Parents weigh hastening death of children with terminal cancer, Boston study finds

She and her colleagues surveyed 141 parents whose children had died of cancer at least a year before, asking them about their child's death and how they would respond to hypothetical vignettes of terminally ill children suffering excruciating pain or in an irreversible coma. The study was conducted at Dana-Farber, Children's, and Children's Hospitals and Clinics of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minn., from 1990 through 1999.

Nineteen of the 141 parents said they considered asking their child's doctors about an earlier death for their child in the last weeks of their lives. Thirteen reported having such a discussion, and five said they asked their child's caregiver to act on their wishes. Three parents said that wish was carried out, using morphine, but the researchers were skeptical, saying it is more likely that morphine was being used to treat worsening pain in doses not intended to end life.

When presented with a scenario in which a dying child was in extreme pain, half the parents said they would favor speeding that hypothetical child's death. They were 40 percent more likely to approve of an early death if the child was in pain rather than in an coma.

Wolfe thinks the study should be a starting point for discussion about end of life care for children. "The important point is that these considerations may be mitigated if we did a better job taking care of children suffering while we are doing end of life care," she said in an interview. "There need to be opportunities for families to express their fears and for us to be able to indicate what is possible in terms of controlling pain and discomfort at the end of life."

She cautioned that not every child dying of cancer will have suffering relieved. "We still as yet cannot promise families that their child will be pain free," she said.

Reilly, who was not part of the study, said once she and her husband, David, knew Michael's cancer had spread, their focus shifted from curing the disease and having a child who could live a normal life to making sure he could have the most peaceful death possible. He died 10 days after the family came home to Massachusetts from a trip to Disney World.

"He danced with Snow White down Main Street. He did it with smiles and he did it with a sense of 'Hey, I'm here. I'm living in the moment,' " she said.

After they returned home, Michael's pain medications made him sleepier each day as his disease took its natural course, his mother said. "We felt very fortunate we had control over what happened."