Ingemar Patrick Linden - The Case against Death

The Case against Death

Ingemar Patrick Linden

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2022 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Linden, Patrick Ingemar, 1968 author.

Title: The case against death / Ingemar Patrick Linden.

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2021] | Series: Basic bioethics | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021000482 | ISBN 9780262543163 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Death.

Classification: LCC BD444 .L4895 2021 | DDC 128/.5dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000482

d_r0

To Ingemar Linden and
Else-Marie Linden,
whom I thank for my existence.

The idea for this book can be traced back to a summer a long time ago, sometime in the 1970s, where I counted each day of my summer vacation. I did not want it to end, not so fast, but it did. I spent these summers with my parents and grandparents, and I owe them for nurturing my curiosity and for providing the love and security that gave me the sense that life is a wonderful, beautiful adventure. So firstly, my thanks go out to my family. Then I must thank those who initially encouraged me to write this book, although they are also partly to blame for the pain suffered in writing it. My brother Anders Linden, Douglas Osborne, Andreas Ohlson, Gran Adamson, Kris Kemtrup, Patrik Caesar, Marisa Arpels, and Ignacio Rodriguez are some of the main culprits. Here I should also mention the acquisition editors at MIT Press, Christopher Eyer and Philip Laughlin, who saw the value in my rough prospectus. Next, I must thank those who suffered through some of my drafts: Jeff Stephenson, Pelle Neroth, and most of all Steven Chung, whom I owe a great deal for his careful and comprehensive critique. I thank Kristin Day and the Department of Technology, Culture and Society at NYU Tandon for the opportunity to teach my class Death, Longevity and Values and I thank the many students who took the class for the many wonderful conversations we had. My failure to convince them that aging is bad for them, and that death is best avoided, further spurred my efforts. These efforts were rewarded with a grant from the Institute of Human Studies. Finally, I thank my philosophical mentors, in particular Ted Honderich, Jesse Prinz, and Thomas Nagel.

Is it bad to die? Or is death after a long, full life a good, fitting end? Our answer to this question matters because it reveals our attitudes about the purpose of our lives and our place in the cosmos. It also matters because science might be on the cusp of introducing a new human conditionone where we will live significantly longer and healthier lives, where aging is addressed as an illness and cured, and where death is not seen as the inevitable consequence of being born. Whether to encourage this research is a significant question.

The last 100 years or so have seen an unprecedented increase in average human life expectancy. A child born in the United States today can expect to live for almost 80 years, nearly 30 more years than one born 100 years ago. By 2100 the United States and the rest of the developed world are expected to achieve a life expectancy at birth of 85 and by 2200 the average person in those countries is expected to reach 90. By 2300, life spans are expected to reach nearly 100. The rest of the world is not far behind and is steadily closing the gap.

Increased longevity is primarily due to better nutrition, improved sanitation, and advances in medicine, such as vaccinations and penicillin. In particular, child mortality has been drastically reduced. In 1900, 63 percent of children in the world survived their first five years; today 96 percent live to see their fifth birthday. However, the increase in life expectancy for older people has not been remotely as drastic as that for the young. The reason for this is that we have a natural limit to our life span that has remained unaltered. We have not raised the ceiling; we have only increased the likelihood that we will reach it.

The United Nations projections for 2300 rest on the assumption that over the next 280 years we will continue to operate under the constraint of our natural age limit and that therefore increases in life expectancy will slow down until no further gains are possible. There are, however, reasons for questioning this assumption. Not only is 280 years a long timemodern science is not much older than thatbut research on aging is experiencing a boom. Such research, in particular if explicitly conducted with life extension as its ultimate goal, was until recently regarded as suspect by the mainstream science community. The taboo, though, is wearing off, and with funding by trillion-dollar companies like Google, we seem to be getting serious about cracking the code of aging and death.

Traditionally, aging and death were seen as determined by God. These were part of the ordained limiting conditions of our earthly existence with which we just had to put up. However, most scientists today take a different view. They see the human life span, like the life span of any species, as nothing but the result of our evolutionary history and, as such, entirely contingent. Conditions being slightly different, we could have had a life span of no more than 50 years, like the mountain gorilla; as much as 200 years, like giant tortoises; or 500 years, like the Greenland shark; or even longer. Recently, it has been discovered that some creatures, such as the immortal jellyfish, hydras, and maybe even ordinary lobsters may have no biological upper limit; they will just keep going as long as no accidents befall them. One explanation for why nature settled on our upper limit of about 120 years is that so few humans survived beyond their youth. Natural selection had no opportunity to remove the genes that cause problems for us as we age. A gene for Alzheimers disease, for example, could not have been replicated if it expressed itself before reproductive age, as it would have made its bearer unfit to have children. Similarly, blindness afflicts all humans as they hit 90 and 100, but since, in a state of nature, they already would have been dead long before that, it would not have been an obstacle to reproduction and hence it could not have been selected against. The story is the same for all other age-related illnesses that afflict us once we are about age 50.

Evolutionary biology explains why we age and die, but unlike the prescientific, mythological perspective it does not tell us that we must age and die, or that we ought to do so. Fearless and armed with the knowledge of DNA structure, empowered by computers and microscopes that can see and manipulate individual atoms, and advancing on many fronts and on several explanatory levels, scientists now look for ways to break through what they see as the arbitrarily set age limit of human existence. There are already several known ways to significantly prolong the life span of nonhuman organisms. One of these ways is caloric restriction. Mice given less than their normal calorie intake live 20 to 40 percent longer and are also healthier and more active until they die, an increase that corresponds to adding decades of quality life to a human being. Caloric restriction has also worked for yeasts, worms, rats, cats, dogs, cows, and, most interestingly, for primates. A longitudinal study of 76 rhesus monkeys begun in 1989 by the Wisconsin Primate Research Center shows that monkeys on a 30 percent caloric restriction age slower and have a reduced mortality rate compared to a control group. If this conclusion holds up, then we have discovered a way to increase the upper limit of the human life span. Given current baselines and effects comparable to those on mice and monkeys, the calorically restricted human can live 150 years, with an average of 100 years.