From Leon Kass of the American Enterprise Institute, "Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotech and the Pursuit of Perfection," given January 9:

Should aging research deliver on its promise of adding not only extra life to years but also extra years to life, who would refuse it? . . . To say no to this offer seems perverse. But I want to suggest that it may not be—that there are in fact many human goods that are inseparable from our aging bodies, from our living in time, and from the natural human life cycle by which each generation gives way to the next. . . .

What if everybody lived life to the hilt, even as they approached an ever-receding age of death in a body that looked and functioned like that of—let’s not be too greedy—a 30-year-old? . . . What would relations between the generations be like if there never came a point at which a son surpassed his father in strength or vigor? What incentive would there be for the old to make way for the young, if the old slowed down little and had no reason to think of retiring—if Michael [Jordan] could play until he was not forty but eighty? Might not the prolongation of life span with vigor lead to a prolongation

in the young of functional immaturity—of the sort that has arguably already accompanied the great increase in average life expectancy experienced in the past century? One cannot think of enhancing the vitality of the old without retarding the maturation of the young.

. . . A concern with one’s own improving ageless ness is finally incompatible with accepting the need for procreation and human renewal: a world of longevity is increasingly a world hostile to children.

From Mark Blitz of Claremont McKenna College, "Technology and Political Responsibility," given February 19:

Genuine reflection on what makes our goals good and on the place of thought in enriching or even threatening these goods is a central task if we are to govern technology responsibly, especially given the emergence of biotechnology. . . . I have argued that the basic ends we seek and experience have not yet been terribly much changed, and in any event not obviously for the worse, by technological changes in communication and transportation, by television and phonographs and the rest. At least, if we are aware of what we might lose, we can try to find substitutes. One might now fear, however—when the basic or natural ways of longevity and procreation are so subject to change and manipulation—that we have reached a situation where the experience or organization of happiness in these root bodily facts will be distorted or reduced, and that this is more broad and less reversible than what may not always have been, but has now become, the expected pace of historical change. Technology does not only promise here, but threatens. At risk is not some subtle mistake about . . . the necessary range, depth, risks, and extremes of passion and thought, which biochemical manipulation brings about, but, rather, the form in which vital human experiences have always existed.

Amy Laura Hall of Duke University Divinity School spoke on "Technology and Parenthood" March 11:

Hall argued that our society often transforms scientific developments into icons—tempting idols, really—that offer false hope for a utopian future. Noting that scientific developments are often mistakenly accepted as unqualified advances, she drew a connection between the 1950s campaign to promote atomic energy and today’s appeal to the double helix as a symbol of the apparent malleability of human nature. These discoveries, she argued, provide an object lesson about the need

to attend to the peril as well as to the promise of scientific discoveries. Warning of a new era of eugenics made possible by current biotechnologies, Hall called for greater moral scrutiny of the technological enterprise and appealed to the virtue of "unconditional love" as a polestar to guide the new biology and new genetics.