ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 1, 1993                   TAG: 9309010059
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Seattle Times
DATELINE: SEATTLE                                LENGTH: Short

NEW GROUP DISCLOSES ASSISTING 2ND SUICIDE

Compassion in Dying, a new group that helps terminally ill patients end their lives, has assisted a second person in committing suicide and says it is working with five to 10 other patients.

Ralph Mero, executive director of the group, would give no details of the most recent death but at one point in an interview said it was a "well-known" person in the Seattle area.

Earlier this summer, Compassion in Dying assisted a terminally ill cancer patient in his 70s in ending his life with barbiturates.

It is the first known organization in the nation assisting in suicides by helping patients procure lethal drugs. Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the Michigan physician arrested this month for his 17th suicide assist, acts alone, usually with injections or lethal gas.

Compassion in Dying does not release the identities of the patients it helps. Mero, a Unitarian minister, would give no details of the most recent suicide "because the person might be identified."

Mero said a third patient died in August of lung cancer about 36 hours before he had planned to take his own life. The man was in his late 60s, he said.

As with all its patients, Compassion in Dying members had counseled the man and his family for hours before helping him procure a prescription for medications that could have killed him.

Keywords:
FATALITY 


 by CNB