No. But if they could make my best furry friend age more slowly I might do that.
This is where it gets complicated (for me… this is all IMHO, after all). Everyone/everything dies. This technology does not prevent the animal from dying.
Extending life is not always an ethically correct choice, for humans or animals. I look doubly askance when the subject cannot speak for themselves on the matter.
I think it’s an . . . unexamined perspective that looks at this hypothetical tech and says that of course it’s right to use not because I want the pet to live longer, but the pet wants to live longer.
And, I 100% believe that were this tech available, it would result in more unwanted/stray/abandoned cats (my current pet, but pick your animal). It’s technology that purports to solve a problem of “humans are sad when their pet dies”, however, the animal will hopefully be someone’s pet when it dies.
As a pet owner, I hope/expect to be able to ensure my animal gets good and loving care for its whole life. If I were to extend its life so it could outlive me and my heirs, how can I guarantee that care? I don’t know if this makes sense, but I feel like creating a new reality for my cat in which she outlives multiple homes and caregivers and faces a questionable future at those inflection points would represent a failure on my part to live up to my responsibility as a pet owner.
I disagree, mostly. Sure, not always, extending the life of someone in pain from terminal illness isn’t ethical, but extending the healthy lifespan of human or animal is, IMHO almost always the ethically correct choice.
Let’s reverse it. When is shortening the life of a healthy animal the ethical choice?
My dogs don’t seem to want to die. I’m sure that they want to live to the next hour, the next day, the next week. And they will feel the same way in an hour, in a day, in a week.
I think the opposite. If you have a permanent family dog, then you aren’t going to go to the pet store to buy one, meaning you won’t be supporting puppy mills. The reason that some people are resistant to spaying and neutering is because their dog lives such a short time, and they want to preserve them by breeding them. Then they have far more puppies than they know what to do with, so they end up in the shelter.
But in that time, it will have given joy to numerous people, and most of those people wouldn’t have to deal with that death. I had 2 calls today about dead dogs. Obviously the owner is pretty broken up, but I’ve known most of these dogs all their lives, too, at this point, and I’ll be missing them, too.
As dogs age, their owners start getting sad, long before they die. They know it’s coming, and they see every day the deterioration of their loved companion. It’s not just about the death, it’s about a few years leading up to their death.
Your heirs may have heirs as well, and they’ll have heirs. Lots of people would be willing to take a dog that is already well trained and socialized, that they don’t need to worry about getting older and dying.
You know the dogs that almost never get adopted out of shelters? Old dogs. Few people want to get a dog that will die on them right after they get attached to it.
If no one really wants to keep it, then you could always euthanize it rather than leave it homeless or in a shelter, it doesn’t make them unkillable. If it’s shared joy with several generations of family, then it may be ready to take a rest anyway, having had a fuller and more fulfilling life than any dog currently could.