Editing Life extension (section)

===Commentators===
[[Leon Kass]] (chairman of the US [[President's Council on Bioethics]] from 2001 to 2005) has questioned whether potential exacerbation of [[Human overpopulation|overpopulation]] problems would make life extension unethical.<ref>{{cite web | vauthors = Smith S |date=3 December 2002 |title=Killing Immortality |url=http://www.betterhumans.com/Features/Columns/Forward_Thinking/column.aspx?articleID=2002-12-03-4 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20040607195722/http://www.betterhumans.com/Features/Columns/Forward_Thinking/column.aspx?articleID=2002-12-03-4 |archive-date=7 June 2004 |publisher=Betterhumans |access-date=17 July 2009}}</ref> He states his opposition to life extension with the words:
{{Blockquote|"simply to covet a prolonged life span for ourselves is both a sign and a cause of our failure to open ourselves to procreation and to any higher purpose ... [The] desire to prolong youthfulness is not only a childish desire to eat one's life and keep it; it is also an expression of a childish and [[narcissistic]] wish incompatible with devotion to posterity."<ref>{{Cite book | vauthors = Kass L |author-link= Leon Kass |year=1985 |title=Toward a more natural science: biology and human affairs |publisher=[[Free Press (publisher)|Free Press]] |location=[[New York City]] |isbn=978-0-02-918340-3 |oclc=11677465 |page= 316}}</ref>}}

John Harris, former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, argues that as long as life is worth living, according to the person himself, we have a powerful moral imperative to save the life and thus to develop and offer life extension therapies to those who want them.<ref>Harris J. (2007) ''Enhancing Evolution: The ethical case for making better people''. Princeton University Press, New Jersey.</ref>

[[Transhumanist]] [[philosopher]] [[Nick Bostrom]] has argued that any technological advances in life extension must be equitably distributed and not restricted to a privileged few.<ref>{{Cite news | vauthors = Sutherland J |date=9 May 2006 |title=The ideas interview: Nick Bostrom |url=https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/may/09/academicexperts.genetics |work=[[The Guardian]] |access-date= 17 July 2009 |location=London}}</ref> In an extended metaphor entitled "[[The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant]]", Bostrom envisions death as a monstrous dragon who demands human sacrifices. In the fable, after a lengthy debate between those who believe the dragon is a fact of life and those who believe the dragon can and should be destroyed, the dragon is finally killed. Bostrom argues that political inaction allowed many preventable human deaths to occur.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Bostrom N | title = The fable of the dragon tyrant | journal = Journal of Medical Ethics | volume = 31 | issue = 5 | pages = 273–277 | date = May 2005 | pmid = 15863685 | pmc = 1734155 | doi = 10.1136/jme.2004.009035 }}</ref>