Sedation at the End-of-life: An Interdisciplinary Approach by Paulina Taboada

Author:Paulina Taboada
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

And also says, in the same sense, that it is licit to inflict harm to avoid a greater evil: … medicine never removes a greater good in order to promote a lesser; thus the medicine of the body never blinds the eye in order to repair the heel. However, sometimes it inflicts harm (infert nocumentum) in lesser things if it may be helpful in things of greater importance. (Aquinas, ST, II-II, q. 108, a. 4c)17

The traditional authors, therefore, do not have the need to justify these situations in the light of the PDE. Using a common language, it could be said that in these situations the chosen object, even though it includes a physical evil, it is not a disordered object that makes the choice immoral, because such physical evil is within a rational order: the order of subordination of the parts to the whole.

A similar argument demonstrates that there are some cases in which it is permissible to intend physical pain as a means to a good end. Alison McIntyre gives the example of dentists, who are allowed, in order to make a diagnosis, to seek physical pain as a means, as happens when they instruct their patient with the phrase “tell me when it hurts” (McIntyre 2004).

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