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Credits
2006, Trailer. (NYU).
Director/Writer/Editor: Jonathan Sanden
Producers: Jonathan Sanden and Alexis Ward
Director of Photography: Chris J. Lytwyn
Cast: Gregory Waller, Austen Cooke, Clare Stevenson, Gene Morra, Ralph DeMatthews.
About
From Ponce de Leon to Dorian Gray and beyond, the quest to halt aging has been one of the key sources of legend and imaginative literature. “I first became interested in the subject,” says filmmaker Jonathan Sanden, “because it’s such a fundamental human yearning that has been explored throughout all art, literature, and religion: the fear of death and the desire to live forever.” In Sanden’s film Extropy, a geneticist whose own father is succumbing to Alzheimer’s believes he had discovered a way to stop the aging process. He turns to an eccentric businessman to fund his endeavor, but with time running out for his father, begins testing his discovery on himself.
Says Sanden of his film, “I wanted to explore the idea of viewing aging as a disease (which some people do as part of a movement known as transhumanism). Biological aging is partly the result of wear and tear, but it is still controlled by a precise genetic mechanism (or mechanisms) which means that there might be a way to influence it or even control it.”
In particular, says Sanden, telomeres, the “sections of DNA on the ends of each chromosome” may “be one of the core causes of the aging process, and research is being conducted today to explore the regenerative implications of this.” In the course of his research for the film, Sanden met with a Yale geneticist “who is attempting to use telomerase-based gene therapy to regenerate damaged tissue.”
Sanden was as influenced by current debates on the limits of science as much as he was by contemporary genetic research. “What will be the limit of our ability to control our own biology with technology - if there is any?” he asks, “How are we going to morally and ethically evaluate this limit, and then how do we enforce those decisions?” And certainly the intersection of advances and ethics is represented by another subject of the film, the 1990s biotech boom with the merger of science and industry.
Before becoming a filmmaker, the Connecticut-born Sanden was pursuing the field of genetics. A number of short films made as undergraduate at New York University led him to graduate work in film at the school. Extropy, his senior thesis, “brought me back to the world of genetics. At a time when a lot of popular culture seems so trite,” says the filmmaker, “and amazing discoveries in technology, medicine, and genetics that are changing the world seem to be overlooked or ignored by the popular culture and media, I was moved to make a film that embraced realistic scientific material.”
As a Molecular Gerontologist who performs the type of work indicated in the film short "Extropy', I have to comment in the glaring lack of moral questioning on the protagonist's self-experimentation. This goes against the very foundation of medical and scientific ethics. Additionally, I have to challenge the idea many transhumanists have regarding the notion that their genes are their own property, to do with what they will. Consider this: are the genes you inherited from your parents yours or theirs? will the genes that you pass to your children belong to you, or them? We are stewards of the genes we have, not the owners, and as such, the human race should have some say in how germ line changes are conducted. I truly believe that as long as no real harm is done, a person should have the right to do as they wish. Should it be allowable for a person who wants to modify themselves genetically to do so only after they surrender their right to procreate? I don't know, but genetic modification that results in germ line modification is speciation, not transhumanism.
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