Plumber

Suppose a man is stuck in a cave. Oxygen is running out, but there happens to be a plumber nearby, though above ground. He skillfully inserts a PVC pipe with a duct fan through a crevice to give the stranded spelunker enough oxygen to survive. The man in the cave is now surviving thanks to something made possible by the plumbing industry. Yet it does not follow that this undertaking which enabled the spelunker’s breathing is now rightly categorized as an act of preventative plumbing or treatment plumbing. Although a plumber (and plumbing technology) was involved, that intervention’s essential nature was not, in this case, a “plumbing intervention.” It was a morally requisite human act delivering life’s natural necessities to someone in need of them, and plumbing technology just happened to be involved. Suppose that plumber was driving home from his last day at work; he had just retired and promised himself to never “do plumbing” again. He did not break that promise, for he was not “doing plumbing.” He was delivering air—which, like delivering nourishment, “always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act,” as Pope St. John Paul II taught. Similarly, the obligatory nature of artificial nutrition cannot be logically construed as a refutation of the thesis that purely preventative medical interventions are not universal moral obligations any more than the obligatory nature of the intervention above could be construed as a refutation of the rather uncontroversial statement that purely preventative plumbing interventions are not universal moral obligations.

Consider, as well, an electrician who fixes the faulty wiring in a pressure redistribution mattress in a bedridden woman’s hospital room, and suppose that specialized mattress is her only way to avoid ulcers. He has prevented the patient from developing bed sores and related pathologies, and he has provided her with morally obligatory ordinary care in a medical setting. But it does not follow that his work was a “preventative medical intervention.” That would be an obvious category mistake. Similarly, when supplying other “natural means” such as food—even when provided by someone with an M.D., not an A.A.S.—a hospital employee is not undertaking a “medical act.” Nutrition is a basic human need, therefore its fulfillment—no matter how extravagant, clinical, or technological the method of delivery—is neither a medical treatment nor a medical prevention. It is just care, which we must provide. As we have seen, this is precisely what the magisterium has repeatedly stated—and in a manner that supports my thesis and contradicts Schneider’s.