Use of ‘suicide capsule’ suspended pending criminal investigation after American woman dies

Editor’s note: Help is available if you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health issues. In the US, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Globally, the International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide have contact information for crisis centers around the world.

AP
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Advocacy groups behind a so-called suicide capsule said on Sunday they had suspended the process of accepting applications to use it – over 370 in the last month – as a criminal investigation into its first use in Switzerland concludes .

The president of Switzerland-based organization The Last Resort, Florian Willet, is in custody, said the group and Exit International, an affiliate founded in Australia more than a quarter century ago.

Swiss police arrested Willet and several other people following the death on September 23 of an unidentified 64-year-old woman from the Midwestern United States who became the first person to use the device known as a “Sarco” in a forest in the northern Schaffhausen region near the German border.

According to the authorities, other people who were initially arrested were released from custody.

Switzerland has some of the most permissive laws in the world when it comes to assisted suicide, although the first use of the Sarco has sparked debate among lawmakers.

Laws in the wealthy Alpine country allow assisted suicide as long as the person takes their own life without “external help” and those who help the person die do not do so “for selfish motives.”

The stakeholders said in a statement on Sunday that as of September 23, 371 people were “in the process of applying” to use the Sarco in Switzerland and the applications were suspended after the first use.

Exit International, whose founder Dr. Philip Nitschke, based in the Netherlands, is behind the 3D printed device, which cost over $1 million to develop.

The Sarco capsule is designed so that a person sitting on a reclining seat inside can press a button that injects nitrogen gas from a tank below into the sealed chamber, allowing the person to fall asleep and then suffocate within minutes.

Exit International said Willet was the only person present when the woman died and described the death as “peaceful, quick and dignified”. These claims could not be independently verified.

On the same day the woman died, Swiss Health Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told parliament that use of the Sarco was not legal. The woman is said to be severely immunocompromised.

Exit says its lawyers in Switzerland believe the device’s use is legal.

“It was only after the Sarco was deployed that it was learned that Ms. Baume-Schneider had raised the issue,” the interest groups said in a statement on Sunday. “The timing was purely coincidental and not our intention.”