allowed to exist in their little obsolete world, while the rest of the species goes on without them. That is assuming, of course, that they aren’t euthanized due to massive overpopulation.
Either that, or we’ll start seeing human upgrades, at which point the entire evolutionary theory goes out the window because we assume we know better. Given how far we’ll have come to even reach this point, there’s no reason to believe these upgrades won’t be ubiquitous. Who even knows what humans will look like by then: Will you have a small Apple logo under your ear, indicating an iPhone implant? Will your hair naturally grow in rainbow shades? Will your clothes reshape themselves to be in-line with the latest styles?
And in that kind of environment a few rich little immortals will fit right in.
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