This just in from Virginia Postrel, via The Speculist...

The WaPost reports that Leon Kass and friends are promoting what they call an "offensive bioethics agenda....it looks like they want to separate their anti-research agenda from the convictions of Sam Brownback and other religious pro-lifers. They seem to think they'll be stronger politically without their religious allies...

Well good for him! It's nice to see him poking his head out. And best of luck to him in his new "Back To The Bronze Age" political scheme. He's been a public relations disaster for his own team for quite some time now, and I can only hope that he continues his crusade with renewed vigor and fluency, providing the world with many more uniquely memorable soundbites. Who could forget this little gem?

The desire to prolong youthfulness is not only a childish desire to eat one's life and keep it; it is also an expression of a childish and narcissistic wish incompatible with devotion to posterity.

There's nothing quite like initiating a frank exploration of values from a position of overwhelming superciliousness, is there?

...if one could do something about Alzheimer's, if one could do something about chronic arthritis, if one could do something about general muscular weakness and not, somehow, increase the life expectancy to 150 years, I would be delighted.

Oh, yeah. That's sure to win over the little people.

Long time readers may recall that it was Virginia Postrel who first introduced me to the enigma that is Kass. Over the twenty years that I've been reading his wet and windy prose, I've grown almost perversely fond of him. In a sense, the life extension movement is lucky to have such an obvious foil.

And yet, "almost" is the key word here, since it most certainly would be a perverse fondness. Taking the man at his word, we find ourselves looking at a moral monster. He is willing to sacrifice human life on an unthinkably massive scale to promote his idiosyncratic vision of "the good". A few months ago, in this posting I raised the following points...

Point one. Leon Kass cannot win his crusade against life extension.

Point two. He might be able to slow progress down, for a while.

Point three. Such a delay would cost lives. People will die early, who need not have.

Which lead me to the following rhetorical questions...

So what does he think he is doing? He isn't ignorant of this argument. Better men than I have told him much the same thing. Perhaps the Doctor feels that he can do no less. One must fight for human dignity regardless of collateral damage. Perhaps (almost certainly) he will not cede the inevitability. He believes he may yet pull it off.

We'll come back to those thoughts bye and bye. For the next couple minutes let's review the following exercise in triage, and my foaming-at-the-mouth reaction to it, courtesy of the Pesident's Council on Bioethics...

Actually, some of those Council scenarios were pretty good. Try this one on for size. A house is burning down, and there are children in it. In the east wing is a toddler that you just met today. In the west wing is a cryostat containing three dozen frozen blastocysts, produced using the eggs of your dead wife. You are their father. Clearly, you can’t be in two places at once. Do you go east, or west? Is it a big struggle for you?

It took me all of a tenth second to make my choice. I will not stand by and let living children burn to death. I will not, even at the cost of my own “children”. Now, you can play word games here and say that the blastocysts are living too. Yes, yes, they are or at least could become, alive. Granted. Now what’s your point, bright guy? Shall we play at being medieval scholastic logicians? Will you try and convince me that the frozen embryos stand on the same moral plane as somebody else’s toddler? That I should have run west instead of east? Don’t even try, because I won’t believe you. At the end of the day, the “real” children are the ones who need to be fed, bathed, and tucked in. The ones who scream when they burn.

To the nuanced, this might seem awfully either or, mightn't it? If not accorded the same respect as a two year old, the two week old embryo deserves at least SOME human dignity rather than none at all. It would only be when its rights conflicted with those of an older child that we would need to make such an awful determination. Precisely.

If we were just talking about slacker scientists carving up embryos for cheap thrills, then yeah, this is an affront to human dignity. But that is the whole point. This isn't about cheap thrills. This research, this "violation of human dignity" is being done with the best of intentions, to save people’s lives. People with, you know, limbs. And a head. In an over-the-top metaphorical kind of way, lots of kids are being threatened by the flames, even now. Do we run east, or west?

At the time I wrote the above words, my speculations regarding the doctor's thought processes were merely that. But now, comes the New Atlantis, and an answer to rhetorical questions is at hand.

...I don’t know whether the earliest embryo is or is not my equal. I simply don’t know. I see the power of the argument from continuity, and yet my moral intuitions cut in a somewhat different direction, even if the existential choice were between preserving my embryo or rescuing someone else’s child...

Well, huzzah! Given the choice between saving his own embryo or someone else's child, he would probably opt to save the stranger's child. That's more than you'll get out of Gilbert Meilaender. Perhaps we should ask him about Narnia, instead. But let's return our focus to Dr. Kass, who, true to form, is still talking.

...since I don’t know whether the early embryo is or is not one of us, and since the choice before us now is not this child versus this embryo but whether to engage in a speculative project of embryo research, I am inclined not to treat human embryos less well than they might deserve.

Bit of fast footwork there. Don't blink or you'll miss it.

"The choice now before us is not this child versus this embryo..."

Sorry, but that is exactly the choice before us. Or more correctly, the choice that some of us hope to have before us. It is the main reason we, as a society, are having this disagreement. And what are we to make of "a speculative project of embryo research"? The phrase seems unduly and deliberately dismissive when we weigh it against the remarkable results coming out of the laboratories. Why, it's almost a cheapshot.

In order to do so, I don’t have to insist that the human embryo is the moral equivalent of my child.

I sure hope he doesn't hurt himself trying to move that goalpost. And come to think of it, though the question, as such, was raised by Elizabeth Blackburn before the Bioethics Council, it was not followed up on at that time. They had to break for drinks or something.

I can call instead for a certain kind of expansiveness, a certain kind of generosity, a certain insistence that we should not wish to live in a society that uses the seeds of the next generation for the sake of its own.

Whoops! Again with the vigorous saltatory excursions. He's a tricksy one.

Let's try to say things clearly. We are not talking about "The" seeds of "The" next generation here. To phrase it that way is a piece of rhetorical legerdemaine worthy of Classical Values itself. And where's the "moral seriousness" in that?

What we are talking about is taking "some" seeds from "some" rather willing people. The "Next Generation" will still arrive, right on time. We are not strip-mining our future. We are not eating the seed corn. If any one woman should actually want to bear half a dozen fat, chuckling babies, she still has that option.

How I hate it when "should" becomes "must".

This argument appeals to the dignity with which we conduct ourselves, not the indisputable equality of the early embryo. It is an argument grounded in prudence and restraint, not in equality or justice. It is an argument that remembers that we must not sacrifice the opportunities to live well simply in order to try to live longer.

This argument is mere hand waving, a rather pitiful fluttering that moves me not at all. Appealing to my nonexistent dignity is a fool's errand. And even if I had it, I'd sell it in a heartbeat to keep my family healthy. Who among us wouldn't? I'm inclined to say that we must not sacrifice opportunities to live well longer, out of undue concern with imprudent restraint.

And another thing. Stem cell research, of whatever variety, is not congruent with the field of anti-aging research. The latter is not wholly dependent on the former.

Let's say we dropkick the whole cloned stembryo mess right over the fence.
Poof. It's gone. We will still end up with radical life extension by other means. Of course, it will certainly take longer and probably cost more. But it will eventually arrive.

Thought experiment time. Through the miracle of Quantum Flux Modulation, powered by ten megawatts worth of Prigoginic Entropy Shunts, your tired, saggy carcass blooms like a blushin' rose. We could use cell repair nanobots if you prefer, but the end result will be the same. You feel like...a million bucks. Pity it's the freaking twenty fifth century, but at least no specks of nascent human goop were harmed in the production of your perky new corpus. All it took was silicon, electricity, and five hundred years worth of progress in Doubletalk Engineering.

So, how does the average citizen feel about this? Pretty darn satisfied, I imagine. No moral quandaries regarding exploitive biological techniques. No religious objections, because after all, we aren't trying to cheat God. It's like antibiotics and vaccination, only better. It's well known that nothing physical can last forever, and presumably God doesn't mind waiting. We just have a slightly longer cosmic eyeblink to move around in. Wouldn't that be nice?

Here's the thing. Leon Kass would still hate it. It's the thing itself, the lengthened lifespan, that chafes him so. The cellular indignity angle is just a sideshow, a preliminary skirmish. To him, extended life is a tragic societal mistake, no matter how it's achieved. That's why I think he's a moral monster.

On a sunnier note, the Methuselah Mouse Prize has hit the million dollar mark in pledges. Sincere congratulations are in order. To take a wetter and windier tack, I aspire to speak truth to my desires by mentioning that this research is a blessing for every human individual, whether he knows it or not. No, really.

If you like the idea of raging again the dying of the light, you might want to check out "More Than Human", a book about the coming age of advanced therapy and enhancement. Rand Simberg has a review up, with comments from the author, Ramez Naam. I haven't yet read it myself, but I'm aiming to. I hear it's optimistic. I like that.