One American woman traveled to Switzerland to take her death into her own hands. Exit International, an organization that advocates for the right-to-die movement, announced on Tuesday that the unnamed 64-year-old woman was the first person to die in a suicide pod.
Called Sarco, as in sarcophagus, the capsule is an airtight cabin the size of a coffin. Once inside the suicide pod, the woman pressed a button, and the air in the pod was replaced with nitrogen gas, causing the oxygen level to drop within one minute. She lost consciousness and died of hypoxia, the lack of oxygen.
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Philip Nitschke, the founder of Exit International and the creator of Sarco, compared the death to what happens when an airplane loses cabin pressure.
“We know from people who have survived that this doesn’t feel like suffocating. You just keep on breathing. After half a minute, people start to feel disoriented,” he said. “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 Last Resort, a Swiss assisted suicide organization, supervised the procedure. Florian Willet, the organization’s director, was the only person present at the woman’s death.
Nitschke monitored the woman’s death from Germany with the use of a heart rate monitor, an oxygen monitor, and a camera inside the capsule.
“When she entered the Sarco, she almost immediately pressed the button. She didn’t say anything,” Nitschke said of the woman, who had very serious illness that caused severe pain. “She really wanted to die. My estimate is that she lost consciousness within two minutes and that she died after five minutes. We saw jerky, small twitches of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then. It looked exactly how we expected it to look.”
The woman made a statement to Fiona Stewart, a lawyer with The Last Resort, before her death. During that statement, she revealed that she had wanted to die for two years. She also said that her sons agreed that the decision was hers alone, and submitted written statements to that effect.
After the woman died, The Last Resort notified the police. Cops later detained a photographer who captured photos of the woman’s death. Swiss police told The New York Post that “several people” had been arrested in connection to the death, adding that all parties were under investigation for alleged incitement and accessory to suicide.
Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, though all forms of euthanasia are against the law. Exit International said that, until recently, the Swiss government hadn’t weighed in on the pod’s legality. The organization said it was previously told by Swissmedic that the Sarco is not a medical device, so no permit is required. Additionally, since nitrogen is a gas that is present in the air, it is not registered as a medicine.
However, in the wake of the woman’s death, Swiss Minister of Internal Affairs Elisabeth Baume-Schneider has questioned if the Sarco met safety requirements and rules of the Chemicals Act, Exit International said.
Though the legality of the Sarco has been called into question, it has a waiting list. The Last Resort does not charge a fee to use the 3D-printed machine—save the cost of a nitrogen tank. It will not be available for use to people under the age of 50.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, help is available. Call 1-800-273-8255 to speak with someone now or text START to 741741 to message with the Crisis Text Line.
