What reassurances do the community need regarding life extension?

Evidence from studies of community attitudes and an analysis of film portrayals

Mair UnderwoodSchool of Social Science

The University of Queensland, Australia

The importance of community attitudes• Developments in biotechnology (e.g. GM foods) have demonstrated

that public opinion determines:• the research trajectory• the entry and reception of new technologies

• Public opinion is a crucial constraint• Yet biogerontologists:• dismissive of public attitudes (Settersten Jr et al 2008).• disparaging the public’s “breathtaking stupidity” (de Grey 2004).• failed to communicate effectively with the public (Partridge, Lucke and Hall

2010) as the majority of community members have no knowledge of biogerontological research (Partridge et al 2011).

The larger study

• Australian Research Council Discovery Project - “Knowledge and attitudes about life extension technology: Public and stakeholder perspectives”.• Examined attitudes of:• the community (Underwood et al 2009, Bartlett and Underwood 2009)

• 57 individual interviews and 8 focus groups with Australians aged 20-89• policymakers (Bartlett and Underwood 2009)• researchers in ageing (Underwood, Bartlett and Hall 2009)

• Found limited knowledge of biogerontological research

An alternative frame of reference

• Referenced conceptualisations of life extension in popular culture from literature, television and movies. • They saw these sources as a legitimate basis for discussing life

extension.• Back in the 1930’s a novelist called Aldous Huxley wrote a novel called “After

Many A Summer”, … in which a very wealthy American wanted to go on living forever, and he did it by eating carp livers or something, but it reduced him to the status of an ape. Maybe a précis, or synopsis of that would be useful to present to future focus groups, as a way of helping to focus on what the issues are (Focus Group 1 – Older Community).

An analysis of 19 filmsMovie (year) Famous names (actor unless noted) Genre (from IMDb)The Asphyx (1973) Sir Robert Stephens Sci-fi, HorrorZardoz (1974) Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling Fantasy, Sci-fiThe Hunger (1983) Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon,

David BowieFantasy, Horror, Romance

Cocoon (1985) Don Ameche, Brian Dennehy, Jessica Tandy, Steve Guttenberg

Drama, Sci-fi

Highlander (1986) Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery Action, Adventure, Fantasy

Cocoon: The Return (1988) Don Ameche, Jessica Tandy, Steve Guttenberg, Courtney Cox

Adventure, Comedy, Mystery

Golden Years (1991) Felicity Huffman. Created by Stephen King Drama, Horror, Sci-fi

Death Becomes Her (1992) Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis Comedy, Fantasy

Orlando (1992) Tilda Swinton, Billy Zane. Novel by Virginia Woolf

Drama, Romance

Movie (year) Famous names (actor unless noted) Genre (from IMDb)Interview with the Vampire (1994)

Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater. Novel and screenplay by Anne Rice

Horror, Romance

Gulliver’s Travels (1996) Ted Danson. Novel by Jonathan Swift Adventure, Family, Fantasy

A little bit of soul (1997) Geoffrey Rush ComedyVanilla Sky (2001) Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz,

Kurt RussellMystery, Romance, Sci-fi

Tuck Everlasting (2002) Sissy Spacek, William Hurt. Novel by Natalie Babbitt

Drama, Romance, Fantasy

Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004)

No-one of note. Action, Adventure, Horror

The Fountain (2006) Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz Drama, Romance, Sci-fi

Dr Who: The Lazarus Experiment (2007)

David Tennant Sci-fi

Dorian Gray (2009) Ben Barnes, Colin Firth. Novel by Oscar Wilde.

Drama, Fantasy, Thriller

In Time (2011) Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried Action, Sci-fi, Thriller

Methods

• Detailed notes on the characters, dialogue and action of each film were taken. • Scripts or screenplays were downloaded and analysed • Notes that resulted were analysed according to the following research

questions:1. What methods were used to achieve life extension?2. How was the pursuit of life extension depicted? 3. What did the films suggest about the characters’ interest in life extension and the choice to extend life?4. How was the experience of an extended life depicted at both individual and societal levels?

Results - The means of life extension

• Vampirism (The Hunger, and Interview with the Vampire) • Alien in origin (Cocoon, and Cocoon II: The Return) • Unclear (Highlander and Orlando)

• Mythic symbolism (e.g. the fountain of youth, the tree of life):• liquid or water (Death Becomes Her and

Gulliver’s Travels)• extract from a Guatemalan tree (The

Fountain)• orchid (Anacondas). • spring of water emerging from a tree (Tuck

Everlasting).

Interview with the Vampire

Scientific life extension

• Dr Who: • “Hypersonic soundwaves to destabilise the cell structure and a metagenic program to

manipulate the coding in the protein strands”.

• The Fountain: • A compound from a Guatemalan tree rejuvenates a Macaque through:• repair of bodily injuries and deterioration• reversal of the degeneration of neural activity produced by ageing (neuroscientist, Ari

Handel, co-wrote the film).

• 42% of films (n=8) • Anacondas:

• Researchers discover the Blood Orchid (Perenia Immortalis) which can prolong cellular life.

• A Little Bit of Soul: • Researchers investigating progeria used a virus to

correct faulty genes and immortalise cells.

The pursuit of life extension• Presented as ground-breaking• Potential to change the world forever (A little bit

of soul, Dr Who)• “Biggest medical discovery in history”, “bigger

than penicillin” and even “bigger than Viagra”. Failure to pursue life extension as a “crime against humanity” (Anacondas). • “The most important advance since Rutherford

split the atom, [and] the biggest leap since Armstrong stood on the moon” (Dr Who).• The next logical step in our evolution (In Time).

• Life extension scientists: • Tunnel vision, arrogant, irrational, reckless. • Reprimanded for recklessness and told has lost perspective (The

Fountain). • “Renegade scientists” created the means of life extension (Zardoz). • Stereotypical ‘mad scientist’ ignores all of his colleagues’

suggestions to follow protocol and reduce risk (Golden Years).

• Inspired by individualistic motivations e.g. selfish desire to extend one’s own life or the lives of loved ones, desire for power and money

Discouraging enthusiasm about life extension• Life extension research as unscientific:

• “This isn’t science! You’ve no right to experiment with this” (The Asphyx).

• as “beauty therapy” rather than science (A Little Bit of Soul).

The Fountain

Golden Years

Life extension as risky and dangerous• The Asphyx• Individuals had to be on the brink of death before they

could extend their lives

• Anacdondas• High death toll (n=6) as a result of life extended snakes

• Hidden risks• May only deceptively appear to be young and healthy

(Death Becomes Her, Gulliver’s Travels).• Dr Who: Life extending experiment opens a “Pandora’s

box” resulting in activation of dormant genes “evolution rejected 40 million years ago”.

Dr Who

The Asphyx

Secretive and inadequately controlled• Researchers allowed to ignore scientific protocols and guidelines for

ethical research because the goal justifies the means. • “This Doctor of yours has got something real important locked up inside his

head. They’d let him start up [his research] again if he was Norman Bates [star of the famous Psycho movies]” (The Golden Years).

• The pursuit and means of life extension will be kept secret from the general community (42% of films).

Unnatural and unholy• Unnatural or defying or violating nature (n=7)• Religious terms (n=8, 42%). For example,

immortals:• have ‘the devil in them’ (Highlander) • have ‘sold their soul to the devil’ (Tuck Everlasting). • are like god, thus the pursuit of human immortality

is:• “blasphemy” (Tuck Everlasting)• “heresy” (The Fountain) • “unholy” (Dorian Gray)• “wrong … we’re all of us merely creatures of God, not

God” (The Asphyx).

• Life extension research funded by Satanists (A Little Bit of Soul).

The choice to extend life

• Life extension was presented as choice that the individual should make for themselves after being informed of all consequences.• Cocoon movies: choice is individual and should be respected.

• 3 films (Cocoon, Tuck Everlasting, Gulliver’s Travels): life extension is something most, if not all people, would want. • “If people find out about the spring they’ll trample over each other to get to

that water” (Tuck Everlasting).

Dorian Gray

• Featured in the majority (74%) of films• Some given a choice (e.g. Highlander, Tuck

Everlasting). • Not always a completely informed choice

(e.g. Death Becomes Her, The Hunger, Dorian Gray).

Choosing life extension

• “Do you have any idea what it’s like growing up a woman and a Satanist? It isn’t easy I can tell you. Can you conceive of how terrified I am of ageing and death? To be tortured with the loss of beauty in this life and the promise of boiling oil in the next?” (A Little Bit of Soul).

• The only exceptions: • Cocoon movies: rational individuals who did not want to age and die.• A Little Bit of Soul: arthritic lady and prematurely ageing child. Should be used to

restore rather than enhance

Vanilla Sky

• Approximately 60% of films• Selfish, vain, fearful, irrational and even

crazy. • Motivation: fear of ageing and death• As an alternative to cosmetic surgery (Death

Becomes Her)

Choosing not to extend life

• Approximately half of the films (n=9) • Immediate mortality over life

extension (Death Becomes Her, Dorian Gray) • Normal, calm, rational and mentally healthy individuals,

typically the heroes of the films. • Very little is said about the reasons for deciding against

life extension suggesting that it is normal and natural.

Death Becomes Her

The experience of an extended life

• Benefits outweighed by negatives• Eternal beauty is a mask for decrepitude (Death Becomes Her, Gulliver’s

Travels).• Pleasures of an extended life wear thin:

• “I can assure you that pleasure is very different to happiness. I mean some things are more precious because they don’t last” (Dorian Gray).

• Benefits:• experiencing lots of different things

(Orlando)• including many pleasurable experiences

(Dorian Gray)• witnessing lots of history (Highlander) • collecting riches and antiquities (Hunger,

Highlander)Dorian Gray

The experience continued

• Loneliness (26%), in many cases immortals are socially isolated and ostracised. • No lasting love or repeated heartbreak (26%)• Loss of the ability to have children (16%). • Exceptions:

• Immortals have lasting relationships as both partners are immortal (Cocoon movies). • Immortals having children (Cocoon: The Return, Orlando).

Highlander

• 52%: Bored, tired, jaded, cynical, aimless, frustrated, stagnating and longing to die. • “The day comes when you’ve had enough.

Your mind can be spent even if your body’s not. We want to die. We need to” (In Time).

• “Nightmare” (Vanilla Sky), “curse” (Dr Who), “not really living” (Tuck Everlasting, In Time).

The societal experience• Life extension would create or exacerbate social

divides (32%)• Access would be unequally (and unfairly) distributed

(21%)

• Those with extended lives were represented as a drain on society (21%) • Vampires (The Hunger, Interview With

the Vampire)• Lazarus replenished his own energy by

draining that of others (Dr Who)• Depend on unextended to provide food

and labour (Zardoz, In Time)

Mortality as more valuable than immortality

• Zed (Sean Connery) “mentally and physically vastly superior” to the immortals (Zardoz). • “There can be only one”, immortals

battle for “the prize” only to find it is mortality (Highlander).

Zardoz

Alternative means to achieve immortality• Eulogy of Ernest (Bruce Willis) who chose mortality:

• “We are gathered here today to honour the passing of a man of courage and of vision. … A brilliant academic as well as a rugged outdoorsman, Dr Menville pursued with vigour a variety of pursuits, not just to attain some personal ambition, but to enhance the world for us, and make it a better place then he found it, oh and that he did …. This man has, in his own way, learned the secret of eternal life, and its here among us in the hearts of his friends, and the secret of eternal youth right here in the lives of his children and his grandchildren, and it is my opinion that our beloved Ernest is one man that will indeed live forever” (Death Becomes Her).

• Achieving immortality through works and children is presented as much more appropriate and acceptable than the selfish pursuit of life extension.• The exception:

• Cocoon movies: • Extended life and unextended life as equally valid options• No apparent judgment of the individuals who make different choices

Why the exception? (The Cocoon movies)• Because they feature characters who are

much older than the characters featured in other life extension films? • Is life extension a more valid option once one

is nearing the end of the natural lifespan? • In only other film with character of

comparable age (Golden Years) life extension not a choice, and little info on experience, so the age-appropriateness of life extension could not be tested

Cocoon: The Return

Discussion

• These films appear to draw on myth, religious texts and historical literature• Epic of Gilgamesh: immortality should be achieved through lasting

works of culture and civilisation, not pursued at the physical level. • Life extension comes with hidden dangers (myth of Tithonus) who

is granted immortality but not eternal youth. • Extended lives are a curse (the Wandering Jew and Sisyphus). • The only individuals who would choose life extension, and ignore

the biblical limit of life, are bound to be evil; they are those damned to suffer in the afterlife (Rosen 1996:128).

Cultural bias against life extension

• From our earliest stories to modern sci-fi, immortality comes at a terrible cost of alienation, ennui, stagnation (Rosen 1996), childlessness (Hendrix 1996) and is best as a hope and never a reality (Rabkin 1996). • Even in children’s stories: the

immortals in Peter Pan and Hitty, Her First Hundred Years were insufferably vain and isolated (Lundquist 1996).

To what extent do these films reflect community attitudes? • Do not appear to be an accurate reflection of levels of community interest

• Qualitative: 56% of a targeted sample of Australians would consider using a life extension technology (Underwood et al 2009).

• Quantitative: older (60-99 years) Americans (Cicirelli 2011)• about ¼ held attitudes that were positive toward living beyond the current maximum• about 1/5 held attitudes that were positive to some degree toward living forever.

• Are an accurate reflection of community concerns:• boring and repetitive• long-term relationships would suffer (Kogan et al 2011)• that it would mean the extension of chronic illness• that life extension was unnatural and playing God• would be unequally distributed (Partridge et al 2010).

Recommendations

1. Assure that life extension science, and the distribution of life extension technologies, are ethical and regulated and seen to be so.

2. Assuage community concerns about life extension as unnatural or playing god.

3. Assure that life extension would involve an extension of healthy lifespan.4. Assure that life extension does not mean a loss of fertility.5. Assure the community that life extension will not exacerbate social

divides, and that those with extended lives will not be a burden on society.

6. Create a new cultural framework for understanding life extension.

Conclusion• The majority of the 19 films were cautionary tales. • Most individuals have little or no knowledge of biogerontological

research. • Biogerontological community frequently dismissive of community

concerns, yet a failure to address these has the potential to negatively impact on:• the research trajectory• the entry and reception of new life extension technologies.

• It is time for biogerontologists to enter community discussions so that community members do not have to rely solely on fictional accounts for their understandings of life extension.

• Acknowledgments: • Prof Helen Bartlett (Monash University) and Prof Wayne Hall (The University of Queensland).• Funded by the Australian Research Council.