 Setting aside refinements to it, in what way does Dworkin’s distinction matter from the point view of justice? We can split this question into two, one concerning brute luck and one concerning option luck (cp. Sher 2014, 1). Most egalitarians believe that justice requires the nullification of all differential effects of brute luck (Cohen 2011, 5, 29; Dworkin 2000; Rakowski 1991; for a recent critique, see Elford 2013), feeling that it cannot be just that some people are worse off than others simply because they have been unfortunate, say, to have been born with bad genes. Not all egalitarians, however, take this position. Peter Vallentyne believes that while it is true that justice requires compensation for congenital dispositions to develop serious diseases, this is because justice requires not the neutralization of bad brute luck but equality of initial prospects (Vallentyne 2002, 543). This equality obtains between two people when at some early stage in their development—say, the time at which they become sentient—their prospects are equally good. A genetic defect, at this point in time, would limit one’s opportunities, and so such defects will often provide grounds for compensation. However, if two people face the same initial risk of developing malaria and have equally good initial opportunities, justice does not require us to compensate the one who gets malaria as a result of bad brute luck.