Some bioethical theories, including the teaching of the Catholic Church, distinguish ordinary and extraordinary care. Ordinary care is always obligatory. Extraordinary care is care whose provision involves a disproportionately great burden on the patient or community, and hence is not morally obligatory.
On the Catholic version of the distinction, the natural provision of life necessities, such as food, air, and water, is an example of ordinary care, although it does not exhaust ordinary care, since easily performed medical procedures (that do not impose an undue burden on patient and community) will also be ordinary care.
Famous quotes containing the words ordinary and/or care:
“A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man.... It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, it afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)