Serendipity can be both educational and amusing. Not long ago, I made some appreciative remarks about a book by Sherwin Nuland. That post generated more comment traffic than I'm generally used too, which was both novel and welcome. Now, by the merest fortuitous happenstance, I find that Dr. Nuland and Leon Kass are fellow travelers. Small world, eh?

I should declare here that I have no desire to live beyond the life span that nature has granted to our species. For reasons that are pragmatic, scientific, demographic, economic, political, social, emotional, and secularly spiritual, I am committed to the notion that both individual fulfillment and the ecological balance of life on this planet are best served by dying when our inherent biology decrees that we do.

Kudos to YOU, sir!

This remark comes up in the context of an article about Aubrey De Grey, and I am serious about the kudos. Dr. Nuland is informing his readers (quite properly, in my estimation) of his ideological bias. With this I have no complaint, even though I disagree with said bias. It helps that he isn't, like y'know, crafting federal stem cell policy.

Anyway, given his perspective on death and dying, I expected to dislike his article much more than I did. When we flense away the toxic blubber of Kassian doomspeak, we find a rather sensitive and admirable fairmindedness. I truly appreciate Dr. Nuland, who in turn seems to appreciate Aubrey De Grey.

For example...

Though he and his ideas may be sui generis, he is hardly an isolated monkish figure....he has a sheer talent for organization and even for his own unique brand of fellowship. The sheer output of his pen and tongue is staggering, and every line of that bumper crop, whether intended for the most scientifically sophisticated or for the general reader, is delivered in the same linear, lucid, point-by-point style that characterizes all his writings on life prolongation...

I found myself wondering what sort of man would devote the labors of an incandescently brilliant mind and a seemingly indefatigable constitution to such a project.

And what project was that exactly? Strategies for Engineered Neglible Senescence. Basically, a cure for aging. I am always and ever surprised that so many people seem to hate the idea.

Not only does the science seem more than a little speculative, but even more speculative is the assumption on which the entire undertaking is based—namely, that it is a good thing for the men and women now populating the earth to have the means to live indefinitely.

Now THAT is classic Kass-speak, but it's mercifully leavened with a gracious and sincere humility, yielding a much more palatable product.

One of the (many) problems I have with the prose of Leon Kass is that he never sounds more phony than when he is trying to be humble. People who know him say that he really IS a gracious and charming man, but I can only judge him by his execrable writings. He should steal a few pages from Dr. Nuland.

Whether one chooses to believe that he is a brilliant and prophetic architect of futuristic biology or merely a misguided and nutty theorist, there can be no doubt about the astonishing magnitude of his intellect.

Now I ask you, could that have been fairer spoken?

I wanted de Grey to justify his conviction that living for thousands of years is a good thing...De Grey’s response to such a challenge comes in the perfectly formed and articulated sentences that he uses in all his writings. He has the gift of expressing himself both verbally and in print with such clarity and completeness that a listener finds himself entranced by the flow of seemingly logical statements following one after the other. In speech as in his directed life, de Grey never rambles. Everything he says is pertinent to his argument, and so well constructed that one becomes fascinated with the edifice being formed before one’s eyes. So true is this that I could not but fix my full attention on him as he spoke.

Ideological differences aside, we seem to have an unabashed fan on our hands.

Admittedly, some may consider his responses to have the sound of a carefully prepared sermon or sales pitch because he has answered similar questions many times before, but all thought of such considerations disappears when one spends a bit of time with him and realizes that he pours forth every statement in much the same way, whether responding to some problem he has faced a dozen times before or giving a tour of the genetics lab where he works. His every thought comes out perfectly shaped, to the amazement of the bemused observer.

And Dr. Nuland is no mere bemused observer. Regarding De Grey's feelings for his wife, he observes:

...each member of this uncommon pair is touchingly tender with the other. Even my brief 15 minutes with them was sufficient to observe the softness that comes into de Grey’s otherwise determined visage when Adelaide is near, and her similar response. I suspect that his website photo was taken while he was either looking at or thinking of her.

Right on target. As Kevin, over at Imminst.org forums remarked:

it was.... I took it.. Adelaide was on his right.. one of the few moments they had to spend together at the hectic IABG10..

We should all have such critics. I found Kevin's quotes, along with many other good links, over at Fight Aging! Click on over and check out Technology Review's editorials. They made my hackles rise.

Lest any Classical Values readers accuse me of undue credulity, let me disclose my own opinions on these matters. I don't believe physical immortality is possible in the universe as we know it. No matter how long the span of our lives, eventually we will surely die. The laws of physics tell us that nothing physical can last forever.

That being said, I see nothing immoral or foolish in trying to prolong our lives to the best of our freely chosen ability. Just how successful we can be remains unclear at present. What does seem very clear however, is that we can do much more along these lines than we have heretofore accomplished, and that we will probably do better by aiming high. I have long wondered just what sort of payback it is that naysayers derive from the practice of their art. If we don't make an effort we end up with nothing.

Let's say de Grey is wrong, off by a factor of ten in his projections. Rather than living five thousand years we would have to content ourselves with a meager half millennium. Curse the luck. From where I'm sitting even fifty years looks like a good deal. Let's give it a shot. God won't get mad.