← Chapter 9
Applied Ethics · Chapter 9

The Last Weeks Console

At the end of life the law is settled where people think it is fraught, and unsettled where they assume it is obvious. Pick a pathway for Mr Okonjo, say who is deciding and where you are standing, and the console breaks it down on the four axes that actually do the work: who acts, what is intended, what causes death, and what the law permits.
Mr Okonjo, 71. Metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer, progressing through second-line treatment. Breathless at rest, weight down eleven kilos, on the ward for the third time in six weeks. His oncologist would not be surprised if he died within six months. He is exhausted and he has started asking what his options are.
The pathway
Who is deciding?
Where are you standing?

Double effect check

Aquinas's four conditions, from his discussion of self-defence in the Summa Theologiae. Tick the ones that hold.