New Group Is Offering Life-or-Death Advice : Euthanasia: Helping terminally ill patients end their lives could be a felony, critics say. But the right-to-die organization says it will not help administer means of death.

A new right-to-die group plans to offer terminally ill patients compassionate words in their final days--and the names of drugs that could be deadly.

Seattle-based Compassion in Dying aims to assist such patients in “completing their predetermined plan for ending life,” it said in a recent newsletter.

The group also will advise patients about how to cope with pain, and arrange spiritual support and hospice care. Physicians are being asked to prescribe the drugs that could be used to commit suicide, the newsletter said.

The group’s goal, however, might break state laws that make assisted suicide a felony, said Ken VanderHoef of Human Life, a Washington state group that fights euthanasia and abortion. He predicted failure for the group.

“Telling people you are going to kill someone is not going to sell,” he said.

Compassion in Dying President Barbara Dority disagreed, saying the group will offer advice but will not help administer the means of death.

“We didn’t want to act like criminals. We don’t feel that we are,” Dority said.

“We don’t intend to be acting covertly and contributing to this notion that a compassionate act toward a dying person should be criminal and regulated by the government.”

Most of Compassion in Dying’s 11 board members are affiliated with the Hemlock Society, an Oregon-based group that provides information on euthanasia.

“All of us had the direct experience of answering the phones” at the Hemlock Society, Dority said. “We got calls from people in desperate situations, pain-racked situations emotionally and psychologically distressing situations.”

Compassion in Dying shares Hemlock’s Seattle office, but Hemlock is distancing itself from the new group.

“They weren’t talking about merely counseling; they were talking about being seriously involved in assisting people to die, which, according to our information, is illegal,” Hemlock spokeswoman Robin Fletcher said.

Washington is one of 28 states that outlaws assisted suicide.

Dr. Diane Myer, co-author of an article in the New England Journal of Medicine last year that favored euthanasia in some cases, said the group could be dangerous.

“We have to be careful about facilitating a person’s death because sometimes that’s not necessarily what they want or need,” Myer said.

“Can a lay group really ascertain the meaning of a patient’s wish to die? The request can often mean something else.”

Some suicidal patients may suffer from treatable depression, need further medical care or simply feel they are a burden, said Myer, a faculty member at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

Much of the recent controversy associated with euthanasia has surrounded Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a retired Michigan pathologist who has helped more than a dozen people end their lives since 1990.