U.S. Study Finds Doctors May Be Euthanizing Dying Children at Parents’ Request

LifeSiteNews.com -- Your Life, Family, and Culture Outpost ^ | Wednesday March 31, 2010 | By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

[topher]

Wednesday March 31, 2010

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U.S. Study Finds Doctors May Be Euthanizing Dying Children at Parents’ Request

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

BOSTON, March 31, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - 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 the parents' motivation in considering and enquiring about hastening their child's death.

The study found that 19 of the 141 parents, or 13 percent, said they had considered asking about ending their child's life, and 13 parents reported having discussed intentionally ending their child's life. Parents of five children said they had explicitly asked a clinician for medications to end the child's life, 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 child died of cancer."

"With two US 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."

Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, told LifeSiteNews (LSN) that he is seriously concerned by the finding of the study that medical professionals may have been willing to break the law and cause the death of a child in response to the request of parents.
 
"The fact is that if euthanasia of children were legal, such as it is in the Netherlands, there would be little to no protection for these children," Schadenberg said.
 
"Thankfully the actual number of children who were allegedly euthanized is small. The fact is that these children required excellent care, not death."

Dr. Wolfe observed that the child's experience of pain affects hastening death (HD) considerations by the parents, but many are not given adequate information about the legal options for pain relief, which can include sedating children into unconsciousness.

"Several studies indicate that both caregivers and physicians tend to confuse the unintended adverse effects of intensive symptom management with the intentional hastening of death. In our sample, the 3 families who reported intentionally hastening their child's death described doing so using morphine, which raises the question of whether they had misinterpreted the physicians' intentions. In fact, evidence indicates that opioids can be used safely at the end of life and that their effect on survival, if any, is negligible."

"Our results suggest that more than 1 of every 8 parents report considering HD during their child's illness, and they tended to do so if their child was in pain. In the context of an HD discussion, identifying sources of suffering and clearly explaining effective and legal options, including proportionately intensive symptom management, may ease parents' considerations of hastening their child's death," the report concluded.

The full text of the study, titled "Considerations About Hastening Death Among Parents of Children Who Die of Cancer" is available here.

URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/mar/10033103.html

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[Cathy]

I’m so glad to hear how you are doing well. We had a period of a 2 years where we lost my FIL, 3 grandmothers, uncles, aunts, 2 young cousins, 2 friends in a gun related crime - nowhere near as many as you, but it made me weary of answering the phone.

The Lord does work in wonderful ways, putting people in your life that make all the difference. I’ve met so many people through my activism in politics the past 3 years that have been so affirming, because we are so much alike. I value all my relationships more than I did years ago...life’s lesson.

YOur geneology research sounds very interesting, which site did you use? I need to get lots of dates and names down somewhere but don’t know where to start.

[metmom]

Mama, My FIL died in June 2006 and my MIL is just now fully realizing her loss. I’m probably not explaining this well - but she told me intellectually knows he is gone but emotionally she is just now feeling the full brunt. It’s been very emotional for her, and she is not an emotional person - so it’s been all that much harder to watch. My prayers are with you, you have lost so much but life is still to be lived. Peace Mama.

It's not unusual for it to be years before it really sinks in. It happened to my mother when my father died, and it happened with me after they each died. For some reason, after I thought I had gotten over it, something triggered the memories and brought it all back. Christmas was really hard a couple years because of that for no reason that I could put my finger on.

[buschbaby]

I hope they don’t make too much out of this. It’s one of those things that should just be kept quiet and let the poor families have privacy. I doubt there is abuse, so why dig into it.

[MamaB]

I use Family Tree Maker for my data base. I started with the people I know about or who people tell me about. GenForum.com has sites for different surnames, counties, states, etc. I have learned a lot from that site. I also use census sites which really makes it come alive. I also have a subscription for ancestry.com which has been a lot of help but like other sites, there are lots of errors on it. When I first started with my dad's side of the family, I knew his parents and grandparents The genforum site really got me started by just seeing if others had posted messages about the same names, etc. UsGenWeb is also a very useful site but most counties have census data on them. When I go back as far as I can, I just type in the name of the oldest + genealogy and others may have posted info on your family.

I try not to use FamilySearch which is the LDS site because of the errors there. I just read a report today or yesterday which was talking about all of the mistakes on that site. I am not back far enough to get to the countries of origin so I think I will have to update my ancestry.com to get the foreign countries. So far, I have ancestors in England, France, Wales, Scotland, Russia, Ireland with a few others tossed in for good measure.

It is a fascinating hobby especially when I get back to the Middle Ages and the plagues, kings, etc. It brings to life what those people went through with all of the deaths and in some cases, whole towns died of the plague. Sometimes there were no one left to bury the dead. I can not imagine living through something like that.

Try it. Don't expect miracles to happen overnight. It may take a while but like I did for my friend, he gave me some names and in about 2 hours, I found data which took the family back to the mid 1500’s. I have tried to find verification info as much as possible. When I first started, I just entered the data and did not add where it came from. Big mistake. His other trees are causing me lots of headaches because I can not find info on the members of the family. It is going to take time for those. But that is ok. I have plenty of time.

One feature of ancestry.com is finding well known people who are related to yours. Of course, I take a lot of that with a grain of salt since some dates are way off base. Children are born after parents and in some cases they are off hundreds of years. But in a lot of cases, I find the right info and if someone else has done that research, use it as a starting point. I then verify what I can from other sources.

Good luck. You just might find it very addictive.

[Drango]

I and my family don’t fear death...It’s a journey to a better place. Those who demand someone suffer in deep agony and excruciating pain, as it somehow glorifies God, have a different version of God’s love than I do.

[Lurking Libertarian]

John Carradine is about to "shoot a woman" so the Indians do not get her. Just as he is about to shoot her, there is the sound of a Calvary bugle.

Probably the inspiration for the last scene in the horror movie The Mist.

[MamaB]

You know what really gets to me is my daughter’s death. One example. I had to go to the ER about 10 days ago. When the nurse came into the room, I just knew I knew her from somewhere. I asked her if she had been my daughter’s nurse when she was there so many times. She said she was and then asked how she was doing. When I told her about her death, she was shocked. Think it bothered her more than me at that time. I know that she influenced so many over her lifetime. I knew if I could survive her death, then any others would be much easier. Still, things I see or read about makes me want to tell her.

[Mrs. Don-o]

As long as --- as you said --- nobody is killing the child deliberately, I can't think there would be any moral or legal objection to giving a dying child the morphine doses necessary to stop the pain. Even if a (forseeable, but unintended) side effect is to reduce respiratory efficiency.

Actually intending to kill the child, is a different matter altogether.

[topher]

One thing you do not say is that a doctor could be sued for deliberating causing the death of a patient.

Now if that patient had a living will, and it was acceptable to "kill the patient" by "overdose", then what you are saying could be done.

But, in my opinion, is what that gets down to.

For drugs like morphine, they now have "Patient Controlled Analgesics" (PCA), where the patient presses a button to administer a dose.

If someone else presses that button, they could be criminally charged. They basically could be prosecuted to administering morphine to someone.

[rrrod]

tough call for me to make for others whom I respect.

My own wishes should the need arise is a one way boat ride...or something similar.

[topher]

PCA solves this problem. This stands for "Patient Controlled Analgesia". Analgesia is another name for "pain medicine".

The patient can administer doses to themselves. There are mechanisms so that they do not overdose themselves.

And if the patient is asleep, then the patient is unable to "press the button".

One would have to take this issue up with the AMA, FDA, and the DEA.

[little jeremiah]

Just when I think it can hardly get worse, it gets worse. Intellectually I know it can and most likely will get much, much worse (before it gets better which I am firmly convinced will happen), it’s hard to read some of this stuff.

Once it’s okay to kill some people, when they are “almost” dead anyway (or unwanted, helpless, can’t speak for themselves, etc), the line of who it’s okay to kill and when, gets looser and looser and looser.

[cookiedough]

My Dad didn’t want to die. He wanted to be out of pain. I kept thinking the whole time that here we are, with modern medicine and all, and it is still difficult, at times, to manage pain successfully.

[Yaelle]

Agreed 100%.

[topher]

All drugs have side effects. Morphine can kill you if you increase the dose to the point that your respirations are too shallow and too few each minute.

What medicine has done today is allow the patient to medicate themselves by "pressing a button". The dose they receive of morphine is a safe dose, and even if the patient presses the button again and again, it will only dispense medications to a "prescribed" schedule and a "prescribed" dose.

The article specifically says that there are parents who wish to directly end the children's lives...

[Mrs. Don-o]

Yes, I have been on self-administered liquid morphine after surgery, and it's wonderful stuff. I mean it!

I'm pretty sure we're in agreement here. I was responding to Yaelle, who was concerned about pain management for a dying child. There's no moral offense in giving as much morphine as needed to stop the pain, even if it predictably will interfere with respiration and shorten life.

If the doctors or the parents had the suppression of respiration and thus the suppression of the child's life as their as their direct intention --- then that is murder.

[Cathy]

Good info, thanks so much! I’m copying and pasting your reply for reference. I Sent you a private message.

[Cathy]

So true. It’s hard to watch someone go through and it’s hard to feel it so keenly. After spending the better part of 50 years with someone (in my MIL’s case) I can’t imagine the loss.

[metmom]

Those morphine pumps are NICE.

I was on one after my last c-section and it managed the pain better than anything else I had had previously.

The thing about pain, is that it takes a lot more to knock it down than to keep it down. The idea is to keep it under control than to let it get bad and have to do a lot more medication.

I had read somewhere that as you experience pain, the body secretes some substance that actually sensitizes the nerves to the pain, so that as you try to tough it out, the pain actually hurts worse because of biochemical reasons.

So pain killers work in two ways, one being numbing the pain, but the other is avoiding this process that over sensitizes the nerves to the actual amount of pain.

[MrRobertPlant2009]

What if the allowed dose does not reduce the pain?

I don’t understand why it matter if someone dies ten hours early in no pain versus ten hours later in tremendous pain.

I’ve now seen enough friends and relatives die that I see no beauty or grace in the suffering that comes at the end.