Fortune Summary and Rebuttal Stipp, David. (April

¶ … Fortune

Summary and Rebuttal

Stipp, David. (April 5, 2004) Chasing the Youth Pill. FORTUNE.

He or she who patents the pill that will magically extend human life, states David Stipp of Fortune magazine, will be not only healthy and wise, but also quite wealthy as well. Although most readers might take a more physical and personal interest in extending life, this reporter from Fortune Magazine points out that, as potential anti-aging drugs have become a legitimate research area they are also a potential financial bonanza for pharmaceutical companies and scientists.

According to Huber Warner, head of the Institute's Biology of Aging Program, the purpose of a recently funded study was to "identify drugs that foster a healthier old age" and also to discover "compounds that lengthen mouse lives" that "may well ward off ills like cancer, which shorten the lives of rodents as well as people." Stipp adds that drugs that "extend human life and confer a healthier old age are probably coming," and coming soon although, "perhaps not fast enough to make much difference to the baby-boom generation," he notes, presumably in regards to himself. "Even a drug that modestly slows human aging -- extending the average lifespan by, say, 15% -- would change everything," he adds, enthusiastically, although vaguely as regards to what everything might mean.

Thus Stipp's initial ethical analysis seems a bit shaky. In his commends regarding mice, for instance, he ethically equalizes curing the disease of cancer with prolonging natural, healthy, but invariably terminal aging. True, there are long-lived examples in natural history, such as France's Jeanne Calment. But she is the exception rather than the rule.

Moreover, Stipp also does not make a distinction in his article between drugs and other longevity methods, such as low calorie diets. "Animals fed 30% to 40% fewer calories than they usually prefer to eat generally live 30% to 40% longer' and many individuals have put themselves on CR diets today. However, from a 'wealth standpoint' it might seem that there is little lucrative benefit for an individual who wishes to profit off of the longevity drive. Wouldn't a CR diet simply take more money out of the pockets of food sellers and drugs companies who benefit from cholesterol reducing drugs and drugs to treat the consequences of obesity?

Furthermore, calorie restriction as a lifestyle seems to harbor little hope for the survival of the species. Long-lived rodents are unusually small and infertile, only highlighting a rather 'creepy' aspect of longevity studies that Stipp, in his enthusiasm, does not seem to notice. When Stipp notes that "the mutants' idiosyncrasies support a theory that explains everything from the marked longevity of dwarf animals like Chihuahuas to the infertility of anorexic women," the idea of a future of skinny, old individuals and tiny dogs as the future of life upon earth is less than pleasant.

Another possibility exists in lab of Leonard Guarente, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology biology professor, which discovered an "enzyme called Sir2p that appears to act like a famine sensor: It registers calorie intake and, when it is very low, helps activate the formation of long-living spores -- a yeast cell's version of hunkering down in a state of slowed aging, "mimicking caloric restriction" in yeast. "Now the race is on" to determine whether it does the same thing in mammals, including humans, possibly yielding the potential to create resveratrol pills.

Rebuttal

Stipp ends his article, noting that although countering the effects of aging may be profoundly unnatural, so are seatbelts and antibiotics. However, does 'developed by humans' mean the same thing as unnatural? True, human beings have had varied life spans for the duration of the recorded life of the species. Moreover, improved nutrition, less warlike lifestyles, the curtailment of disease, and the introduction of central heating have all conspired, however unintentionally to extend the available lifespan of the species.

However, all of these modifications are quite different than simply popping a pill to prolong human existence. The idea that some individuals would have access to a life-prolonging pill because of greater wealth and available pharmaceutical health care would not simply exacerbate the differences between the lifestyle and lives of the rich and poor, it would effectively create a 'brave new world,' where alpha long lived humans dominated and planned their lives differently than shorter lived epsilons, whom had no hope of getting the longevity drug. Even if everyone was accorded such a drug, the greater lifespan over such a short period of time would mean that individuals would require more health care, dwell in apartments and homes for longer periods of time, require more help when elderly (even if the longevity pill was accompanied by greater resilience of constitution) and perhaps even have a prolonged adolescence because they knew they would life longer.

In short, many of the modern cultural effects of aging would become even more pronounced than they are now in the United States -- and the difference between countries where the drug was present with other nations is even more striking. Even recent MSNBC article on calorie restrictive diets, which are perhaps the least noxious form of this urge to prolong life was entitled, "Starve your way to health." Of course, at very least such diets would not enrich the makers of a drug at the expense of those in other nations or Americans who could not afford a prescription. But the title shows the unnaturalness of the diet and its incompatibility with not only modern cultural lifestyles but also the human body.