The argument that sacrificing this

The argument that sacrificing this or that convenient group is fair where membership in the group is an arbitrary, natural occurrence should be suspect because it proves too much; indeed it proves everything and anything. It would justify enslaving those who are weaker, despoiling the defenseless, ignoring the suffering of the unfortunate, because in each case these characteristics are acquired arbitrarily, at random. The effect of the argument would be to justify morally any and all burdens which we can in fact succeed in imposing on each other. But that is the very opposite of morality, for morality is concerned to restrain the impulse to profit from natural disadvantage and to require justification for imposing greater burdens on others than we accept for ourselves. But one makes just this kind of immoral argument in arguing that the misfortune of illness is a random event fairly enough distributed to justify imposing even more burdens on the ill. Indeed the whole practice of medicine may be seen as an expression of this moral tendency to overcome the effects of the “naturallottery”25 without which disease would be allowed to run its course, weeding out the weak and inept.