ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the challenge the non-identity problem (NIP) poses to theories of intergenerational justice, theories which postulate that the present generation has duties towards future generations. Parfit's statement can be interpreted to the effect that intellectually gifted people cannot deny the validity of the NIP. The NIP theoreticians further distinguish between 'different-people/same-number choices', and 'different-people/different-number choices', depending on whether the number of people, too, would change. The important step taken by Parfit, Kavka and later an entire generation of theoreticians of the non-identity paradigm was to use the NIP not only for reproductive decisions, but also for decisions on policy and on individual life which have only a very indirect connection with reproductive decisions. For in reproductive medicine, which is for good reasons currently experiencing a vociferous ethical debate, the non-identity thesis is an important moral argument. American courts have used the non-identity argument to dismiss wrongful-life suits.
