Swiss police say they have detained several people and opened a criminal case a day after the first use of the “Sarco” capsule to end a person’s life. Assisted dying is legal in Switzerland in some circumstances.
Police in the northern Swiss canton of Schaffhausen said on Tuesday that several people had been detained, and a dead body taken for examination, following the apparent first use of a capsule designed to help people end their lives.
The “Sarco” capsule, made in the Netherlands and in development for several years now, is supposed to allow a person reclining inside to press a button, after which most of the oxygen in the sealed chamber is replaced with nitrogen.
According to the group that promotes its use, Exit International, this triggers first mild disorientation and euphoria, then unconsciousness, and in a few minutes death by asphyxiation.
Don’t You dare screw this up. Assisted dying is the only thing I’m looking forward to in life. And I’m 37, so I’ll need this good and running in like the next 4 years.
Did the pizza delivery guy trip?
I C Weiner!?
Swiss law allows for assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no “external assistance” and those who help the person do not do so for “any self-serving motive,” according to a government website.
So you can get help or not?
You can get help setting everything up, but you have to be the one to push the button, pick up the lethal medicine, etc
But you have to pay to use this machine. So the people who made it are self-interested in you dying because they want your money.
Pretty sure you have to pay if you back out as well, so that’s not an incentive to kill you either.
Sarco’s inventor, Philip Nitschke, pictured here in Rotterdam in July 2024, was said to have monitored the device’s use on Monday closely, but not in person
Lmao what?
I don’t think he takes the fact that his machine is killing people seriously enough. He should definitely be there for at least the first few “uses”
Philip Nitschke has been around a long time now, He helped get the first Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia laws on the books in the Northern Territory of Australia, only for the feds to strike it down on a technicality as ‘Territories’ don’t get the same rights as ‘States’.
That was almost 30 years ago.
Edit: Link for more information on Territories vs. States in Australia
Maybe it was just family physically in the room? You could monitor the air composition with a video feed from elsewhere, even just a room over.
EDIT: Ok just read through the article:
“the death took place in the open air under a canopy of trees in a private forest retreat near the German border with the association’s co-president, Dr. Florian Willet, the sole person present.”
So he wasn’t present or nearby, but someone else from the company was.
Also this bit sticks out to me (emphasis mine):
“On displaying cogency and an understanding of the stakes, it becomes possible push the button to activate the process, which cannot then be aborted.”
I wonder if this is a legal sticking point? If someone presses it and immediately has second thoughts, shouldn’t they have the freedom to open it and cancel the process?
