A 64-year-old US woman recently became the first known person to die in a ‘suicide pod’ named Sarco, earlier this week in Switerzland’s Schaffhausen. According to news agency AP, report, police have detained several people on charges of “inducing and abetting suicide.”
The Sarco capsule, which has been in development for several years, allows a person seated in a reclining chair inside the pod to release nitrogen gas into the sealed environment with a push of a button. The person then chokes to death and dies a natural death of asphyxiation after a few minutes of being asleep.
People in Switzerland have a right to assisted suicide if the patient dies by his or her own hand with no “external assistance” and the helpers do not have any selfish purpose, the government site states.
Exit International, an assisted suicide group from the Netherlands, confirmed it was behind the 3D-printed device that has taken more than $1m to design.
The organisation behind the Sarco said that the 64-year-old woman had severe immune compromise.
It added that Florian Willet, the co-president of The Last Resort, a Swiss branch of Exit International, was the only person present at her death and described the death as “peaceful, fast and dignified”.
The manufacturers of the pod have asserted that the device can be controlled exclusively by the individual contemplating suicide and does not require the assistance of a medical professional.
Exit International’s member, Philip Nitschke has said in interviews with the AP that the organisation’s lawyers advised him it was legal to use the Sarco in Switzerland.
On September 24, Nitschke said that he was ‘pleased’ that the Sarco had worked as designed, helping offer an elective, non-drug, peaceful death at the time of the person’s choosing.
In July this year, Swiss newspaper Blick reported that a state prosecutor in Schaffhausen to Exit International that any operator of the suicide capsule could face criminal proceedings and up to five years of jail term.
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