ABSTRACT
A policy analyst suggested that in order to reduce the incidence of skin cancer in the United States, blacks ought to be asked to occupy the seats on the sunny side of sports arenas (blacks are supposed to be biologically less sensitive to the sun rays). The analyst added that he recognizes such a policy would encounter "some social difficulty in implementation," From an efficiency perspective alone (or, narrow utilitarianism), it is difficult to fault the suggested policy. It would clearly raise the total well-being of society at a low cost. Some would argue that policies should be designed in such a way that they improve the well-being of some, but only as long as they do not reduce the well-being of any. This is a possibly worthy rule, but it is practically always impossible to follow. Attempts to fault the proposal on grounds of inefficiency (the policy may lead to riots and hence to high costs) fail because the estimated probability of such riots is undetermined or low. Instead, most would reject the policy on the basis of our first reaction, our moral intuition; it sounds outrageous. On examination, we would reject it because it is unfair to ask those who have suffered long and still do, to take on yet one more burden (a disproportionately small but yet additional amount of skin cancer), in order to help a group that has historically imposed many disadvantages on the targeted minority, the blacks. Many also oppose policies that deliberately impose an illness on a specific group of people, especially one defined by racial criteria. The suggested policy is therefore judged morally inappropriate even if it is efficient.
