Geneva, Switzerland:
A 64-year-old American woman committed suicide in a controversial suicide capsule in a Swiss forest. Police said Tuesday that several people have been arrested.
The Sarco capsule, which looks like a spaceship and fills with nitrogen and is deadly due to lack of oxygen, was deployed on Monday outside a village near the German border.
The portable, human-sized pod, which operates itself with a button on the inside, has raised a lot of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but euthanasia has been legal for decades.
On the same day the weapon was used, Swiss Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told parliamentarians that the Sarco was “not legal”.
Police in the northern canton of Schaffhausen reported that several people have been arrested and prosecuted.
'Peaceful, fast, dignified'
The Last Resort, a euthanasia organization, presented the Sarco-pod in July in Zurich. They expected the pod to be used for the first time within a few months. They saw no legal obstacles to its use in Switzerland.
The Last Resort said in a statement to AFP that the deceased (who was not named) was a 64-year-old woman from the Midwest of the United States.
She “had been suffering for years from a number of serious problems related to a severely weakened immune system,” the statement said.
The death occurred “under a canopy of trees, in a private woodland retreat”.
The association's co-president, Florian Willet, was the only other person present. He described the woman's death as “peaceful, swift and dignified,” according to the statement.
Warning given
The cantonal public prosecutor's office “has initiated criminal proceedings against several individuals for incitement to and complicity in suicide… and several individuals have been taken into custody,” a police statement said.
The Public Prosecution Service received a message from a law firm on Monday that a case of assisted suicide had taken place in a forest hut in Merishausen.
The police, the forensic investigation service and the Public Prosecution Service have “gone to the scene of the crime”.
Sarco's suicide capsule was secured and the body was taken for autopsy.
“We have found the capsule containing the lifeless person,” said Schaffhausen public prosecutor Peter Sticher.
He told the newspaper Blick that several people had been arrested, “so that they did not collude with each other or cover up evidence”.
According to Sticher, the operators knew the risk of being arrested.
“We warned them in writing. We said that if they came to Schaffhausen and used Sarco, they would face criminal consequences,” he said.
Sarco: 3D printable capsule
The Sarco was invented by Philip Nitschke, one of the leading international activists for the right to die.
The 3D-printable capsule cost more than €650,000 ($725,000) to research and develop in the Netherlands over 12 years. Future Sarcos could cost around €15,000. The pods are reusable.
In a statement, Nitschke said he was “pleased that the Sarco did exactly what it was intended to do: provide a voluntary, non-drug, peaceful death at the time the person chooses.”
In order to use the Sarco, the person who wants to die must first undergo a psychiatric assessment.
The person climbs into the purple capsule, closes the lid and is asked automated questions such as who they are, where they are and whether they know what will happen if they press the button.
In July, Nitschke explained that once the button is pressed, the amount of oxygen in the air drops from 21 percent to 0.05 percent in less than 30 seconds.
The person in question quickly loses consciousness and dies within about five minutes.
Nitschke's Exit International organization, which owns the Sarco, is a non-profit organization funded by donations. The only cost to the user is 18 Swiss francs ($21) for the nitrogen.
Suicide law
In July, Willet said Switzerland was “by far the best place” to use the Sarco, because of its “wonderful liberal system”.
Swiss law generally allows assisted suicide if the person commits the lethal act themselves.
But Interior Minister Baume-Schneider, answering questions in parliament on Monday, said: “Sarco's suicide capsule does not comply with the law.”
“Firstly, it does not meet the requirements of the Product Safety Act and may therefore not be placed on the market. Secondly, the corresponding use of nitrogen is not compatible with the target article of the Chemicals Act,” she said.
Fiona Stewart, who sits on The Last Resort's advisory board, said the group acted on legal advice, which “has consistently concluded since 2021 that Sarco's use in Switzerland would be lawful”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published via a syndicated feed.)
