Not much news comes out of Switzerland, especially since the crackdown of Swiss bank accounts.
The European nation is making headlines for a new way to die by assisted suicide – legally.
Switzerland’s medical review board has given authorization for the use of the Sarco Suicide Pod, which does not involve the use of a chemical substance.
This pod is a 30D printed portable object that resembles a coffin. The capsule contains windows, and it can be Brough to a tranquil place if that’s what the person using it to leave the earth requests.
Philip Nitschke invented it; he talked to swissinfo.ch about how his assisted suicide “death pod” is different from other versions.
“We want to remove any kind of psychiatric review from the process and allow the individual to control the method themselves. Our aim is to develop an artificial-intelligence screening system to establish the person’s mental capacity. Naturally there is a lot of skepticism, especially on the part of psychiatrists.”
In Switzerland, dying by assisted suicide is a thing; in 2020, roughly 1,300 people died that way, and most of them did it by ingesting liquid sodium pentobarbital. This toxic mix puts a patient in a coma before it kills them.
Here’s how Nitschke’s pod will work. The patient has to answer pre-recorded questions when they are in the pod and then push a button themselves that starts the process of flooding the pod’s interior with nitrogen.
This reduces the oxygen level significantly.
Here’s more about the process from the inventor.
“The person will get into the capsule and lie down. It’s very comfortable. The whole thing takes about 30 seconds. Death occurs through hypoxia and hypocapnia, oxygen, and carbon dioxide deprivation, respectively. There is no panic, no choking.”
2022 is the year the Sarco Suicide Pod should be operational. No word yet on how much the process costs.
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