The Moral Imperative for Bioethics: Get Out of the Way

As a companion piece to last week's post on the miserable, parasitic institution of modern bioethics, here are a few apropos comments from Steven Pinker: Have you had a friend or relative who died prematurely or endured years of suffering from a physical or psychiatric disease, such as cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, or schizophrenia? Of course you have: the cost of disease is felt by every living human. The Global Burden of Disease Project has tried to quantify it by estimating the number of years lost to premature death or compromised by disability. In 2010 it was 2.5 billion, which means that about a third of potential human life and flourishing goes to waste. The toll from crime, wars, and genocides does not come anywhere close. Physical suffering and early death have long been considered an ineluctable part of the human condition. But human ingenuity is changing that apparent fate. Advances in drugs, surgery, and epidemiology have brought reductions in years lost to more recalcitrant diseases in every age range and in richer as well as poorer countries. As the treatments get cheaper and poor countries get richer, these gains will spread. Biomedical research, then, promises vast increases in life, health, and flourishing. Just imagine how much happier you would be if a prematurely deceased loved one were alive, or a debilitated one were vigorous -- and multiply that good by several billion, in perpetuity. Given this potential bonanza, the ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs