Self-determination and the Ethics of Life Extension
Masahiro Morioka, Osaka Prefecture University, Japan
The book, “Beyond Therapy,” written by Leon Kass and the President’s Council of Bioethics, was published in 2003. In Chapter 4 of their book, the authors discussed the ethics of life extension and age-retardation, and concluded that the technologies that accelerate them should not be encouraged because they might deprive us of the meaning of life and human dignity. From just after the publication, academic articles criticizing their argument started to appear in bioethics journals. Most of them strongly advocated freedom of research on life extension and age-retardation, and our right to choose (or buy) those future technologies in terms of the principle of self-determination. Some authors profess their desire to live as long as possible even if it be more than several hundred years.
Since last year, when I had an opportunity in Japan to give a public lecture on ethics of life and death, I talked about this topic every time and asked the audience how they thought about this issue. Surprisingly, the majority of people who replied to me said that they didn’t wish to live for such a long period of time even if they could buy those technologies. In the United States of America, people who object to the idea of life extension and are-retardation are those who are sympathetic with Christian values. Then, what about in Japan?
Concerning this topic, the philosopher Hans Jonas published a paper entitled, “The Burden and Blessing of Mortality,” in Hastings Center Report in 1992. In his paper he concludes that death is a burden to us, but at the same time, death is a blessing to humans. I would like to make clear what he really meant to say in his last philosophical paper, and finally, I would like to present my comments on this topic.
