Bellingham doctors may help with assisted suicide, but they don't advertise it Terminally ill Whatcom County residents who want to use the state's new Death With Dignity law to hasten their deaths are being encouraged to talk to their doctors, the Whatcom County Medical Society, and Compassion & Choices of Washington. The society doesn't maintain a list of local doctors willing to prescribe a lethal lose of barbiturates, but it is keeping a list of physicians who say they will not participate in the voter-approved initiative that went into effect March 5.