A small provocative study has suggested that doctors may be giving malignant morphine doses to a few children dying of cancer, in a stressful request by the parents to end their affliction.

It is revealed that many parents told researchers that they had asked doctors to hasten their children's deaths — and that doctors complied, with the help of high doses of the powerful painkiller.

The lead author of the study and several other physicians posted their doubt that doctors are engaged in active mercy killing. Instead, they expect that the parents surveyed in the study mistakenly believed that doctors had followed their wishes.

The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics and most other mainstream doctor groups have stood against mercy-killing; however, they post that withholding life-prolonging treatment for dying patients can be ethical.

Dr. Douglas Diekema, a medical ethicist at Seattle Children's Hospital, "I have no doubt that in a small number of cases, some physicians might cooperate with a parent's desire to see a child's suffering ended. This might include giving a drug for sedation or pain control that also suppresses the drive to breathe”.