Bioethics beyond the lifespan.

摘要

What are our responsibilities for a future we will not live to experience? How should we think, morally speaking, about a world that will not include us? Environmentalists are now asking these questions with regularity. They demand that we think about the severity and frequency of storms and droughts predicted to occur in the second half of the 21st century and consider which low-lying land masses will be underwater if the polar ice caps completely melt-events that may occur after many of the readers of this essay are dead. Certainly many parents and grandparents think locally, if not globally, about their own demise, especially in terms of the material goods and spiritual legacy they should bequeath to their progeny.