{"id":79931,"date":"2018-06-22T10:02:21","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T17:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/humanity-first-or-individuals-first"},"modified":"2018-06-22T10:02:21","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T17:02:21","slug":"humanity-first-or-individuals-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/humanity-first-or-individuals-first","title":{"rendered":"Humanity first, or individuals first?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/humanity-first-or-individuals-first2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Humanity is made of individuals; preserving the life of individuals preserves humanity. Thus, life extension and the preservation of our species aren\u2019t incompatible.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>What is it that really matters: preserving individual lives or preserving humanity? Is it more important to grant individuals the option to live as long as they\u2019d like in good health, or is it more important to ensure the preservation of our species? This sort of question isn\u2019t unheard of in the context of discussions of pros and cons of rejuvenation biotechnology; at times, when presented with the possibility of indefinite lifespans, some people reply that focusing on the preservation of our species is more important. This observation is reminiscent of the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.leafscience.org\/are-there-more-urgent-issues-than-aging\/\">other priorities<\/a>\u201d objection, and one could respond to it in the same way. However, this issue is also worth examining from other angles.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Quick comeback: the two goals aren\u2019t incompatible<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A practical remark to make here is that preserving individual lives automatically preserves the human species because the species only exists as long as there are humans. Not everyone agrees that having a population of individuals that live indefinitely is \u201cgood for the species\u201d\u2014be it for fear of overpopulation or of cultural stagnation\u2014but this concept is rather vaguely defined and not objectively measurable. However, here we are stepping into a different territory, one that has been explored in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.leafscience.org\/category\/concerns\/\">other articles<\/a>, so we won\u2019t go there in this one.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.leafscience.org\/humanity-first-or-individuals-first\/\">https:\/\/www.leafscience.org\/humanity-first-or-individuals-first\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Humanity is made of individuals; preserving the life of individuals preserves humanity. Thus, life extension and the preservation of our species aren\u2019t incompatible. What is it that really matters: preserving individual lives or preserving humanity? Is it more important to grant individuals the option to live as long as they\u2019d like in good health, or [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":418,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-life-extension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/418"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}