This video series is derived from Mr. Stolyarov’s essay, “Political Priorities for Achieving Indefinite Life Extension: A Libertarian Approach“. The series highlights each of the proposed areas of pro-liberty life-extension reforms in an effort to spread these ideas and achieve their broader public consideration.

#1 – Repeal FDA Approval Requirements

Mr. Stolyarov discusses the greatest threat to research on indefinite human life extension: the  current requirement in the United States (and analogous requirements elsewhere in the Western world) that drugs or treatments may not be used, even on willing patients, unless approval for such drugs or treatments is received from the Food and Drug Administration (or an analogous national regulatory organization in other countries).

Such prohibitions on the quick development and marketing of potentially life-saving drugs are not only costly and time-consuming to overcome; they are morally unconscionable in terms of the cost in human lives.

#2 – Abolishing Medical Licensing Protectionism

There are too few doctors in the West today – not enough to deliver affordable, life-saving treatments, and certainly not enough to ensure that, when life-extending discoveries are made, they will rapidly become available to all.

Mr. Stolyarov advocates for the elimination of compulsory licensing requirements for medical professionals, and the replacement of such a system by a competing market of private certifications for various “tiers” of medical care.

#3-4 – Abolishing Medical and Software Patent Monopolies

Patents – legal grants of monopoly privilege – artificially raise the cost and the scarcity of new drugs and new software. Mr. Stolyarov recommends allowing free, open competition to apply to these products as well.

#5 – Reestablishing the Doctor-Patient Relationship

The most reliable and effective medical care occurs when both patients and doctors have full sovereignty over medical treatment and payment. A libertarian system is most likely to prolong individual lives and lead to the rapid discovery of unprecedented life-extending treatments.

Mr. Stolyarov presents the case for political reforms that maximize patient choice and free-market experimentation with various methods of payment for and provision of medical services.

#6 – Medical Research Instead of Military Spending

Mr. Stolyarov concludes his series on libertarian life-extension reforms by offering a way to reduce aggregate government spending while also increasing funding for medical research. If government funds are spent on saving and extending lives rather than destroying them, this would surely be an improvement. Thus, while Mr. Stolyarov does not support increasing aggregate government spending to fund indefinite life extension (or medical research generally), he would advocate a spending-reduction plan where vast amounts of military spending are eliminated and some fraction of such spending is replaced with spending on medical research.