140 Lewis D. Solomon

aging techniques as providing the opportunity for the further blossoming of humanity, offering personal and societal benefits of a longer, even more vital lifespan.”

The possibility of preserving our youth, coupled with the postponement of both age-related diseases and a general age-related decline, is seductive. Despite the warnings of technological pessimists, most of us, I believe, would want a longer, healthier existence, especially if the additional years remain ones of physical and mental vitality, not marked by a lower level of cognitive functioning.

The prospect that people will be healthy for most of their old age will alter every phase of human existence. Certainly more people will have several families with a higher proportion of stepchildren. Given the already high incidence of divorce, however, will marriages survive for more than one century? Will other forms of relationships exist to complement or supplement marriage?

Making lives longer raises questions of profound social economic and political impact and presents the specter of gigantic generational clashes, including how to fund Social Security and Medicare for the very elderly and how to provide work and career opportunities for younger generations. Seniors may want to preserve the world as they know it. A ballooning in the population, at least in developed countries, will increase the global demands for food, water, and energy, further burdening the earth. Distributional questions will also arise if only the wealthy are able to afford these procedures that likely will begin with the embryo or fetus and continue thereafter. If only the rich can cheat death through the new techniques, including expensive gene therapies, pressure will build to use public funds to pay for the pre- and postnatal treatments. Cheaper procedures may enable societies to overcome these economic inequities. Other negative consequences may require societal foresight and planning, including constraints on the number of births.

Before we get carried away with the new means to extend human existence, it is important to limit our notions of genetic