Killing yourself is not known to be a particularly safe or well-regulated practice but in Switzerland, it’s legal, under certain conditions. Unfortunately, people who want to end their lives via medically-induced suicide near the snowy Alps have to do it the right way. Creators of a euthanasia vessel learned that the hard way this week when the first known use of the device ended in multiple arrests and claims from government officials that it had violated government safety regulations.
The Sarco pod—a 3D-printed capsule that releases nitrous gas at the click of a button—is the creation of a group calling itself The Last Resort. The group, which claims to be made up of “a small international collective of human rights advocates (with a law, science, medicine and healthcare background),” says its mission is to “diversify (and improve) the assisted dying process in Switzerland.” The Sarco pod is designed to put its occupant to sleep in a matter of seconds via the nitrous gas. The gas then swiftly lowers the oxygen levels in the pod until the person expires. The whole process is said to take a matter of minutes.
The pod comes equipped with wheels and is built to be mobile, so that users can transport it to beautiful, idyllic spots. The experience afforded by the device is also said to be quite peaceful. The creator of the device, an Australian doctor named Philip Nitschke, has compared it to the feeling that one might have if they were aboard a plane whose cabin had depressurized. “We know from people who have survived that this doesn’t feel like suffocating,” Nitschke recently told a Swiss outlet. “You just keep on breathing. After half a minute people start to feel disoriented. They’re not really being aware of what is happening to them. This is often accompanied by a feeling of mild euphoria. And then they just slip away.”
The Sarco pod was originally given legal approval for public use in Switzerland way back in 2021, but since then controversy has dogged the device. It was used for the first time on Monday, when an American woman reportedly ended her own life in a rural area near the German border. The Last Resort announced the death in a short post on its website, and Nitschke said via social media that the woman’s death had been “an idyllic, peaceful death in a Swiss forest.”
While that may be true, the first use of the device seems to have been a total disaster for everybody else involved. As of Monday, multiple people have been arrested in connection to the woman’s death The Guardian reports, noting that a local prosecutor’s office had “opened an investigation into suspected incitement and aiding and abetting of suicide.” It isn’t yet totally clear who was arrested.
Just what went wrong—from a legal standpoint—also isn’t clear, though government officials have criticized the device for not adhering to local safety regulations. Elisabeth Baume-Schneider, the nation’s Health Minister, told the Swiss House of Representatives that the device did not meet government safety requirements and, as a result, could not be sold on the market, local outlet Swiss Info reports.
Switzerland is one of the few places in the world where assisted suicide is legal. For the most part, this is a good thing. Horror stories abound about people who may, say, be afflicted with an extremely painful terminal illness but who cannot legally end their own lives in their country.
If you or someone you know is having a crisis or contemplating suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text HOME to 741-741 to connect with a volunteer at the Crisis Text Line.
