Enhancement Ethics and the Molecular Genetics of Aging

描述(申请人提供)：分子遗传学研究进展 细胞老化将干预人类衰老过程的前景提高到 大大延长了人类的寿命。这种干预措施的发展 将使社会面临解释、使用和规范的挑战 终极基因增强技术：一种可以让我们 在细胞水平上改变人类生命的一个基本常量。 该项目旨在将两个正在进行的研究计划的工作结合起来 开始应对这些挑战。第一个是埃里克的研究 Juengst，Maxwell Mehlman和Thomas Murray一直在进行关于伦理的 以及普遍存在的由基因增强带来的公共政策挑战 技术。伦理分析和公共政策制定的框架 由这项研究产生的结果将在这里应用于抗衰老的情况 干预，既是对框架的测试，也是为了看看它在 这个案子。第二个资源是其他合作调查员的工作， 斯蒂芬·波斯特、彼得·怀特豪斯和罗伯特·宾斯托克，关于临床和社会 人类衰老过程的意义。这项研究将被用来确定 通过提供当代景观来分析这个项目中要分析的问题 社会实践、价值观和信仰，即激进的寿命延长可以 挑战。通过协作，我们将寻求预测以下问题 抗衰老干预可以为三个群体筹集资金：个人 以及可能会使用它们的家庭，可能会提供 他们，以及将塑造他们的背景的公共政策制定者 可能会变得可用。该项目的方法将是分析和论述的： 我们将在以下基础上进行批评、构建和提出论点 现有信息和我们以前的工作，通过定期的养生法 研究会议和协作写作。这项工作将由一个 顾问团；Carol Donley，文学中心联席主任， 西拉姆学院医学和卫生专业；迈克尔·福塞尔，编辑 《抗衰老医学杂志》；琳达·乔治，研究中心副主任 杜克大学老龄化与人类发展研究；托马斯·默里， 总统，黑斯廷斯中心。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Advances in the molecular genetics of cellular aging raise the prospect of intervening in the human aging process to dramatically extend the human life span. The development of such interventions would confront society with the challenge of interpreting, using and regulating the ultimate genetic enhancement technology: a technology that could allow us to change a basic constant of human life at the cellular level. This project is designed to combine the work of two ongoing research programs to begin to address these challenges. The first is the research that Eric Juengst, Maxwell Mehlman and Thomas Murray have been conducting on the ethical and public policy challenges that are posed generically by genetic enhancement technologies. The framework for ethical analysis and public policy development generated by that research would be applied here to the case of anti-aging interventions, both as a test of the framework and to see what it yields in this case. The second resource is the work of the other co-investigators, Stephen Post, Peter Whitehouse and Robert Binstock, on the clinical and social meanings of the human aging process. That research will be used to identify the issues to analyze in this project, by providing the landscape of contemporary social practices, values and beliefs that radical life extensions could challenge. Collaboratively, we will seek to anticipate the issues that anti-aging interventions could raise for three constituencies: the individuals and families that might use them, the health professionals that might provide them, and the public-policy makers that will shape the context in which they might become available. The project's methods will be analytic and discursive: we will be critiquing, constructing and proposing arguments on the basis of existing information and our previous work, through a regimen of regular research meetings and collaborative writing. This work will be overseen by an expert group of advisors; Carol Donley, Co-director, Center for Literature, Medicine and the Health Profession at Hiram College; Michael Fossel, Editor, Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine; Linda George, Associate Director, Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, Duke University; and Thomas Murray, President, The Hastings Center.