Earth to Don: We're sorry. We've failed you. We will continue to fail you.

[elfs]

Has anyone else read It bothers me that I have to go? This has to be one of the saddest, most freighted things I've read in months. Don Crowdis, the blogger behind DonToEarth, is 93 years old, and he knows his mortality is approaching fast.

At this age, I must say that I do delight in people's amazement when I tell them how old I am. But under all this is the knowledge that I am the oldest male on either side of my family, maternal or paternal, and I know I must go fairly soon. I just don't like the idea. ... There are many reasons. For too long I have behaved as if I could postpone going indefinitely, and thus have so many things that I must do first. I don't want my successors to find out how much I could have done that isn't done, not by a long shot. There are numerous notes and letters I must write. There are places I've wanted to travel, but never had the chance. Actually, each of you can, if you think yourself into my age, fill out the list. At least you can try to understand why I say that I hate to go.

The man is eloquent, whole, and sane, and I have to ask why in all of creation do some people think than Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is a tragedy needing medical investigation to circumvent and prevent, but Suddon Don Death Syndrome would be natural, acceptable, even desirable?

I can't begin to tell you how saddened I am that the library of humanity known as Don Crowdis will someday, probably soon, burn to the ground, along with a hundred thousand like him every day. I can't begin to describe how utterly, unbelievably bloody fucking furious men like Leon Kass and Francis Fukuyama make me when they actively block the development of life-extending and life-confirming research, and who want to use government power to ensure that technology for healthy life extension is never developed or used. Kass is on the side of withholding techonolgies that can help us live longer, happier, more productive lives: he is on the side of legislative murder.

Sorry, it's been in the news a lot recently. Last week, the Guardian ran an article about how the children born this year are probably within the tipping point of voluntary immortality (personally, I hope it's 40 years earlier than that!) and how they face "unprecedented challenges" (when hasn't a generation faced "unprecedented challenges" since Newton and Darwin?) dealing with boredom and stagnation. If Mike Adams echoes from the popular tiers what his ivory tower intellectuals blather and believes that death is essential and morally compulsory for "making room," he should do the right things and embrace it now, rather than later.

As long as we continue to give ear to the Adams, and desks to the Kasses and Fukuyamas of the world, we will fail Don Crowdis, and we will continue to fail men and women like him.

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

There is a tendency in U.S. medicine to target the diseases that wealthy people tend to catch.

Most Americans, indeed most people in the Western world, live long enough that "old age" is one of the things that they die from. The precise cause of death may be "heart attack" or "stroke," but the ultimate reason for the heart attack or stroke was the body wearing out over time. Thus, an immortality technology would benefit most people in the West -- and even in the Third World, some people live long enough to die of old age.

There is also less emphasis on prevention than there might be.

The whole point of anagathics technology is to prevent death from old age.

I agree that immortality and rejuvenation are good things, but I think there are other good things that have better health bang per research buck. I hesitate to name specifics, but maybe AIDS prevention or anti-malnutrition supplements?

In the West, AIDS is primarily prevented by avoiding unprotected sex or needle exchanges with multiple or promiscuous partners. There are other ways of catching the disease, but those are the two biggies. A true vaccine would, of course, be useful if we could develop one.

In Africa, where AIDS is a true epidemic, the problem is a total social breakdown caused by warfare which results in massive levels of prostitution and of rape. Short of recolonization, I don't see a good way of preventing this.

And we already spend money on AIDS research out of proportion to the number of victims in the West.

As for "anti-malnutrition supplements," we already have them. They are called "food" and "vitamins." The reasons why people suffer from severe malnutrition are usually political and malicious, rather than technological and merely unfortunate. In brief: governments delilberately starve minorities of whom they disapprove, and this occurs overwhelmingly in the Third World, especially in Africa. The only good solution I see is recolonization.

Transhumanists seem to assume that class divisions will somehow just go away with more time and/or tech. As far as I know, class divisions perpetuate themselves unless people actually directly address the issue.

I do not believe that class divisions will "just go away." I in fact believe that they will exist eternally, though the manners in which they are expressed and the precise membership and names of the classes may change from time to time.

My point is not that anagathics will eliminate class differences, but that while they may be at first expensive, over time the technology and economy will advance to the point where they are cheap relative to the wealth of even poor people. This is a normal pattern with any technology.

Consider what has happened regarding telephones, for instance -- 125 years ago they were curiosities for the idle rich or special equipment for huge organizations; 75 years ago they were owned primarily by the upper middle classes and above; today almost everyone has a telephone or at least regular access to a telephone.

Now, imagine if we had, in an egalitarian spirit, decreed that nobody save for the government could have telephones until they were cheap enough for all to afford. Without the huge effective demand for new and better phones and phone systems, the technology would have developed more slowly, and we would still be mostly phoneless today.

The same could happen with anagathics, if we let envy and spite throttle the developing technology.