Ethics and the Double Effect Docrtine

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The highest ethical imperative of doctors should be to provide care in whatever way best serves patients' interests, in accord with each patient's wishes, not with a theoretical commitment to preserve life no matter what the cost in suffering.... The greatest harm we can do is to consign a desperate patient to unbearable suffering--or force the patient to seek out a stranger like Dr. Kevorkian. According to the traditional 'doctrine of double effect' it is permissible to act in ways that may result in bad consequences if, it occurs as a side effect of the act which is directly aimed at or intended; the act directly aimed at is morally good or morally neutral; the good effect is not achieved by way of the bad, meaning that the bad must not be a means to the good; and the bad consequences cannot be so serious as to outweigh the good effect.

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