Professor Allen Buchanan, Professor of Philosophy, Duke University, North Carolina, USA

Summary: There is growing concern that technological innovations, especially biomedical enhancements of normal human capacities, will exacerbate existing inequalities or even create new ones. In this lecture Professor Buchanan examines the sources and nature of this concern, argues that the chief worry is not with inequalities per se but with unjust political inequalities and with differences that prevent some people from being effective participants in their society's dominant cooperative framework. He then critically examines several strategies for coping with the problem of injustice in innovation, where the aim is to not only reduce the risk that innovations will exacerbate existing injustices / create new ones, but also to strive to harness innovation to reduce existing injustices.