Why Life Extension is Immoral

Summary: Years of life are in finite supply. It is morally better that these be spread among relatively more people rather than concentrated in the hands of a relative few. Example: Most people would save a young child instead of an old person if forced to choose, and it is not not just because the baby has more years left, part of the reason is because it seems unfair for the young child to die sooner than the old person.

The argument would be limited to certain age ranges; an unborn fetus or newborn infant might justly be sacrificed to save a mature person (e.g. a mother) due to the fact that early development represents a costly investment on the part of adults which it is fair for them to expect payoff for (at least for adults who contribute to the rearing of offspring -- which could be indirect, etc.).

I think my rejection for the argument is that I don't think of future humans as objects of moral concern in quite all the same respects that I do for existing humans, even though they qualify in some ways. While I think future beings are entitled to not being tortured, I think they are not (at least not out of fairness with respect to existing humans) entitled to being brought into existence in the first place. Perhaps my reason for thinking this is that most humans that could exist do not, and many (e.g. those who would be in constant pain) probably should not.

On the other hand, I do think it is valuable for there to be people in the future, and this holds even if they can't be continuations of existing humans. (I would assign fairly high utility to a Star Trek kind of universe where all currently living humans are dead from old age or some other unstoppable cause but humanity is surviving.)