Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, concern over inadequate social conditions - which is what has truly hampered human development - has been focused on growth together with equity. If human development is a process which should steadily broaden human options, what place does this concept play in the discourse of the social sciences and politics as 'master' - whose major product today is greater poverty, overpopulation, and less options for people? How can this situation be reverted, so that people can enjoy a long, healthy life, receive an education, and have access to the resources that are needed if their life chances are to be greater than their death chances? What role does or should the social sciences play in devising an ethical discourse on health care? To what objectives will we need to return, if we are to refrain from using scientific knowledge to validate the unjust social inequalities espoused in the discourses of power and of the master?