I have often argued that many political disagreements that seem like differences in fundamental values are really disagreements over the right means to achieve common ends. That is certainly true of many of the issues that divide libertarians from liberals on the one hand and social conservatives on the other. However, there are some exceptions to this generalization. Cato Unbound’s recent debate over the desirability of radical life extension technology (which could potentially extend human lifespans for decades or centuries) highlights an especially stark divergence of this type – one that definitely does separate libertarians from at least some social conservatives in a fundamental way. To me, and to most libertarians, it seems pretty obvious that life extension is an extraordinarily good thing in and of itself. Perhaps some negative second-order effects of this technology could outweigh its vast benefits. But those negative effects would have to be truly enormous to outweigh the massive benefits of decades or centuries of extra lifespan. This is especially true, given the fact that life extension research seeks to extend not merely lifespan, but “healthspan” – the length of time during which we will remain reasonably vigorous and healthy (see Aubrey de Grey’s lead essay in the Cato debate).
In his contribution to the Cato debate, conservative bioethicist Daniel Callahan clearly takes a different view:
I had a child who died a few months after birth, and I considered that tragic as did everyone else, but when my mother died at 86 of cancer, no one considered it a tragedy or even a great evil. Those who knew her said at her funeral that