A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

4. Justice

According to luck egalitarianism, we should compensate victims of the genetic lottery to the extent that they have acquired a set of genes that renders them worse off than others. Thus we should compensate at least some people who have genes that cause them to have a disease. Usually, luck egalitarians have aimed to redistribute social assets (e.g. money) to achieve this, but genetic technologies have made it possible to compensate by distributing natural assets instead. Furthermore, luck egalitarianism would seem to require not only the treatment of disease but also enhancements, namely in so far as there are properties that are not departures from species-typical functioning but may nevertheless render people worse off than others (Holtug 1999). An example of this may be a boy with a predicted adult height of 160 centimeters (5 feet 3 inches).

Some egalitarians have nevertheless given a qualified defence of the treatment/enhancement distinction (Buchanan et al 2000: chs 3–4). They argue that, while justice requires compensating victims of the social lottery, it requires only limited compensation of victims of the genetic lottery. The latter should only be restored to the level of “normal” (not equal) competitors for advantages, where normal competitors may well suffer disadvantages that come from normal but not optimal or even average capabilities. Roughly, this means that justice requires genetic treatments, not genetic enhancements. Luck egalitarians, on the other ...