They oppose the extension of healthy, active human life beyond its current limits. They are, quite literally, pro-death. Scientists at the conference reported on research to retard aging and restore the youthfulness of cells and organs. It's all very far from clinical practice, but promising. That sounds great, if a tad optimistic.
Regular people look on such research with admiration and hope.
Not so the pro-death philosophers. Callahan, a political liberal, was echoed by the University of Chicago's Leon Kass, the leading neoconservative bioethicist. Both Kass and Callahan have been arguing for years that open-ended medical progress is an affront to nature and humanity. Both promote stat-ic, closed definitions of medicine and health. Both find markets, technology and scientific research far too subservient to the individual desire for life, health and biological self-determination.