The misery inflicted by the
dragon-tyrant was incalculable. In
addition to the ten thousand who
were gruesomely slaughtered each
day, there were the mothers,
fathers, wives, husbands, children,
and friends that were left behind to
grieve the loss of their departed
loved ones.

Some people tried to fight the
dragon, but whether they were brave
or foolish was difficult to say.
Priests and magicians called down
curses, to no avail. Warriors, armed
with roaring courage and the best
weapons the smiths could produce,
attacked it, but were incinerated by
its fire before coming close enough
to strike. Chemists concocted toxic
brews and tricked the dragon into
swallowing them, but the only
apparent effect was to further
stimulate its appetite. The dragon’s
claws, jaws, and fire were so
effective, its scaly armor so
impregnable, and its whole nature so
robust, as to make it invincible to
any human assault.

Seeing that defeating the tyrant
was impossible, humans had no choice
but to obey its commands and pay the
grisly tribute. The fatalities
selected were always elders.
Although senior people were as
vigorous and healthy as the young,
and sometimes wiser, the thinking
was that they had at least already
enjoyed a few decades of life. The
wealthy might gain a brief reprieve
by bribing the press gangs that came
to fetch them; but, by
constitutional law, nobody, not even
the king himself, could put off
their turn indefinitely.

Spiritual men sought to comfort
those who were afraid of being eaten
by the dragon (which included almost
everyone, although many denied it in
public) by promising another life
after death, a life that would be
free from the dragon-scourge. Other
orators argued that the dragon has
its place in the natural order and a
moral right to be fed. They said
that it was part of the very meaning
of being human to end up in the
dragon’s stomach. Others still
maintained that the dragon was good
for the human species because it
kept the population size down. To
what extent these arguments
convinced the worried souls is not
known. Most people tried to cope by
not thinking about the grim end that
awaited them.

For many centuries this desperate
state of affairs continued. Nobody
kept count any longer of the
cumulative death toll, nor of the
number of tears shed by the bereft.
Expectations had gradually adjusted
and the dragon-tyrant had become a
fact of life. In view of the evident
futility of resistance, attempts to
kill the dragon had ceased. Instead,
efforts now focused on placating it.
While the dragon would occasionally
raid the cities, it was found that
the punctual delivery to the
mountain of its quota of life
reduced the frequency of these
incursions.

Knowing that their turn to become
dragon-fodder was always impending,
people began having children earlier
and more often. It was not uncommon
for a girl to be pregnant by her
sixteenth birthday. Couples often
spawned a dozen children. The human
population was thus kept from
shrinking, and the dragon was kept
from going hungry.

Over the course of these
centuries, the dragon, being well
fed, slowly but steadily grew
bigger. It had become almost as
large as the mountain on which it
lived. And its appetite had
increased proportionately. Ten
thousand human bodies were no longer
enough to fill its belly. It now
demanded eighty thousand, to be
delivered to the foot of the
mountain every evening at the onset
of dark.

What occupied the king’s mind
more than the deaths and the dragon
itself was the logistics of
collecting and transporting so many
people to the mountain every day.
This was not an easy task.

To facilitate the process, the
king had a railway track
constructed: two straight lines of
glistening steel leading up to the
dragon’s abode. Every twenty
minutes, a train would arrive at the
mountain terminal crammed with
people, and would return empty. On
moonlit nights, the passengers
traveling on this train, if there
had been windows for them to stick
their heads out of, would have been
able to see in front of them the
double silhouette of the dragon and
the mountain, and two glowing red
eyes, like the beams from a pair of
giant lighthouses, pointing the way
to annihilation.

Servants were employed by the
king in large numbers to administer
the tribute. There were registrars
who kept track of whose turn it was
to be sent. There were
people-collectors who would be
dispatched in special carts to fetch
the designated people. Often
traveling at breakneck speed, they
would rush their cargo either to a
railway station or directly to the
mountain. There were clerks who
administered the pensions paid to
the decimated families who were no
longer able to support themselves.
There were comforters who would
travel with the doomed on their way
to the dragon, trying to ease their
anguish with spirits and drugs.

There was, moreover, a cadre of
dragonologists who studied how these
logistic processes could be made
more efficient. Some dragonologists
also conducted studies of the
dragon’s physiology and behavior,
and collected samples – its shed
scales, the slime that drooled from
its jaws, its lost teeth, and its
excrements, which were specked with
fragments of human bone. All these
items were painstakingly annotated
and archived. The more the beast was
understood, the more the general
perception of its invincibility was
confirmed. Its black scales, in
particular, were harder than any
material known to man, and there
seemed no way to make as much as a
scratch in its armor.

To finance all these activities,
the king levied heavy taxes on his
people. Dragon-related expenditures,
already accounting for one seventh
of the economy, were growing even
faster than the dragon itself.

Humanity is a curious species.
Every once in a while, somebody gets
a good idea. Others copy the idea,
adding to it their own improvements.
Over time, many wondrous tools and
systems are developed. Some of these
devices – calculators, thermometers,
microscopes, and the glass vials
that the chemists use to boil and
distil liquids – serve to make it
easier to generate and try out new
ideas, including ideas that expedite
the process of idea-generation.

Thus the great wheel of
invention, which had turned at an
almost imperceptibly slow pace in
the older ages, gradually began to
accelerate.

Sages predicted that a day would
come when technology would enable
humans to fly and do many other
astonishing things. One of the
sages, who was held in high esteem
by some of the other sages but whose
eccentric manners had made him a
social outcast and recluse, went so
far as to predict that technology
would eventually make it possible to
build a contraption that could kill
the dragon-tyrant.

The king’s scholars, however,
dismissed these ideas. They said
that humans were far too heavy to
fly and in any case lacked feathers.
And as for the impossible notion
that the dragon-tyrant could be
killed, history books recounted
hundreds of attempts to do just
that, not one of which had been
successful. “We all know that this
man had some irresponsible ideas,” a
scholar of letters later wrote in
his obituary of the reclusive sage
who had by then been sent off to be
devoured by the beast whose demise
he had foretold, “but his writings
were quite entertaining and perhaps
we should be grateful to the dragon
for making possible the interesting
genre of dragon-bashing literature
which reveals so much about the
culture of angst!”

Meanwhile, the wheel of invention
kept turning. Mere decades later,
humans did fly and accomplished many
other astonishing things.

A few iconoclastic dragonologists
began arguing for a new attack on
the dragon-tyrant. Killing the
dragon would not be easy, they said,
but if some material could be
invented that was harder than the
dragon’s armor, and if this material
could be fashioned into some kind of
projectile, then maybe the feat
would be possible. At first, the
iconoclasts’ ideas were rejected by
their dragonologist peers on grounds
that no known material was harder
than dragon scales. But after
working on the problem for many
years, one of the iconoclasts
succeeded in demonstrating that a
dragon scale could be pierced by an
object made of a certain composite
material. Many dragonologists who
had previously been skeptical now
joined the iconoclasts. Engineers
calculated that a huge projectile
could be made of this material and
launched with sufficient force to
penetrate the dragon’s armor.
However, the manufacture of the
needed quantity of the composite
material would be expensive.

A group of several eminent
engineers and dragonologists sent a
petition to the king asking for
funding to build the anti-dragon
projectile. At time when the
petition was sent, the king was
preoccupied with leading his army
into war against a tiger. The tiger
had killed a farmer and subsequently
disappeared into the jungle. There
was widespread fear in the
countryside that the tiger might
come out and strike again. The king
had the jungle surrounded and
ordered his troops to begin slashing
their way through it. At the
conclusion of the campaign, the king
could announce that all 163 tigers
in the jungle, including presumably
the murderous one, had been hunted
down and killed. During the tumult
of the war, however, the petition
had been lost or forgotten.

The petitioners therefore sent
another appeal. This time they
received a reply from one of the
king’s secretaries saying that the
king would consider their request
after he was done reviewing the
annual dragon-administration budget.
This year’s budget was the largest
to date and included funding for a
new railway track to the mountain. A
second track was deemed necessary,
as the original track could no
longer support the increasing
traffic. (The tribute demanded by
the dragon-tyrant had increased to
one hundred thousand human beings,
to be delivered to the foot of the
mountain every evening at the onset
of dark.) When the budget was
finally approved, however, reports
were coming from a remote part of
the country that a village was
suffering from a rattlesnake
infestation. The king had to leave
urgently to mobilize his army and
ride off to defeat this new threat.
The anti-dragonists’ appeal was
filed away in a dusty cabinet in the
castle basement.

The anti-dragonists met again to
decide what was to be done. The
debate was animated and continued
long into the night. It was almost
daybreak when they finally resolved
to take the matter to the people.
Over the following weeks, they
traveled around the country, gave
public lectures, and explained their
proposal to anyone who would listen.
At first, people were skeptical.
They had been taught in school that
the dragon-tyrant was invincible and
that the sacrifices it demanded had
to be accepted as a fact of life.
Yet when they learnt about the new
composite material and about the
designs for the projectile, many
became intrigued. In increasing
numbers, citizens flocked to the
anti-dragonist lectures. Activists
started organizing public rallies in
support of the proposal.

When the king read about these
meetings in the newspaper, he
summoned his advisors and asked them
what they thought about it. They
informed him about the petitions
that had been sent but told him that
the anti-dragonists were
troublemakers whose teachings were
causing public unrest. It was much
better for the social order, they
said, that the people accepted the
inevitability of the dragon-tyrant
tribute. The dragon-administration
provided many jobs that would be
lost if the dragon was slaughtered.
There was no known social good
coming from the conquest of the
dragon. In any case, the king’s
coffers were currently nearly empty
after the two military campaigns and
the funding set aside for the second
railway line. The king, who was at
the time enjoying great popularity
for having vanquished the
rattlesnake infestation, listened to
his advisors’ arguments but worried
that he might lose some of his
popular support if was seen to
ignore the anti-dragonist petition.
He therefore decided to hold an open
hearing. Leading dragonologists,
ministers of the state, and
interested members of the public
were invited to attend.

The meeting took place on the
darkest day of the year, just before
the Christmas holidays, in the
largest hall of the royal castle.
The hall was packed to the last seat
and people were crowding in the
aisles. The mood was charged with an
earnest intensity normally reserved
for pivotal wartime sessions.

After the king had welcomed
everyone, he gave the floor to the
leading scientist behind the
anti-dragonist proposal, a woman
with a serious, almost stern
expression on her face. She
proceeded to explain in clear
language how the proposed device
would work and how the requisite
amount of the composite material
could be manufactured. Given the
requested amount of funding, it
should be possible to complete the
work in fifteen to twenty years.
With an even greater amount of
funding, it might be possible to do
it in as little as twelve years.
However, there could be no absolute
guarantee that it would work. The
crowd followed her presentation
intently.

Next to speak was the king’s
chief advisor for morality, a man
with a booming voice that easily
filled the auditorium:

“Let us grant that this woman is
correct about the science and that
the project is technologically
possible, although I don’t think
that has actually been proven. Now
she desires that we get rid of the
dragon. Presumably, she thinks she’s
got the right not to be chewed up by
the dragon. How willful and
presumptuous. The finitude of human
life is a blessing for every
individual, whether he knows it or
not. Getting rid of the dragon,
which might seem like such a
convenient thing to do, would
undermine our human dignity. The
preoccupation with killing the
dragon will deflect us from
realizing more fully the aspirations
to which our lives naturally point,
from living well rather than merely
staying alive. It is debasing, yes
debasing, for a person to want to
continue his or her mediocre life
for as long as possible without
worrying about some of the higher
questions about what life is to be
used for. But I tell you, the nature
of the dragon is to eat humans, and
our own species-specified nature is
truly and nobly fulfilled only by
getting eaten by it...”

The audience listened respectfully
to this highly decorated speaker.
The phrases were so eloquent that it
was hard to resist the feeling that
some deep thoughts must lurk behind
them, although nobody could quite
grasp what they were. Surely, words
coming from such a distinguished
appointee of the king must have
profound substance.

The speaker next in line was a
spiritual sage who was widely
respected for his kindness and
gentleness as well as for his
devotion. As he strode to the
podium, a small boy yelled out from
the audience: “The dragon is bad!”

The boy’s parents turned bright
red and began hushing and scolding
the child. But the sage said, “Let
the boy speak. He is probably wiser
than an old fool like me.”

At first, the boy was too scared
and confused to move. But when he
saw the genuinely friendly smile on
the sage’s face and the outreached
hand, he obediently took it and
followed the sage up to the podium.
“Now, there’s a brave little man,”
said the sage. “Are you afraid of
the dragon?“

“I want my granny back,” said the
boy.

“Did the dragon take your granny
away?”

“Yes,” the boy said, tears
welling up in his large frightened
eyes. “Granny promised that she
would teach me how to bake
gingerbread cookies for Christmas.
She said that we would make a little
house out of gingerbread and little
gingerbread men that would live in
it. Then those people in white
clothes came and took Granny away to
the dragon... The dragon is bad and
it eats people… I want my Granny
back!”

At this point the child was
crying so hard that the sage had to
return him to his parents.

There were several other speakers
that evening, but the child’s simple
testimony had punctured the
rhetorical balloon that the king’s
ministers had tried to inflate. The
people were backing the
anti-dragonists, and by the end of
the evening even the king had come
to recognize the reason and the
humanity of their cause. In his
closing statement, he simply said:
“Let’s do it!”

As the news spread, celebrations
erupted in the streets. Those who
had been campaigning for the
anti-dragonists toasted each other
and drank to the future of humanity.

The next morning, a billion
people woke up and realized that
their turn to be sent to the dragon
would come before the projectile
would be completed. A tipping point
was reached. Whereas before, active
support for the anti-dragonist cause
had been limited to a small group of
visionaries, it now became the
number one priority and concern on
everybody’s mind. The abstract
notion of “the general will” took on
an almost tangible intensity and
concreteness. Mass rallies raised
money for the projectile project and
urged the king to increase the level
of state support. The king responded
to these appeals. In his New Year
address, he announced that he would
pass an extra appropriations bill to
support the project at a high level
of funding; additionally, he would
sell off his summer castle and some
of his land and make a large
personal donation. “I believe that
this nation should commit itself to
achieving the goal, before this
decade is out, of freeing the world
from the ancient scourge of the
dragon-tyrant.”

Thus started a great
technological race against time. The
concept of an anti-dragon projectile
was simple, but to make it a reality
required solutions to a thousand
smaller technical problems, each of
which required dozens of
time-consuming steps and missteps.
Test-missiles were fired but fell
dead to the ground or flew off in
the wrong direction. In one tragic
accident, a wayward missile landed
on a hospital and killed several
hundred patients and staff. But
there was now a real seriousness of
purpose, and the tests continued
even as the corpses were being dug
out from the debris.

Despite almost unlimited funding
and round-the-clock work by the
technicians, the king’s deadline
could not be met. The decade
concluded and the dragon was still
alive and well. But the effort was
getting closer. A prototype missile
had been successfully test fired.
Production of the core, made of the
expensive composite material, was on
schedule for its completion to
coincide with the finishing of the
fully tested and debugged missile
shell into which it was to be
loaded. The launch date was set to
the following year’s New Year’s Eve,
exactly twelve years after the
project’s official inauguration. The
best-selling Christmas gift that
year was a calendar that counted
down the days to time zero, the
proceeds going to the projectile
project.

The king had been undergone a
personal transformation from his
earlier frivolous and thoughtless
self. He now spent as much time as
he could in the laboratories and the
manufacturing plants, encouraging
the workers and praising their toil.
Sometimes he would bring a sleeping
bag and spend the night on a noisy
machine floor. He even studied and
tried to understand the technical
aspects of their work. Yet he
confined himself to giving moral
support and refrained from meddling
in technical and managerial matters.

Seven days before New Year, the
woman who had made the case for the
project almost twelve years earlier,
and was now its chief executive,
came to the royal castle and
requested an urgent audience with
the king. When the king got her
note, he excused himself to the
foreign dignitaries whom he was
reluctantly entertaining at the
annual Christmas dinner and hurried
off to the private room where the
scientist was waiting. As always of
late, she looked pale and worn from
her long working hours. This
evening, however, the king also
thought he could detect a ray of
relief and satisfaction in her eyes.

She told him that the missile had
been deployed, the core had been
loaded, everything had been
triple-checked, they were ready to
launch, and would the king give his
final go-ahead. The king sank down
in an armchair and closed his eyes.
He was thinking hard. By launching
the projectile tonight, one week
early, seven hundred thousand people
would be saved. Yet if something
went wrong, if it missed its target
and hit the mountain instead, it
would be a disaster. A new core
would have to be constructed from
scratch and the project would be set
back by some four years. He sat
there, silently, for almost an hour.
Just as the scientist had become
convinced that he had fallen asleep,
he opened his eyes and said in a
firm voice: “No. I want you to go
right back to the lab. I want you to
check and then re-check everything
again.” The scientist could not help
a sigh escaping her; but she nodded
and left.

The last day of the year was cold
and overcast, but there was no wind,
which meant good launch conditions.
The sun was setting. Technicians
were scuttling around making the
final adjustments and giving
everything one last check. The king
and his closest advisors were
observing from a platform close to
the launch pad. Further away, behind
a fence, large numbers of the public
had assembled to witness the great
event. A large clock was showing the
countdown: fifty minutes to go.

An advisor tapped the king on the
shoulder and drew his attention to
the fence. There was some tumult.
Somebody had apparently jumped the
fence and was running towards the
platform where the king sat.
Security quickly caught up with him.
He was handcuffed and taken away.
The king turned his attention back
to the launch pad, and to the
mountain in the background. In front
of it, he could see the dark slumped
profile of the dragon. It was
eating.

Some twenty minutes later, the
king was surprised to see the
handcuffed man reappearing a short
distance from the platform. His nose
was bleeding and he was accompanied
by two security guards. The man
appeared to be in frenzied state.
When he spotted the king, he began
shouting at the top of his lungs:
“The last train! The last train!
Stop the last train!”

“Who is this young man?” said the
king. “His face seems familiar, but
I cannot quite place him. What does
he want? Let him come up.”

The young man was a junior clerk
in the ministry of transportation,
and the reason for his frenzy was
that he had discovered that his
father was on the last train to the
mountain. The king had ordered the
train traffic to continue, fearing
that any disruption might cause the
dragon to stir and leave the open
field in front of the mountain where
it now spent most of its time. The
young man begged the king to issue a
recall-order for the last train,
which was due to arrive at the
mountain terminal five minutes
before time zero.

“I cannot do it,” said the king,
“I cannot take the risk.”

“But the trains frequently run
five minutes late. The dragon won’t
notice! Please!”

The young man was kneeling before
the king, imploring him to save his
father’s life and the lives of the
other thousand passengers onboard
that last train.

The king looked down at the
pleading, bloodied face of the young
man. But he bit his lip, and shook
his head. The young man continued to
wail even as the guards carried him
off the platform: “Please! Stop the
last train! Please!”

The king stood silent and
motionless, until, after while, the
wailing suddenly ceased. The king
looked up and glanced over at the
countdown clock: five minutes
remaining.

Four minutes. Three minutes. Two
minutes.

The last technician left the
launch pad.

30 seconds. 20 seconds. Ten,
nine, eight…

As a ball of fire enveloped the
launch pad and the missile shot out,
the spectators instinctively rose to
the tips of their toes, and all eyes
fixated at the front end of the
white flame from the rocket’s
afterburners heading towards the
distant mountain. The masses, the
king, the low and the high, the
young and the old, it was as if at
this moment they shared a single
awareness, a single conscious
experience: that white flame,
shooting into the dark, embodying
the human spirit, its fear and its
hope… striking at the heart of evil.
The silhouette on the horizon
tumbled, and fell. Thousand voices
of pure joy rose from the assembled
masses, joined seconds later by a
deafening drawn-out thud from the
collapsing monster as if the Earth
itself was drawing a sigh of relief.
After centuries of oppression,
humanity at last was free from the
cruel tyranny of the dragon.

The joy cry resolved into a
jubilating chant: “Long live the
king! Long live us all!” The king’s
advisors, like everybody that night,
were as happy as children; they
embraced each other and
congratulated the king: “We did it!
We did it!”

But the king answered in a broken
voice: “Yes, we did it, we killed
the dragon today. But damn, why did
we start so late? This could have
been done five, maybe ten years ago!
Millions of people wouldn’t have had
to die.”

The king stepped off the platform
and walked up to the young man in
handcuffs, who was sitting on the
ground. There he fell down on his
knees. “Forgive me! Oh my God,
please forgive me!”

The rain started falling, in
large, heavy drops, turning the
ground into mud, drenching the
king’s purple robes, and dissolving
the blood on the young man’s face.
“I am so very sorry about your
father,” said the king.

“It’s not your fault,” replied
the young man. “Do you remember
twelve years ago in the castle? That
crying little boy who wanted you to
bring back his grandmother – that
was me. I didn’t realize then that
you couldn’t possibly do what I
asked for. Today I wanted you to
save my father. Yet it was
impossible to do that now, without
jeopardizing the launch. But you
have saved my life, and my mother
and my sister. How can we ever thank
you enough for that?”

“Listen to them,” said the king,
gesturing towards the crowds. “They
are cheering me for what happened
tonight. But the hero is you. You
cried out. You rallied us against
evil.” The king signaled a guard to
come and unlock the handcuffs. “Now,
go to your mother and sister. You
and your family shall always be
welcome at the court, and anything
you wish for – if it be within my
power – shall be granted.”

The young man left, and the royal
entourage, huddling in the downpour,
accumulated around their monarch who
was still kneeling in the mud.
Amongst the fancy couture, which was
being increasingly ruined by the
rain, a bunch of powdered faces
expressed a superposition of joy,
relief, and discombobulation. So
much had changed in the last hour:
the right to an open future had been
regained, a primordial fear had been
abolished, and many a long-held
assumption had been overturned.
Unsure now about what was required
of them in this unfamiliar
situation, they stood there
tentatively, as if probing whether
the ground would still hold,
exchanging glances, and waiting for
some kind of indication.

Finally, the king rose, wiping
his hands on the sides of his pants.

“Your majesty, what do we do
now?” ventured the most senior
courtier.

“My dear friends,” said the king,
“we have come a long way… yet our
journey has only just begun. Our
species is young on this planet.
Today we are like children again.
The future lies open before us. We
shall go into this future and try to
do better than we have done in the
past. We have time now – time to get
things right, time to grow up, time
to learn from our mistakes, time for
the slow process of building a
better world, and time to get
settled in it. Tonight, let all the
bells in the kingdom ring until
midnight, in remembrance of our dead
forbears, and then after midnight
let us celebrate till the sun comes
up. And in the coming days… I
believe we have some reorganization
to do!”

* * *

Stories about aging have
traditionally focused on the need
for graceful accommodation. The
recommended solution to diminishing
vigor and impending death was
resignation coupled with an effort
to achieve closure in practical
affairs and personal relationships.
Given that nothing could be done to
prevent or retard aging, this focus
made sense. Rather than fretting
about the inevitable, one could aim
for peace of mind.

Today we face a different
situation. While we still lack
effective and acceptable means for
slowing the aging process[1],
we can identify research directions
that might lead to the development
of such means in the foreseeable
future. “Deathist” stories and
ideologies, which counsel passive
acceptance, are no longer harmless
sources of consolations. They are
reckless and dangerous barriers to
urgently needed action.

Many distinguished technologists
and scientists tell us that it will
become possible to retard, and
eventually to halt and reverse,
human senescence.[2]
At present, there is little
agreement about the time-scale or
the specific means, nor is there a
consensus that the goal is even
achievable in principle. In relation
to the fable (where aging is, of
course, represented by the dragon),
we are therefore at a stage
somewhere between that at which the
lone sage predicted the dragon’s
eventual demise and that at which
the iconoclast dragonologists
convinced their peers by
demonstrating a composite material
that was harder than dragon scales.

The general ethical argument in
the fable is simple: There are
obvious and compelling moral reasons
for the people in the fable to get
rid of the dragon. Our situation
with regard to human senescence is
closely analogous and ethically
isomorphic to the situation of the
people in the fable with regard to
the dragon. Therefore, we have
compelling moral reasons to get rid
of human senescence.

The argument is not in favor or
life-span extension per se.
Adding extra years of sickness and
debility at the end of life would be
pointless. The argument is in favor
of extending, as far as possible,
the human health-span. By
slowing or halting the aging
process, the healthy human life span
would be extended. Individuals would
be able to remain healthy, vigorous,
and productive at ages at which they
would otherwise be dead.

In addition to this general
moral, there are a number of more
specific lessons:

(1) 
A recurrent tragedy became
a fact of life, a statistic. In
the fable, people’s expectations
adapted to the existence of the
dragon, to the extent that many
became unable to perceive its
badness. Aging, too, has become a
mere “fact of life” – despite being
the principal cause of an
unfathomable amount of human
suffering and death.

(2) 
A static view of
technology. People reasoned that
it would never become possible to
kill the dragon because all attempts
had failed in the past. They failed
to take into account accelerated
technological progress. Is a similar
mistake leading us to underestimate
the chances of a cure for aging?

(3) 
Administration became its own
purpose. One seventh of the
economy went to
dragon-administration (which is also
the fraction of the GDP that the
U.S. spends on healthcare).
Damage-limitation became such an
exclusive focus that it made people
neglect the underlying cause.
Instead of a massive publicly-funded
research program to halt aging, we
spend almost our entire health
budget on health-care and on
researching individual diseases.

(4) 

The social good became
detached from the good for people.
The king’s advisors worried about
the possible social problems that
could be caused by the
anti-dragonists. They said that no
known social good would come from
the demise of the dragon.
Ultimately, however, social orders
exist for the benefit of people, and
it is generally good for people if
their lives are saved.

(5) 
The lack of a sense of
proportion. A tiger killed a
farmer. A rhumba of rattlesnakes
plagued a village. The king got rid
of the tiger and the rattlesnakes,
and thereby did his people a
service. Yet he was at fault,
because his priorities were wrong.

(6) 
Fine phrases and hollow
rhetoric. The king’s morality
advisor spoke eloquently about human
dignity and our species-specified
nature, in phrases lifted, mostly
verbatim, from the advisor’s
contemporary equivalents.[3]
Yet the rhetoric was smoke screen
that hid rather than revealed moral
reality. The boy’s inarticulate but
honest testimony, by contrast,
points to the central fact of the
case: the dragon is bad; it destroys
people. This is also the basic truth
about human senescence.

(7) 
Failure to appreciate the
urgency. Until very late in the
story, nobody fully realized what
was at stake. Only as the king was
staring into the bloodied face of
the young pleading man does the
extent of the tragedy sink in.
Searching for a cure for aging is
not just a nice thing that we should
perhaps one day get around to. It is
an urgent, screaming moral
imperative. The sooner we start a
focused research program, the sooner
we will get results. It matters if
we get the cure in 25 years rather
than in 24 years: a population
greater than that of Canada would
die as a result. In this matter,
time equals life, at a rate of
approximately 70 lives per minute.
With the meter ticking at such a
furious rate, we need to stop
faffing about.

(8) 
“And in the coming days… I
believe we have some reorganization
to do!” The king and his people
will face some major challenges when
they recover from their celebration.
Their society has been so
conditioned and deformed by the
presence of the dragon that a
frightening void now exists. They
will have to work creatively, on
both an individual and a societal
level, to develop conditions that
will keep lives flourishingly
dynamic and meaningful beyond the
accustomed
three-score-years-and-ten. Luckily,
the human spirit is good at
adapting. Another issue that they
may eventually confront is
overpopulation. Maybe people will
have to learn to have children later
and less frequently. Maybe they can
find ways to sustain a larger
population by using more efficient
technology. Maybe they will one day
develop spaceships and begin to
colonize the cosmos. We can leave,
for now, the long-lived fable people
to grapple with these new
challenges, while we try to make
some progress in our own adventure.[4]

 

---

[1] Calorie restriction (a diet
low in calories but high in
nutrients) extends maximal lifespan
and delays the onset of age-related
illnesses in all species that have
been tested. Preliminary results
from an ongoing study on rhesus and
squirrel monkeys show similar
effects. It seems quite likely that
calorie restriction would work for
our species too. Few humans,
however, would be willing to put
themselves through a lifelong
hunger-diet. Some researchers are
searching for calorie-restriction
mimetics – compounds that elicit the
desirable effects of lowered caloric
intake without us having to go
hungry. (See e.g. Lane, M. et al.
(1999) “Nutritional modulation of
aging in nonhuman primates,” J.
Nutr. Health & Aging, 3(2):
69-76.)

 

[2] A
recent straw poll at the 10^th
Congress of the International
Association of Biomedical
Gerontology revealed that the
majority of the participants thought
it either probable or “not
improbable” that comprehensive
functional rejuvenation of
middle-aged mice would be possible
within 10-20 years (de Grey, A.
(2004), “Report of open discussion
on the future of life extension
research,” (Annals NY Acad. Sci.,
1019, in press)). See also e.g. de
Grey, A., B. Ames, et al. (2002)
“Time to talk SENS: critiquing the
immutability of human aging,”
Increasing Healthy Life Span:
Conventional Measures and Slowing
the Innate Aging Process: Ninth
Congress of the International
Association of Biomedical
Gerontology, ed. D. Harman
(Annals NY Acad. Sci. 959: 452-462);
and Freitas Jr., R. A.,

Nanomedicine, Vol. 1 (Landes
Bioscience: Georgetown, TX, 1999).