BOSTON, Massachusetts - March 31, 2010 - A study published in the March edition of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine suggests that a few physicians may have killed children who were very sick by giving them fatal morphine doses after the parents had requested euthanasia.

Dr. Joanne Wolfe, a palliative pain specialist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital in Boston, interviewed 141 parents of children who died of cancer in order to explore their parents' motivations in considering and enquiring about hastening their children's deaths.

The study found that 19 of the 141 parents, or 13%, said they had considered asking about ending their children's lives, and 13 parents reported having discussed intentionally ending their children's lives. Parents of five children said they had explicitly asked a clinician for medications to end the children's lives, and parents of three said it had been carried out with an overdose of morphine.

Dr. Wolfe wrote that the objective of the study was "to estimate the frequency of hastening death discussions, describe current parental endorsement of hastening death and intensive symptom management, and explore whether children's pain influences these views in a sample of parents whose children died of cancer."

"With two U.S. states now allowing legalized physician-assisted suicide," continued Dr. Wolfe, "these discussions may become more frequent. Attitudes toward hastening death in noninfant children with life-threatening conditions have seldom been described."