Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-vt8vv Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-08-06T22:46:46.608Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Deploying Epigenetics to Identify Biologically Influenced Social Inequalities

from Part III - Inequality as an Unintended Consequence Locally and as a Planetary Phenomenon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2022

Benjamin Gregg
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
Get access

Summary

Research on human genetics reveals distinctly political dimensions, given the need for the modern state to regulate human reproduction through laws of hypodescent,1 that is, interventionist natalist policies that incentivize larger families,2 or eugenics.3 But if the natural world and the social world are sharply distinguished one from the other, justice is a matter solely of the social world, meaningless in the natural world. Thus if one’s genetic endowments are entirely a natural phenomenon, then whether one is fortunate or unfortunate in one’s genetic endowment is without moral significance. Rather, it is a matter of individual luck in the “genetic lottery” of nature. Political community has no obligation to address “losers” in the “genetic lottery” – unless one adopts, say, the standpoint of luck-egalitarianism or, alternatively, commits to consequentialism. Otherwise, “to say that something is due to nature” is to relegate it to the “realm of fortune or misfortune,” hence to reject the notion that it might fall within the sphere of justice (Buchanan et al. 2000: 83). In that case, “natural” disadvantages in the shape of genetically based health disparities among members of a community appear to be an inequality that is no one’s fault: a misfortune, certainly, but not an injustice. Corrections are then gratuitous acts of beneficence, voluntary acts of decency, but hardly moral, let alone legal, obligations.

Type
Chapter
Information
Creating Human Nature
The Political Challenges of Genetic Engineering
, pp. 177 - 201
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×