Double effect doctrine

One difficulty that arises with rule-based systems is conflict between different rales. It is easy to imagine examples in which the requirement to act in the public interest is in conflict with the duty of fidelity towards an employer or client. Moral theory offers a way of handling this, through the doctrine of double effect. According to this doctrine, the foreseeable effects of an action can be divided into those that are intended and those that are merely foreseen but not intended, ft is, in certain circumstances, permissible to carry out an action whose intended effects are good even if some of the consequences that are foreseen as possible but that are not intended are bad. Obviously the good effects of the intended consequences of the action must, in some sense, outweigh the possible bad effects that are foreseen. 

Notice that the doctrine of double effect is intended to overcome problems in rule-based ethics. Consequentialists have no need of the doctrine because they caimot accept a prohibition against ary action... 

An appeal to the doctrine of double effect in a case like this would probably be... 

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