H ealth as Normal Function: a Weak Link in D aniels's T heory of J ust H ealth Distribution

Abstract D rawing on C hristopher B oorse's B iostatistical T heory ( BST ), N orman D aniels contends that a genuine health need is one which is necessary to restore normal functioning – a supposedly objective notion which he believes can be read from the natural world without reference to potentially controversial normative categories. But despite his claims to the contrary, this conception of health harbors arbitrary evaluative judgments which make room for intractable disagreement as to which conditions should count as genuine health needs and therefore which needs should be met. I begin by offering a brief summary of Boorse's BST , the theory to which D aniels appeals for providing the conception of health as normal functioning upon which his overall distributive scheme rests. Next, I consider what I call practical objections to D aniels's use of Boorse's theory. Finally I recount Elseljin Kingma's theoretical objection to Boorse's BST and discuss its impact on D aniels's overall theory. Though I conclude that Boorse's view, so weakened, will no longer be able to sustain the judgments which D aniels's theory uses it to reach, in the end, I offer D aniels an olive branch by briefly sketching an alternative strategy for reaching suitably objective conclusions regarding the health and/or disease status of various conditions.