#  IHRS in the News: Quest for a Peaceful Death 

 



 **By Jeff Wheelwright**

 When a cancer patient has run out of options — when her disease has returned and the latest experimental  
drug has failed and her oncologist hasn’t much to say — that’s when the patient would be fortunate to meet  
Tracy Balboni. She’s a radiation oncologist and palliative care researcher at Harvard Medical School and  
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She works at the murky stage of care known as end-of-life, where  
decisions about additional treatment can be complicated by fear and pain.

   
Simply put, Balboni’s job is to relieve the pain and provide the highest quality of life possible. Her more  
conventional tool is radiotherapy. Normally radiation oncologists attack tumors with as much force as the  
patient can stand, in an effort to eliminate the disease. Palliative radiation oncologists like Balboni, treating  
advanced cases, use doses of radiation that are extremely quick. They may, for example, try to reduce a  
spinal tumor lest a person become paralyzed, or shrink malignant obstructions in the abdomen. “You’re  
using the technology to help patients live better,” Balboni says. “Today we have patients living much longer  
with their cancers. Instead of two months it might be 10 years. Yes, we need to cure, but in the setting where  
we can’t cure, we need to use these tools in a way so that patients can live well as long as possible.

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 **\[Continued in .pdf document below\]**



 

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 See also:- [ Spirituality and Medicine ](/news-topics/spirituality-and-medicine)