ETERNAL LIFE? (Part II)

In my preceding post (Eternal Life? (Part I)), I examined the most benign and universal model of eternal human life I could conjure to see if the kinds of intervention Death With Dignity groups advocate would become unnecessary. The answer was no.
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A world where no one dies quickly runs out of room for births, so in the absence of people volunteering to die, children have to be foregone as well. Not that happy a picture, when you think about it. But also, as a realistic scenario for eternal life, not really on the horizon yet, either scientifically or in terms of social acceptance.

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Where it does seem we are headed, though, is for a kind of eternal life that’s increasingly feasible scientifically and far more insidious than my theoretical version. Thankfully, due to my age, I doubt I’ll still be around, but in the not too far distant future, the odds point toward a combination of cloning, in-situ cellular manipulation and custom organ farming that will grant the rich eternal life while the poor continue to die. To build on the late billionaire Leona Helmsley’s infamous quote, "Only little people pay taxes," only little people will remain mortal.
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There are plenty of early signs. The estates and heirs of various wealthy individuals already pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to preserve the bodies of the deceased cryogenically, awaiting thaw-out and revivification when suitable treatments and/or spare parts become available. There is also a thriving, if disgusting, black market for human organs—don’t ask how they’re obtained—from third-world countries for potential transplant into well-to-do recipients elsewhere. In addition, techniques for human cloning and the other procedures cited above are being developed in laboratories around the globe, notwithstanding the legal and moral strictures against them.
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To a major extent, we ration healthcare based on ability to pay in the US, and to some extent so do most other countries—think of the controversy over AIDS medications. No one should be surprised if access to eternal life follows the same pattern. Nor am I anywhere near the first to see this and view it with alarm.
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French author Michel Houellebecq’s prize-winning novel The Elementary Particles, published eight years ago, was highly prescient. In the final chapter, a cell biologist who has just made key breakthroughs in the quest to provide the elite with eternal life is no longer able to stomach what that implies. He destroys his computer, gathers up his lab notes and documentation and drowns himself in the Irish Sea. Yet an epilogue shows his suicide to have accomplished nothing, because within a few years former colleagues have replicated his results and a master race of immortals is brought into being.
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Interestingly, in voicing opposition, I find allies among Evangelicals and Catholics, whose views on Death With Dignity and other social issues I normally reject. But here, we’re right in synch, and on the same grounds—social justice and the violation of God’s (or in my case, cosmic) law. In regard to justice, if one human is to be immortal, then all should be. In regard to cosmic law, death is a fundamental fact of all existence.
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To me, however, the latter is the biggie. My last blog demonstrated that, even when universal, eternal life for humans would have serious negative consequences at the practical level. But those pale by comparison with the futility of trying to deny that everything we can see or conceive of exists for only a finite time. Death and regeneration are how the cosmos works. To temporarily suspend death in the case of humans—which is all this sort of immortality would amount to anyway—is a chimera, a false hope. And to do it for only the select few is so manifestly unjust, so monumentally selfish, on the part of those who benefit that war and social breakdown will surely follow.
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What will be required to forestall this is a blanket repudiation of the idea by humankind as a whole—that we evaluate it as though we were Mennonite or Amish. And I’m not optimistic. The chimera of eternal life is the most poisonous apple on the tree of knowledge. Moreover, the growing ranks of the super rich—all those oil sheiks and those CEOs with their bloated salaries and their golden parachutes will be among the few who can afford it—make Houellebecq’s master race scenario the likely outcome. If you have doubts, remember that a great deal of this technology is already in place with the goal of collecting hefty fees to make our pets immortal. What's practiced and perfected on Fido now will later be an option for film stars.
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Mind you, I’m not opposed to stem cell research or other means of providing cures for particular diseases that will improve and preserve a person’s quality of life. I oppose only the systemic and probably ongoing interventions that will be required to preserve life indefinitely. If it takes repeated facelifts to maintain a somewhat more youthful appearance into one’s 80s, consider the periodic do-overs that piecemeal eternal life would entail. The basic structures of our bodies simply weren’t designed for it.
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I say stick with the immortality we already have. We are assembled from star dust, and will always revert to it, ceaselessly, only to be reassembled in a myriad other temporary forms, including, since the cosmos has infinite time and obviously knows the trick, reassembled again as our exact biological selves in alternate universes much like this one.
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There is also a strong connection here concerning the Death With Dignity movement. The quest for a narrowly defined human immortality is another facet of our culture’s attitude toward death: "We’ll ignore it, and when we no longer can, we’ll defeat it, because we’re special." As long as we allow ourselves to believe that, we will never, as a society, adopt sensible measures to halt needless suffering on the part of those who challenge our belief by actually dying. How devious of them! And if a deaf ear is the norm regarding end-of-life issues in so many places now, just wait until the rich don’t have to worry about it and the poor are the only ones to suffer.