The ethics of imposing immortality upon a dog

Great Debates
1

I had a weird dream last night, in which I was escaping on foot and via improvised vehicles built from junk, from terrorists, or maybe an invading army, who may or may not have been zombies, through a ruined city that also had some very picturesque suburbs; in one of these suburbs, I was invited into a garden party where the hosts offered to make my dog immortal.

The other members of my group (people I don’t recall from real life, but in the dream, appeared to be close friends) were all for it, but I had a pang of conscience. Would it even be right to make my dog immortal?

The process involved nanomachines that would be injected into the subject and would, over a period of time, replace parts of the subject’s body that were about to wear out - including neurons - and it would do this seamlessly - basically an upgraded, robust and practically perfect version of the mechanism of the natural, but fallible, cellular repair process that many organic entities already have.
Suffice it to say, I was happy enough to accept that this process would not destroy the dog and merely replace it with a copy or a philosophical zombie (those are other debates, not this one). I was convinced that this process would, as promised, confer the property of practical immortality on the dog.

The dog could still be killed by massive sudden trauma or poisoning, or whatever - this is preservation against disease and natural forms of death, not absolute invulnerability, although there was an enhanced package available where I could buy a subscription where the nanomachines would upload the configuration as a continuous stream, and this would mean the dog could be recovered from backup, but again, I digress.

My misgivings were mainly of the form: is it right for me to make this animal immortal - the outcome of that will be that the dog outlives its normal lifespan - sure, it never experiences the frailty of old age, but also misses out on that pleasant gentleness and sweet afternoon-nap tiredness that also comes with age, and is not necessarily a bad thing.
It means that the dog would outlive me (the immortality treatment was only available for dogs) and have to watch me, and everyone else die, and presumably be passed on to another keeper, who would also die, and so on.

Now, I don’t think this predicament is necessarily bad, and I don’t think it would necessarily be a bad thing for someone to accept as an informed choice, or indeed, reject if they so desired.

But is it ethically OK to impose that on a being that cannot express the choice? Should I make my dog immortal if I can?

2

If the dog already had that protection in place, would it be ethically OK for you to remove it from one who can’t express the choice?

3

You mean killing something? This isn’t that discussion.

4

I’m just trying to grok your question; you ask if it’s ethically OK to impose this treatment on a dog that (a) has a normal lifespan, and that (b) “cannot express the choice” — and I’m asking whether you’d also wonder if it’s ethically okay to remove that treatment from “a being that cannot express the choice”, such that it’d then live out a normal-dog lifespan (not, y’know, dropping dead right then).

5

I don’t think it’s the same topic. This is about imposing something notionally good, without consent. The other question is something else (and probably goes down the rabbit hole of whether it’s OK to eat meat)

6

But you do everything else without the dog’s consent. It really doesn’t consent to anything in its life. It’s driven by either its own biology or your restrictions.

7

(This is somewhat reminiscent to a discussion of whether vaccines should be mandatory. Maybe your dream was your sleeping self’s interpretation of this controversy.)

Ask yourself if you would be OK with someone else to applying this technology to YOU. If not, why not.

And, compare this to an adult who has to make a decision for a child’s wellbeing.

I suspect that if this technology existed, there would be a lot of people who WOULD use it, so they would have a lifelong companion. To exaggerate, the world would eventually be “dogs, all the way down.”

8

All dogs go to heaven, so they are already immortal.

9

I suppose the key difference is the permanence

10

Making a choice for a being that is incapable of choosing is generally OK.

The dog won’t miss you for that long. Sure, he won’t understand what is happening, but he also doesn’t understand light switches and door handles, so I think he can get by.

11

Eventually, that dog is either going to end up homeless or with an abusive owner, So no thanks.

12

I would have answered the invitation with, “Me first or no dice.”

13

I don’t know about immortality, but I would sure love some technology that gave dogs an extended life span.

14

We can’t actually get consent, but we do tend to consider what the dog would prefer when making our decisions. We don’t go solely by our own whims or the dog’s biology. Dogs clearly have preferences.

For example, we get them the toy they like. Within reason, we get the food they like. We presume the dog doesn’t like scratching at fleas, so we get flea meds.

So I do think it would be unethical to make a decision about giving immortality to your dog without considering what they would actually prefer. Would they enjoy the longterm repercussions?

To me, what I see in the OP is the huge potential for a lot of suffering the dog wouldn’t want, with no way for it to be able to communicate this to anyone to have their suffering ended. There are things that would not be traumatic enough to kill, but would be unpleasant. Hunger. Thirst. Massive pain for anything that the system could repair. The dog could easily become homeless, living a crappy life on the street. The dog could be abused because you won’t be alive to stop it.

The only way I’d consider it is if you could then remove it, or at set up ways to painlessly euthanize the dog if certain conditions are not met.

15

So it would eventually become the Dog of Theseus.

Would it even be the same dog?

16

Yep - it’s like we do a lot of things for our children and friends and family, without their consent, even though they can consent - we buy gifts they may not appreciate, we cook them meals they may not enjoy (although in both cases, we hope they will) - but I don’t think we’d surreptitiously make a human immortal as a surprise.

17

This is not planned to be a digression.

What would you have said if technology existed to give your child life extension technology? In this scenario, it can only be done in the womb or before. Again, you are imposing life extension on a being that does not have the ability to choose. My instinct would be to say I would definitely do this, and in corollary, I should also agree to immortalize my dog… (for the sake of argument, assume that just because your child can choose to end its life at some time in the future is still an ethical decision as you are forcing your child to be in a position to perform suicide which they may or may not see as ethically challenging).

My gut feel is this depends on whether you see life as sum total good or sum total bad as a general rule.

On assumption that ‘sum total bad’, to take the scenario to its extreme, if you are against immortalizing your dog, you should have a component of your will that states that any dog owned by you still living when you die should be euthanized. As it will no longer be under your benevolent supervision and you have no guarantee that it will not fall back under the blanket ‘sum total bad’ concept and suffer. The next stage would be to say that the safest position would then be that preventing bringing new life into being would be the default position.

On this alone, I lean towards ‘sum total good’ and would provide my dog (and child) such treatment.

18

I think I would be more or less wrestling the same dilemma, more or less, although with one important difference - an immortal human can become more independent and self-reliant than an immortalised pet dog.

19

Fascinating dream. Reminds me of Clifford Simak’s City in some ways.

An immortal dog, always at the peak of fitness, could eventually figure out that it is a predator and start killing things. If it lives long enough it could become quite good at it, too. I’m reminded of a late Asimov story where an abandoned planet is only inhabited by feral dogs.

Or perhaps the dog will eventually get an abusive owner - perhaps someone who might find it amusing to hunt immortal dogs, perhaps only wounding them to see if they can repair themselves.

Neither of these outcomes are optimal. .

20

Are you the same person who was a five year-old? Most of your atoms have been replaced since then.