COLUMN: Aging as natural as science

Published: Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Woman: "Doctor, I feel groggy, incontinent, crotchety and my hair's gray."

Doctor: "You're just getting old."

Woman: "Isn't there anything you can prescribe me?"

The above scene is certainly apropos of satire, but within a decade doctors predict they'll be able to help the concerned woman with her depreciating beauty, wrinkled skin and rapidly curving spine.

That's right. The days of professor Aloysius' Stupendously Satisfying Youth Tonic - 90 percent snake oil, 9 percent WIPP drippings, 1 percent ethanol - are over. Geneticists are currently working on isolating the genes that activate senescence - or aging - in an effort to increase human longevity and it's likely that products with names like Regener-X or Juven-oxyproven-ile are destined for general consumption.

Many argue the sciences attempt to reveal the mystic secrets of the natural world. However creationistic science, such as increasing the human life expectancy from 74 to 150, is a Pandora's Box of ethical issues; when it comes to genetics, chromosomal studies are a smoking gun in the hands of a toddler.

Genetically modified fruits and vegetables, flies with four wings, glow in the dark mice, stem cell babies for organ harvesting; it's all very interesting. But when genetic discoveries are used to alter the course of human existence, tampering with the natural order is not such a wise idea.

Granted, some of the discoveries from genetic studies of aging will help identify the factors of living a healthier life, but in a society where anything appealing to hedonistic impulses is marketable, genetic anti-aging studies are nothing more than a Svnegali; the findings will be exploited as against the better interests of the scientific community and the public. If life as a commodity can be sold, it will be.

Ironically, the people who want the anti-aging drugs are the ones who need them the least: the young. Most elderly people are satisfied with their careers as transient beings and would scoff at living another 80 years.

Aging is natural, and it's only because of the stigma of repugnance Americans place on growing old that aging is seen as abhorrent. In many other cultures, the old are actually respected, not shoved away in some sterile group home to eat baby food for the last 10 years of their lives.

There is a natural course to life. People grow up, reach sexual maturity, get married, have children and then start to die slowly and painfully. Whether this dying is a result of having children or getting married is still the object of some debate. However, variations of this lifestyle formula have been extant for millions of years and, consequently, humans have developed a moral reasoning in combating problems that arouse through social interaction and natural crises. Because issues of genetics have only existed for a brief snapshot in the human chronological spectrum, our minds have not yet adapted solutions to these new, synthetic problems of morality.

As sophisticated as humans are, our minds cannot be forced to evolve in a decade or two to novel and troubling stimuli. We have the capacity to develop nuclear bombs, clones and extended survival length, but we haven't yet developed the cognitive capacity to appropriately and responsibly handle these inventions.

The existential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that philosophy would always remain leaps and bounds ahead of science. However, science is now hyped up on the amphetamines it has synthesized and is running full speed ahead. This is dangerous, for our teleological science is moving along at such a rate that moral preponderance is being eliminated from the agenda. Like Dr. Frankenstein, we're prone to hypothesize, invent and discover before a full investigation of ethical issues has taken place.

Eric Howerton can be reached at erichow@unm.edu