 These accounts face much the same challenge as Liao’s, of determining whether a given being “could have” developed the psychological capacities of human beings when their failure to do so results from genetic differences. They also face the challenge posed by members of other species capable of identity-preserving cognitive upgrades (DeGrazia, 2016; McMahan, 2016). But perhaps the strongest objection to grounding moral status in modal properties is raised by DeGrazia: even if human beings with profound cognitive impairments are aptly characterized as victims of bad luck, why does their victimhood confer moral status? Surely that status cannot be justified as a consolation prize for a near miss. While this objection does not directly apply to the genetic-basis account, that account faces the question of why the biological basis for morally significant attributes itself has moral significance.