Forward Thinking: Is it ethical to live longer?

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Venki Ramakrishnan considers both why we might live longer, and the dilemmas this raises.

In the last few years, medical advances have led to treatments that really do offer the potential to tackle life-threatening cancers and debilitating diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

In discussion with Nuala McGovern, Venki also explores the questions such treatments raise. Initially, they will be expensive, and we already have a global society in which there is a direct link between life expectancy and affluence; will access to these treatments, or lack of it, increase that disparity? And although your incurable disease may now be cured, what about the rest of your quality of life? Can the planet support an increasingly needy older and older generation? Does trying to live longer become a selfish act?

Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan heads a research group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

This is the first in a series of four programmes from the Oxford Literary Festival, presented by Nuala McGovern and produced by Julian Siddle.

Recorded in front of an audience at Worcester College, Oxford.