Making Life Like Groundhog Day.

What if you could take today, health-wise, and freeze your state of health for an indefinite period of time? Would you do it?

Of course, that depends on how healthy you are today. If I had cancer or heart disease today or if I was in excruciating pain, I would hardly want a replay tomorrow or forever. But if I were in good health, I might jump at the chance to maintain my current healthy state in order to avoid what I know was coming up, or at least what I have seen happen to older people around me.

I've never wanted to live forever. My reasoning was that my idea of perpetual life was that of a decreasing ability to function, a kind of decaying, living purgatory where there is no cure and no relief. What would I look like and how would I feel at, say, 150? Could I keep up? Would I be able go to the bathroom on my own? Would anybody other than a freakish handful want to have sex with me?

Now that I am on the lower edge of my mid-forties I am starting to feel the consequences of decisions I made when I was young and invincible. And yet, when I take care of myself, I still feel pretty good. Except that I have this propensity to throw blood clots which can be kept under control by ingesting a certain amount of rat poison each day. Would a pill that kept me in my present state preclude the possibility that someday I might be able to stop taking the rat poison? And would the long-range effects of eating rat poison each day negate the benefits of the pill? But what if I can hold out long enough for the doctors to find out why I have this condition? By that time medical science may be able to concoct a personalized cure for my problem. Conceivably, I could take the cure and restart my healthy limbo.

These are just some of the questions that came to me as I read Justin's post on bioethics at Classical Values.

For now, I take accounts of medical speculation (cure for cancer, regenerative treatments, etc) on about the same level as I take environmental doomsday predictions. I want to see proof. In humans. However, I admit that I find the prospect of living better, healthier much more alluring than choking on chlorofluorocarbons. Maybe I want to believe that these particular scientists can find the Fountain of Youth.

This isn't the same as living forever. I suspect that at some point I would just get tired and want to stop. What then? Would I have to go to Kevorkian Court to get a death sentence? If I just stopped my regimen how long before my body catches up to my age and kills me? I think I would want to die not at physical age 150 but physical age 43 because the whole idea of this pill would be to end suffering. It would be a cruel joke if after another 100 years of good health I now had to endure X number of years in agony. So it occurs to me that we would have to radically change suicide and euthanasia laws, no?

And what about population? If all of us that are alive today are still alive 100 years from now, would we have to institute mandatory birth control? Would we manufacture babies al a Brave New World?

Then I start to think weird. Right now, life fairly sucks. Health goes up-and-down. My job is not working out so far. Money is tight. Do I want to live life forever in this state? Would the prospect of another 100 years give me the opportunity(ies) to change my life for the better or lull me into a century-long procrastination? If there is always tomorrow, what do I really have to get done today? 

If I won the Powerball (I am obsessed, yes) this Saturday, and most, though not all, of my immediate problems are solved, would I be more inclined to extend the party? This is in consideration, of course, that as an ex-broker I would know what to do with the money to insure a life-long income no matter how long the life and that I wouldn't go off and buy drinks for the world.

As is embarrassingly obvious by now, I have no idea what I'm talking about and I am confusing health with longevity. Maybe I will die when I'm 83. Maybe I'll be dead by my mid-fifties. Who knows? All I know is that I don't want to grow old and die sick. I don't want to die right now, either. I don't want to stay in my current limbo and I don't want to be told the precise date of my demise. I do want to be healthy, wealthy and wise but I'll settle for the first two. There are enough foolish rich people out there to convince me that they have the best that life provides.

So let's say it's 83 for me because the fifties are too damn close for comfort. What would it be worth to check out in perfect health instead of helplessly watching my body and mind deteriorate? What if I could bench 250 and run a marathon at 70? What if when I die I retain all my hair and teeth and sported no wrinkles? What if I was learning new languages and starting new endeavors right up to the end?

Again, I am confused. Why did I have to start this in the first place? Why have I descended to the lowest rhetorical tricks and filled the page with questions? Why, Justin of Classical Values, why did I have to read your post in the first place?

Okay. No more blogging on bioethics, I promise. Sort of. Just get me the goddamned pill already.

Comments

[Eric Scheie]

That's Justin for you! I can't count the number of times he's forced me to "descend to the lowest rhetorical tricks" and "fill the page with questions."

:)

[Maggie]

Yeeks, did you ever think of just live-blogging C-Span today? This post was about as painful as listening to Robert Byrd....he verballly ran around in circles today just like you!

But Byrd won't take the little pill I have waiting for him...he is about 150 yrs. old now isn't he?

[Daniel]

Uh, gee... thanks, Maggie. Too much thinking, I guess.