Bailey reports on IEET Longevity Dividend seminar

Is Living Longer Worth It?

Pursuing the longevity dividend at Transvision 2007 in Chicago

Ronald Bailey | July 24, 2007

CHICAGO—In advance of the World Transhumanist Society’s annual confab, Transvision 2007, the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) held a pre-conference meeting in a non-descript ballroom at the Fairmont Hotel. The room was packed with 50 or so people interested in the issue of securing the “longevity dividend.” Not everyone in the audience would call themselves “transhumanists” but all were interested in figuring out how to sell longer lives to the public. This was not a crowd of wild-eyed utopians. The audience was diverse—about one third women and two-thirds men, and ranged from doctors, professors, and economists to people who had lived in alternative communities and even a few high school students. One might think that longer, healthier lives should be an easy sell, but, in fact, there are people who believe that dramatically extending human lives would be a bad idea.