Principles of Integrity and Totality

These principles dictate that the well-being of the whole person must be taken into account in deciding about any therapeutic intervention or use of technology (see Ethical and Religious Directives, nn. 29 and 33). Therapeutic procedures that are likely to cause harm or undesirable side effects can be justified only by a proportionate benefit to the patient. In this context, "integrity" refers to each individual’s duty to "preserve a view of the whole human person in which the values of the intellect, will, conscience, and fraternity are pre-eminent" (Gaudium et Spes, n. 61). "Totality" refers to the duty to preserve intact the physical component of the integrated bodily and spiritual nature of human life, whereby every part of the human body "exists for the sake of the whole as the imperfect for the sake of the perfect" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II, Question 65, Article 1). Accordingly, a part of the human body may be sacrificed if that sacrifice means continued survival for the person. While such sacrifices are normally justifiable under the principles of integrity and totality, they may sometimes be forgone under the principle of disproportionate means.

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