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Rivera 1
Katelyn Rivera
Professor Shaffer
English 1A
19 May 2019
Pulling the Plug on Life Extension
Life extension, today, seems to be in the mind for those who want to expand their lives
with whatever means possible. There is a great deal of people today that seem to be obsessed
with extending their life. From cell therapy which is where cells are injected, implanted or
grafted into a human body, to nanotechnology which can detect failure of organs or cells in
which the “nanotech” would rapidly fix it. Life extension although pleasing, will not have the
best benefits to mankind and our planet. Expanding one's life is inhuman, it will lead to resource
scarcity, and an accelerated increase on our home planets climate.
Allison Arieff, a journalist for the New York Times gives us an insight on her opinion
piece titled “Life is Short. That’s the Point.” For years, many have been trying to defeat the
process of aging by finding different ways to extend one’s life. In her opinion piece, Arieff states
“Beneath the surface of this quest for eternal life seems to be an unwillingness on the part of its
proponents to imagine the world without themselves in it. In a very fundamental way, this
tendency is inhuman.” Trying to achieve a higher living rate is in many ways, selfish. Like most
things in life, we all have an expiration date. We are meant to be born, live, and die. As humans
are meant to live and die, no amount of research and technology can stop that from happening.
As the word “immortality” becomes more popular within our generation, life on our
home planet will have an increase demand on resources which will cause mayhem. One of the
Rivera 2
most important aspects in considering expanding your life would be resource scarcity. Extending
your life is not only inhuman but it will also increase the lack of resources. In an article titled
“Resource Scarcity” states, “The pressures of population growth, economic growth and climate
change are placing incredible stress on finite, non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels and
minerals. Demand for these resources will only intensify as new global actors emerge and join
the competition for the world’s remaining deposits of minerals and fossil fuels.” If one is to
extend their life by forty or one-hundred years, our resources that we are now lacking will most
likely be unavailable. In another article titled “How Resource Scarcity and Climate Change
Could Produce a Global Explosion” written by Michael T. Klare, a professor of Peace and World
Security Studies and an author of various books on petroleum and resources states “In many
