Should Biotechnology be used to Extend the Human Lifespan?
Channel: Artem Alexandra
Date: 2020-04-14

Full article: https://artemalexandra.com/2020/04/16/biotechnology-and-the-avg-lifespan/

Here is a presentation for my Biomedical Ethics class, the first ethics class I have had with in-depth applied ethics (in theories) and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in moral philosophy!

There is no intro or outro because this video is for school, but I quite liked making the PowerPoint – let me know what you think of this style! 

Biotechnology itself contains a host of ethical questions. In this video, my main question is this: who can afford an extended life span? Who currently can? And are the prices currently set to a point in which only the highest socioeconomic class can afford an extended life expectancy? Examples I use include companies like Syngenta with their Golden Rice, Novartis with Kymriah, and then Spark with their Luxturna. Should Kymraih cost three times more than what it ought to? Stem cell therapy costs too much, even considering how much time and money it takes to put in them.

One point that was not covered in the video is this: should we advance the human lifespan at all? The earth can only hold so many humans at once and so extending the human lifespan would have to come with extending the number of livable areas that we have, as well as the amount of food, water, and every other resource. 

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