The Guardian recently reported that Moderna, one of the leading firms that developed the mRNA vaccine for COVID-19, is well on track to developing treatments for cancer, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases. With research and manufacturing capacities accelerated by the pandemic, Moderna stated that vaccines will soon treat many diseases beyond infectious viruses. In the case of cancer, this medical technique begins with a biopsy of the patient’s tumour, identifying the mutant genes and proteins not found in healthy cells, manufacturing a bespoke mRNA vaccine that teaches the body to produce antigens that target proteins on the surface of mutated cells, thereby triggering an immune response to cancer. If the technique is effective, the vaccine signifies not only a long-awaited cure for cancer, but a dramatic change in human health and longevity, an evolutionary event in the history of a species on the living planet.
This triumph of medical science deserves recognition and applause. Conversely, its ramifications will drastically affect how people step into a longevity not previous possible. In a technocratic society, medical progress is lauded as an unalloyed good. Death is a technological and scientific problem that can be dispatched with sufficient innovation and knowledge. At the heart of this endeavour lies the following thesis: if the human body is purely material, bound by natural laws of bio-chemistry, then the problem of disease can solved via techno-scientific breakthroughs that intervene in the biological causes of disease. The same thesis can be applied to aging: by identifying the biological processes of aging, the deterioration of the body, the erosion of function at the cellular and molecular level, science can one day arrest or even reverse the process of aging. From repairing the telomeres involved in cell senescence, to reducing levels of oxidation in the blood stream, immortality—the stuff of mythical fantasy—appears within tantalizing reach.
At the same time, the prospect of greater longevity calls into question the inherent sanctity of a finite human life. Without detracting from the triumph of medical science, the prospect of longevity and immortality poses larger problems for modern cultures that already struggle with meaning and purpose. In “Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity,” Stephen Jenkinson argues that Western cultures are, by in large, afflicted by death phobia and impaired by grief illiteracy. The orthodoxy of this death-phobic establishment marshals every measure available to stave off our pending demise, regardless of consequence. Because Death conceived as Life’s arch enemy, no effort is spared in defence of the latter. This implicit and pervasive belief, held as a given and with the fervour of religious doctrine, plays out in painful drama in hospital rooms and bedsides across nations. Families insist on medical intervention, regardless of the agonizing consequences of treatments that buy more time but degrade life’s quality. Underneath these desperate measures looms an unbridled terror that refuses to submit to Death’s final grip.
Is death the definitive antithesis to life? The postulation of the two in opposition gives rise to a marshal spirit that fights Death tooth and nail. As per Dylan Thomas, we do not go gently into that good night; we rage and rage against the dying of the light. Yet, despite humming machines and beeping monitors, there remains the unabating intuition that a life worthy of the name cannot be reduced to lungs that breathe and a heart that beats. There is an irrepressible essence to life’s fullness that is more than a functioning mass of flesh and blood. The living animus of our existence is inseparable from the fact of our inevitable end. There is no arising without subsiding, no presence without absence. Death and Life are inextricably bound, two facets of the same unity. Deny one and we discard the other; resist one and the other is diminished.
With prospect of death deferred, the trajectory of a human life loses direction. In a modern culture that prizes personal choice and exploration, the developmental path of the younger generation can stretch out over many years compared to their predecessors, who married, raised children, and shouldered the responsibilities of adulthood from an earlier age. In her essay, “Child-Man in the Promised Land,” Kay Hymowitz has observed a troubling trend among a segment of young American males, who seem caught in a period of prolonged adolescence. They eschew responsibility, indulge in games, acquire gadgets, and pursue sex without commitment. The child-man, as Hymowitz describes him, is a boy who doesn’t know how to grow up, who meanders in arrested development. This period of prolonged immaturity has a steep price. By denying or delaying his own ontogenesis, the child man betrays himself by squandering his potential and diminishing his character during the formative years of youth. This extended period of adolescence impedes the progressive stages of growth over a human lifetime, each successive stage deepening and integrating the provisional progress of previous stages in the larger work of maturation.
There is a teleological arch to a finite human life, a series of passages that lend shape and import to the preceding period. The playful innocence of childhood is sweet next to the angst of adolescence. The wisdom of elderhood redeems the foolishness of youth. Death seals the account of a life, either wasted or accomplished. Along this passage, each moment gives weight to the preceding years. How one befriends adversity, make beauty out of heartbreak, is significant precisely because one day the ledger will be settled and the balance paid. Knowing that the end is final, each stage of life has a propulsive force, driving us toward completion that renders our past sacred and our future worthwhile. In this sense, death does not vanquish life, but facilitates its fullness by drawing out its potential within a scope of urgency.
In a death phobic culture, the prolongation of life may not be a boon that so many desperately pined for. Without the vision of an end, we may find ourselves in a state of suspension. There is little impetus to push ourselves beyond the familiar, to relinquish outmoded templates of meaning, to leave the comforts of convention and discover the freedom afforded by maturity and age. We may forfeit the one source of meaning that gives weight to our days. Languishing in an interminable purgatory, we may find ourselves in the most abject of miseries: too tired to live but too afraid to die.
As an undergrad, I read Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book, When bad things happen to good people. Kushner recalls an episode from The Odyssey, when Odysseus was held captive and made an unwilling paramour by the goddess Calypso. Kushner asks: Why would an immortal goddess fall in love with a lowly mortal? Kushner ventures that it is precisely his mortality that regales Odysseus with dignified standing. Because his days are numbered, each moment of his life is invaluable. With no hope of recovering the years lapsed, his choices and actions are of lasting consequence. In contrast, the immortal goddess lives in aimless perpetuity; her days are innumerable and therefore cheap. Nothing she does is of ultimate import. In a twist of irony, there is a magisterial beauty to the mortal’s brief life; his inevitable end imbues him with a gravity that the gods envy.
The affliction of thanatophobia (the fear of death) ossifies into a generalized avoidance in matters of death, which in turn diminishes the collective ability to identify, apprehend, and articulate the matters that attend our mortality. This aversion reduces our lives to a fraction and impairs the deeply humanizing potential of a good death. In a letter to to Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouy, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes:
I am not saying the we should love death, but rather that we should love life so generously, without picking and choosing, that we automatically include it (life’s other half) in our love. This is what actually happens in the great expansiveness of love, which cannot be stopped or constricted. It is only because we exclude it that death becomes more and more foreign to us and, ultimately, our enemy.
If opposition to death indicates a limited appreciation for life, then the embrace of death signals a more fulsome apprehension of life’s totality. The invitation stands in each waking moment. This moment will not come again. This day will not repeat itself. Even this breath is singular and fleeting. Is the ephemeral nature of our existence a glaring flaw in the design of the universe? Or is this a crowning achievement — that everything arises and subsides, and therefore in the flux of change there is always degeneration and renewal? In holding both life and death in the sphere of acceptance, we participate more fully in the completeness of the universe itself.
If I was afflicted by a terminal illness that could be treated with an mRNA-based immunotherapy, I will not foreclose the possibility of undergoing treatment. At the same time, I do not cleave to the hope of longevity or immortality. At some point, it is both good and right that I give death its due. Regardless of the marvels of medical advancement, questions of meaning, value, and agency do not fall within the purview of science; rather, they are the task of inner work and honest reflection. Because death looms on the horizon for each of us, we recognize the poignancy Mary Oliver’s words in “The Summer Day”: Doesn’t everything die, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?