First suicide pod use ‘soon’ in Switzerland

AFP | Zurich, Switzerland

The Daily Tribune - www.newsofbahrain.com

An assisted dying group expects a new portable suicide pod to be used for the first time in Switzerland potentially within months to provide death without medical supervision, they said yesterday.

The space-age looking Sarco capsule first unveiled in 2019 replaces the oxygen inside of it with nitrogen, causing death by hypoxia.

The recently-formed organisation The Last Resort said it saw no legal obstacle to its use in Switzerland, where the law generally allows assisted suicide if the person commits the lethal act themselves.

“Since we have people indeed queuing up, asking to use the Sarco, it’s very likely that it will take place pretty soon. But it’s all I can say,” Last Resort’s chief executive Florian Willet told a press conference.

“I cannot imagine a more beautiful way (to die), of breathing air without oxygen until falling into an eternal sleep,” he added. The person wishing to die must first pass a psychiatric assessment of their mental capacity -- a key legal requirement.

The person climbs into the capsule, closes the lid, and is asked automated questions such as who they are, where they are and if they know what happens when they press the button.

“’If you want to die’, the voice says in the processor, ‘Press this button’,” said euthanasia campaigner and Sarco inventor Philip Nitschke. He said that once the button is pressed, the amount of oxygen in the air plummets from 21 percent to 0.05 percent in less than 30 seconds.

“They will then stay in that state of unconsciousness for... around about five minutes before death will take place,” he added.

No way back As for someone changing their mind at the very last minute, Nitschke said: “Once you press that button, there’s no way of going back.” No decision has been made over the time, date and place of the first death, or who the first user might be.

Such details would not be made public until after the event because “we really don’t want a person’s desire for a peaceful passing Switzerland to turn into a media circus”, said lawyer Fiona Stewart, who is on The Last Resort’s advisory board.

Asked if the first use would be this year, she replied: “I would say yes”. She said the only cost for the user would be 18 Swiss francs ($20) for the nitrogen.

But the capsule’s potential use has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland, reigniting debate on assisted dying