Given the limited availability, some (and I hope, many) would consider that limiting the use of blood products to research and proven clinical settings would be the correct moral stance.
This reminds me of all the people who say that it's morally wrong to spend money on going to space when there are still problems down on Earth. It's not a zero sum game.
If people find commercially viable uses for blood, it might result in the available supply being boosted greatly.
Rejuvenation of senior citizens by feeding on younger citizens who are part of the workforce is a "zero-sum game", whatever you think the future will be made of.
The amount of blood which could be donated is finite, yes. But it is also far, far greater than the amount which is donated.
Also, it is possible, if unproven, that the benefit to seniors is great, while it is known that the cost in health of donating blood is minimal, and may be beneficial. That, too, would be positive sum.
You want to call it creepy and vampiric? I admit, that’s how it strikes me as well.
But you didn’t say that, you said it was zero-sum. Not so.
And I assume that all the problems stemming from the increasing life expectancy are also positive sum? And planning to do so based upon no established scientific grounds by making the younger population contribute by submitting to a non-zero risk procedure.
You can look at it every way you want, maintaining the elderly population is certainly not a logically positive thing in a ressource-constrained environment. And by ressource, I don't mean blood. That we have morals (which is good) does not make it good from a general logical point of view disregarding social ties.
What if the gov puts in place a simple regulation, like “X% of all harvested blood must be donated to local blood banks”. Now you have a market for rejuvenating blood, AND more blood available to hospitals. Only downside is an increase in price for Peter Thiel.
I’ve noticed taking such a moral stance tends to limit creative thinking around such topics (why spend time thinking about it when you’ve already dismissed it as immoral?). A bit of creative problem solving can sometimes turn a potentially problematic situation into a net positive for everyone.
Oh, and how exactly does that provide more blood to hospitals?
Edit:
Ok, now I see what you mean. I do not agree with you, although it is a matter of opinion. My opinion is that there are more important social priorities than making rich old geezers live longer and that your plan depends on numbers that could go one way or the other. You could easily build a scenario where your plan decreases hospital blood availability, and this seems likely to me given the financial incentive.
If your concern is that it will reduce the supply of blood to younger people who currently use it then this is something that can be solved with incentives in a way that everyone benefits (e.g. people using it for rejuvenation pay more to subsidise higher production and are a lower priority when there is insufficient supply in the emergency room etc).
If on the other hand, that is just an excuse because you're morally opposed to old rich people living longer... ?
I don't really see how you provide incentives that go the way of blood to the hospital without paying donors that explicitly donate towards that goal more than those donating for rejuvenation.
Right now, we don't have enough just for the people in the ER. Not saying it can't work, but it seems to me that the potential for catastrophic failure on a social level is quite high.
Your thinking on this is a bit short-sighted. Right now, this might only be available to “rich” old geezers. With test-tube burgers already under development, it seems likely that test-tube blood isn’t much further off. By the time you are an old geezer, blood will be a cheap commodity. But only if we get started on the problem now, instead of shooing people away with moral scare-mongering.
One of the things democracy struggles with is balancing the interests of the rich against the interests of everyone else. Because the rich have far more time and money to spend on persuading others to vote against their interests.
Relying on a partially captured government to set the right price is dangerous in this case.
Yeah, so this again is a matter of opinions, but since you are relying on assumptions about the future, I would say that test-tube blood is probably much further away than you think it is.
So I prefer to rely on verifiable present-day fact to decide on socially critical issues.