Abstract

Catholic end-of-life ethics does not contain a principle that prohibits the excessive use of medical treatment for declining and dying patients. This article fills this lacuna by exploring and developing the principle of unreasonable means. Unreasonable means are present when the burdens to the patient and community far outpace the benefits to the patient and when the use of such means directly or indirectly limits another patient’s access to ordinary means. Unreasonable means reinforce the redistribution of limited medical resources from the poor to the wealthy and from the global south to the global north. The principle of unreasonable means guides individual patients and medical proxies to preferentially opt for the morally ordinary medical needs of others before the patient’s own extraordinary medical needs. The principle underscores the need for patients and proxies to incorporate justice and the common good into end-of-life decisions