Advancing Life, Dismissing Death

Throughout this quarter in “Culture, Medicine, and the Body”, we studied and compared perceptions of health and medicine by investigating the very social fabric that informs these notions. The pattern of biological commodification that Western medicine exemplifies became increasingly obvious through the weeks but in our final sweep of examining and questioning this trend, we focused on the recent and relatively uncharted field of bio-regenerative technology. The sophisticated experimentation currently underway that uses human embryonic stem cells (hES cells) to expand our understanding of life by regenerating it reflects the value that our society places on eliminating death and reversing ageing. The popularity of portrayals of immortality and supernatural abilities in the media confirm societal interest in the indefinite extension of life. As biotechnology improves, these once-fantastical plots in science fiction novels and movies represent a distinctly possible reality.

In the plot of any captivating story, a twist arises that complicates or thwarts the efforts of the characters that then slows the realization of their goal. Based on this simple analogy and on the hubris of Western biomedicine, I argue that the repercussions of our intentional and unscrupulous altering of the natural processes of life and death will incur consequences that future societies will be ill-equipped to handle. Who will benefit from technologically perpetuated life and what will this mean for unaffiliated populations? Additionally, in the purported “crisis of old age”, will the current trend of biotechnology eliminate health disparities or escalate them?

Both assigned articles acknowledge the crisis of old age and question the methods that fields like economics and science use to reverse it. Melinda Cooper writes extensively about the World Bank’s preoccupation with the globally growing elderly population since the extant resources and infrastructure cannot absorb the vast addition to society that result from the baby boom. Cooper explains that the crisis is even more extensive than this issue of population support because instead of addressing questions of infrastructure, we focus on research and “a much more malleable concept of biological limits, one that situates age as a movable threshold between surplus and waste, obsolescence and renewal”, or concepts like stem cells (Cooper 3). The effect that capitalism has on our understanding of life and death is well-documented as its tenets of productivity and reaching full potential influence the mindset that biotechnology’s use of regenerative medicine reduces the human waste that otherwise occurs in death. The commodification of life has been confirmed in our study of Western medicine this quarter to which Cooper responds that it resulted in “a profound legal reconfiguration of the value of human biological life” (Cooper 13). She further explains that, “the potential person will not be commodified – but the surplus life of the immortalized human stem cell will enter into the circuits of patentable intervention” (Cooper 13).



Courtesy of Mode Weekly



The cartoon above depicts Michael Jackson, a now deceased pop icon who famously underwent several plastic surgeries to alter the shape of his nose. Stem cells, according to Geron’s Annual Report from 2000, “can develop into any of the body’s cells, including heart, muscle, liver, neural and bone cells…due to this ability for self-renewal, hES cells are a potential source for the manufacture of all cells and tissues of the body”, which is why the depiction shows Michael Jackson with a regenerated nose (cited in Cooper  14). This comic relief regarding stem cell research and the future abilities that an individual may have in recreating organs and other cells may actually be a possibility soon. The optimization of body image and personality that individuals in Western culture already demonstrate through plastic surgery and age-reversal therapy could escalate to unforeseen levels if this technology allows the resuscitation of life and denial of death.

Several examples of immortality in pop culture exist like vampire legends and tales about hidden resources found in nature like special water that ensure immortality for its human users. Tuck Everlasting, a novel by Natalie Babbit that was published in 1975, explores immortality and the hardships that come with it. The main character befriends a family who drank from a spring of water that made them immortal and toils to guard their secret from a society that would surely capitalize on this resource. The plan that the family hatches goes awry and the unhappy ending implies that mortality is a necessary process that should be accepted. The image below shows the romanticized portrayal of life for the immortal boy, Jesse Tuck.

Courtesy of The Film Journal

Another example, the popular Twilight series, tells the story of another immortal family of vampires. The human main character lusts after the immortality that her transformation into a vampire would offer her, a notion that many in our society today seem to harbor through our emphasis on age-reversing and life-prolonging technology and medicine. The image shows a similar perception of immortality to Tuck Everlasting’s portrayal. The vampire family from the series are also characterized as beautiful, established, individuals who have the good fortune of living forever with optimal physical and mental qualities.



Courtesy of bloodrinako



Lafontaine’s “The Postmortal Condition” mirrors Cooper’s account in that she also discusses our dismissal of death and fixation on an ever-increasing lifespan. She brings up the same themes that these pop culture examples present. “The technoscientific desire to indefinitely prolong life is based on a particular conception of human perfectibility”, she writes of the true desires behind our “our quest for immortality” (Lafontaine 301). The patent laws that Cooper mentioned in “Resuscitations: Stem Cells and the Crisis of Old Age” pass because of science’s supposed mission to improve the quality of life for those with incurable conditions among other medicinal reasons. However, we clearly have other agendas too. Lafontaine speaks to this, “quoted by many researchers as the miracle solution to human weakness and death, nanotechnologies embody the technoscientific ideal of a world without mortality” (Lafontaine 304). Society values an increased quality of life for those that are privileged enough to access these technologies but the subsets of society that purchase exorbitant organs from other countries and invest in cryogenics represent a small portion of the global population. I wonder what the social landscape of the world will look like in the future if only the most powerful and affluent individuals preserve their existence while everyone else-those in developing countries especially- remain exposed to the same inequities that threaten their health today.  

Bibliography:

Cooper, Melinda. "Resuscitations: Stem Cells and the Crisis of Old Age." Body & Society. 1st ed. Vol. 12. London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2006. 1-23. Print.

Lafontaine, Celine. "The Postmortal Condition: From the Biomedical Deconstruction of Death to the Extension of Longevity." Science as Culture 18.3 (2009): 297-312. Print.