X-Message-Number: 18509
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 12:43:41 -0800 (PST)
From: jeff davis <>
Subject: Re: Subject: Soreff, Kass

In Message #18500
From: 
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 10:00:41 EST

Dr.* Ettinger refers to Jeff Soreff's comment:

> >the head of the US's "bioethics" council,
> >Leon Kass, is on record as opposing lifespan
extending research.

and asks:

Could we have a citation on this, please?

            ----------------------

I did a google search with "leon kass immortality life
extension" and came up with 67 hits.  Below is a
sampling.

 http://reason.com/opeds/rb030600.shtml

Intimations of Immortality 
By Ronald Bailey 
March 6, 1999

Will you live forever? There s a better chance than
you might think according to biologists on a panel at
the Extended Life/Eternal Life conference at the
University of Pennsylvania. The conference, co-hosted
by the John Templeton Foundation and the Center for
Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, brought
together an all-star cast of biologists, clinicians,
theologians and philosophers to consider whether
extending human life is technologically imminent and
theologically acceptable. The science is dazzling, the
theology, wary and anxious. 

Is extending human life a good idea? Absolutely not,
say bioethicists Leon Kass from the University of
Chicago and Daniel Callahan from the Hastings Center.
... 

         ---------------------------

http://www.thedailycamera.com/extra/last-rights/

Cheating death: the quest for immortality 
Some see average life spans of 150, 200 years and more
in future 

By Kristin Dizon
Camera Staff Writer 

..."To know and to feel that one only goes around once
and that the deadline is not out of sight is for many
people the necessary spur to the pursuit of something
worthwhile," wrote Leon Kass, a "media-shy" University
of Chicago professor. Kass, who wrote an essay on the
benefits of mortality in the 1980s, is one of the few
voices questioning the value of indefinite life spans.

...
            ----------------------------------

From the Alberta Report, at

http://www.albertareport.com/25arcopy/25a43cpy/2543ar03.htm

The New Immortals 
October 12,
1998

...Eminent University of Chicago medical ethicist Leon
Kass raised a host of other moral questions about the
quest for longevity in his 1983 paper, "The Case for
Mortality," which, he says, he still stands by. It is
not surprising, argues Dr. Kass, that our generation,
which proclaims the meaninglessness of life, hopes to
cure its emptiness by extending it. There is little
hope of that, however, thinks Dr. Kass, for as the
first-century B.C. poet Lucretius wrote: "Not by any
length of life is any new pleasure hammered out." If
the lifespan were increased only 20 years, asks Dr.
Kass, "would professional tennis players really enjoy
playing 25% more games of tennis? Would the Don Juans
of our world feel better for having seduced 1,250
women rather than 1,000?" In fact, argues Dr. Kass,
life could become more meaningless. Mortality brings
significance, because "to number our days is the
condition for making them count." ...

         ----------------------------------
* My respect for Robert Ettinger, as the founder of
the cryonics movement, and the man who "wrote the
book" --consider it if you will his "doctoral"
thesis--...  My respect is such that I occasionally
choose to refer to him as Dr., or the good doctor, or
the esteemed Dr., etc. without regard to his having
formally completed a conventional Phd at an
established academic institution.  It's just a
pleasantry--no great matter--which I mention to
clarify, and to gently pre-empt any corrective,
"picture-straightening" impulse.

Best, Jeff Davis

 "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                       Ray Charles









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