When a very sick patient or the patient’s family made the decision to disconnect a ventilator, for example, Cook would prescribe morphine to make sure the patient wasn’t gasping for breath as mechanical assistance was withdrawn. Achieving this level of comfort often required enough morphine that the drug markedly suppressed the patient’s breathing. The intent was to provide comfort, but the result was to hasten death, and Cook knew it. The difference between something ethical and something illegal was, as Cook would put it, “so fine as to be imperceivable.”
