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More and Better Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

John Harris
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Extract

The principle that people's lives and fundamental interests are of equal value and that they must therefore be given equal weight has immense intellectual appeal and intuitive force. It is often enough to discredit a theory or proposal simply to show that it violates this principle. When measures are said to be discriminatory or unfair it is this principle which is in play. Recent philosophers of widely differing schools and outlooks give versions of this principle a central role in their theories.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 23: Philosophy and Medical Welfare , March 1988 , pp. 75 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1988

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References

1 Dworkin, Ronald, Taking Rights Seriously (London: Duckworth, 1977), 198.Google ScholarPubMed

2 Ibid. 182.

3 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), 33.Google Scholar

4 Glover, Jonathan, What Sort of People Should There Be? (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 40–42.Google Scholar

5 Ibid. 140.

6 Ibid. 142.

7 R. and V. Routley paraphrased by Glover, ibid. 142, from their ‘Nuclear Energy And Obligations to the Future’, Inquiry (1978).Google Scholar

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid. 144.

11 Smith, George Teeling, Office of Health Economics, The Measurement of Health (London, 1985).Google Scholar

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17 Williams, Alan, ‘Economics of Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting’, British Medical Journal 291 (3 08 1985), 326.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

18 And I have heard Alan Williams and Alan Maynard do so on a number of occasions, though not so far as I am aware in print.

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20 Ibid. 326.

21 BBC TV, The Heart of the Matter, (10 1986).Google Scholar

22 Williams, Alan, op. cit. 326, 329Google Scholar. Again I have heard Williams and Maynard say this in discussion.

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25 Ibid.

26 I owe this suggestion to Peter Singer who has helped me to clarify many of the issues in this paper.

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29 Here also I am indebted to Peter Singer.

30 Menzel, Paul T., Creepy QALYsGoogle Scholar, unpublished MS., Department of Philosophy, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA 98447, USA.

31 Ibid. 6.

32 Ibid. 8.

33 Ibid. 14.

34 Ibid. 13.

35 Ibid. 9.

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37 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

38 Dworkin, Ronald, op. cit., 151.Google Scholar

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41 See this volume, pp. 33–55.

42 Harris, , ‘QALYfying the Value of Life’, p. 119Google Scholar, and in this paper, pp. 79–80, supra.

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44 Supra p. 53.Google Scholar

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50 Ibid. Ch. 1, 2.

51 Lockwood, , supra p. 50.Google Scholar

52 See my The Value of Life for a fuller account.

53 See ibid.