The topic of euthanasia is in the headlines again. Last week, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the famously outspoken pro-death proponent who was once called “a reckless instrument of death” by the American Medical Association passed away. This week, we’re seeing euthanasia controversy in the UK following a program aired on the BBC last night called Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die, featuring author Terry Pratchett, who in 2007 was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. In the documentary, which has been called “pro-death propaganda,” he visits the Dignitas Clinic in Switzerland and looks at the various ways one can undertake assisted death.
We’ll leave it to the pundits and social networks to debate the moral complexities of the issue. It did, however, bring to mind this as-yet-unrealised project from Royal College of Art student Julijonas Urbonas, called the Euthanasia Coaster.
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Reminiscent of the Stop-and-Drop suicide booths from Futurama in its complacency, the project takes the form of a roller coaster that kills people humanely as they “elegantly” expire in a state of euphoria. As a former managing director of an amusement park, Julijonas isn’t without qualifications, but it might not be an amusement park to everyone’s tastes. Dealing with an area of aesthetics he calls “gravitational theatre”, the journey would be the ultimate thrill ride where climbing on would mean you wouldn’t be climbing off. The one bonus is you’ll expire in a state of pleasure caused by the extreme g-forces, falling 500m down a drop tower you’ll be exposed to 10g, which will cause a lack of blood to the brain, suffocating you into blissful unconsciousness as you whiz off this mortal coil, your final resting place: the funfair of doom.
Whether the project is anything more than a work of conceptual art is questionable, although the fact that Julijonas calls it a “kinetic sculpture” shows he might be more into the aesthetics and philosophy behind it than actually building it.
