In the above case the intention is to make the person more comfortable. An unintended effect is that death may happen a bit sooner. This of course does not preclude someone giving a drug and saying that their intention is to stop pain, while causing death was the real aim. However, looking at patient and drug records can often reveal the real intention or motivation behind individual treatment decisions. Another complication with decisions about giving pain relieving drugs to cancer patients is that until the patients have received the drugs no-one knows whether they will do harm.
Some patients find that once the pain is controlled they show a measure of recovery.
In fact, far from shortening the person's life, experts in palliative care say that when properly used, pain relief shortens the life in only 1 in 1,000 cases. The legal profession is increasingly being asked to give rulings about medical practice. While it is good that medical practice should be legally sound, there are dangers in having to get every difficult decision backed by a court ruling. To start with, in many cases the time taken to get a court decision would be too long and cause more harm than good. At the same time, doctors are calling for guidelines.