UR TV CAST

Looking back over surveys of the best available expert opinion in these matters, all that I can find have been wildly optimistic. According to the best minds of 1969 we should already be living for 50 years longer on average than we did then.However, suppose that all these difficulties, and more, are overcome. Biologists know an enormous amount more than they did in 1969, and they have infinitely more powerful computers to help them analyse the data they are getting. They may find themselves in fifty years’ time playing with real biological Meccano, able to strip down, debug and rebuild non-functioning human beings; and willing to do so if their patients are rich enough.It is morally certain that the attempt will be made, and that some of them will go wrong and result in huge suffering to the victims.

Bill Gates VI may come into being like his great-grandfather’s software – in several versions, and only start working properly around version 3.11. You can defend this prospect: nothing a human experimenter could do could exceed some of the cruelties of nature, and humans at least might learn from their mistakes and care about their victims.The only justification for playing God is to make a better job of things than God does. The history of medicine over the last 150 years shows that it is perfectly possible to do so; however, it also shows that we often can’t be bothered to improve much on the natural order. It would be perfectly possible to wipe out all sorts of ghastly Third-World diseases for a fraction of what the West spends on pet food or cosmetics.But to judge from the evidence we would rather feed our family pets than other people’s children. The contrast is even more striking where old people are concerned. You don’t need high-tech medicine to improve an NHS geriatric ward right now. If brain tissue transplants ever do become a reliable technique for curing Alzheimer’s disease, then it is a safe bet that the waiting lists will far exceed the life expectancy of most of the Alzheimer’s sufferers.Any science fiction author who has really considered the prospect of immortality has ended up depicting a society in which euthanasia is practised as well.

We haven’t really faced up to the prospect of a society in which every old person is a wanted old person. But this may be more because it is so distasteful for us to consider than because it is so very unlikely or so distant from what already happens.A chilling detail from the Shipman case is that no one found anything unnatural or unexpected in the deaths of any of his victims until he made a profit from one after killing perhaps 150 others. It’s quite probable that in most human societies already, only wanted old people live to be old.With all that said, I still think this is a hopeful development. The selfishness of human nature which these example show up can be exploited if it can’t be eradicated. To offer the powerful and the very rich another 100 years of middle age, is also to give them a huge personal stake in the future.They won’t be saving the planet just for their grandchildren, but for themselves as well: that may not make them nicer, but it is sure to make them behave as if they were. The greatest gift of this kind of medicine would not be immortality, but to make their self-interest more enlightened..

The talks went exactly where everybody knew they would. That is to say, both sides entered without the expectation of progress and had that expectation swiftly confirmed

The talks went exactly where everybody knew they would. That is to say, both sides entered without the expectation of progress and had that expectation swiftly confirmed.
It is fair to guess that the Zimbabweans never had any intention of reaching an agreement with the British. That would have drawn the sting of Mr Mugabe’s campaign of scapegoating the old colonial power far too early. There are still many weeks to run to the election campaign, and Mr Mugabe needs the bogey of Britain and the white farmers for a while yet. The London talks were a time-buying device for Zanu-PF, an attempt to show the international community and their African neighbours that they were doing something to alleviate their country’s slide into anarchy, and to continue with the portrayal of the British government as the colonial oppressor.I have no doubt that the Zimbabwean ministers who went to London will be hailed as brave figures by the official media back home.They need all the boosting they can get. For the past week, the paranoia of the Harare government has been escalating.