Experts have warned Philip Nitschke’s gruesome “Sarco” suicide pod could claim the lives of vulnerable Australians as he confirmed plans to produce the high-tech death capsule here.
Nitschke, the former doctor and director of pro-euthanasia group Exit International, hit back at claims the device glamorises suicide, after he announced the death of a 64-year-old US woman via suffocation in a “Sarco pod” in Switzerland on 23 September.
Responding to questions from The Catholic Weekly Nitschke said he knew of plans to produce the pods in several countries, including Australia.
He intends to include instructions for 3D printing the device in his Peaceful Pill Handbook, the notorious euthanasia manual, “when we can retrieve the device that has been seized by the Swiss authorities.”
He defended the device as a more attractive method of assisted suicide than the first method he launched in 2002, the so-called “Exit bag” aimed at evading laws banning euthanasia and assisted suicide, since legalised.
“Should we be making this lawful practice ugly?” he said.
“For years people desperate for a reliable elective death have used a plastic Exit bag with nitrogen, with many turning away because of the ‘undignified’ appearance of a plastic bag.”
Dr Xavier Symons, Director of the Plunkett Centre for Ethics at Australian Catholic University, said the device was “bizarre and macabre” and perversely glamorises suicide.
Nitschke described the 64-year-old’s death as “an idyllic, peaceful death in a Swiss forest,” but Dr Symons said the “sad reality is that death from nitrogen gas inhalation is anything but idyllic.”
“It draws attention away from what we really should be focusing on—helping people who are in despair and feeling hopeless to overcome pain and recover a sense of meaning and purpose,” he added.
“A suicide device like this will allow people to circumvent the law regulating assisted suicide and euthanasia. This will put vulnerable people at risk.”
An Australian Catholic Medication Association spokesperson said the Sarco death represented “an ideology of nihilism and meaninglessness about the human condition.”
“Sadly, this news is not a surprise given the current cultural trajectory reflected in recent legislative changes supporting suicide and euthanasia in many Western countries, including Australia,
“Combined with the devaluing and underfunding of good palliative care services, the rise of Nitschkean death pods was an almost inevitable consequence.
Dr John Daffy from the Australian Care Alliance, an anti-euthanasia group based in Victoria, said the death pod “brings into sharp focus the real agenda of himself and others with suicide on demand the ultimate end goal.”
That includes in Australia when “large percentages of people don’t even have access to proper high-end palliative care, particularly in rural areas to relieve their suffering,” he said.
“What [Nitschke] started as a supposed effort to help the terminally ill is not actually the case. Suicide is a tragedy and any civilised society does all it can to avoid it no matter the circumstances.
“A depressed and demoralised person who wants to die needs our help, not help to kill themselves. That help is needed just as much at the end of life with a terminal condition.”
On the Sarco website, the device is promoted as a “technological solution” with an “elegant design” prompted by a UK man with Locked-in Syndrome.
“It was the Sarco that emerged. No doctor required and yet completely lawful. The elegant design was intended to suggest a sense of occasion, of travel to a ‘new destination’,” reads the blurb on the home page.
Several people were reportedly arrested following the death at a dedicated Sarco facility called The Last Resort, in Switzerland. Assisted suicide is legal in the country but the use of the pod to cause death is being contested.
In a statement Nitschke said it was the first use of the device and the woman had suffered for many years “from a number of serious problems associated with severe immune compromise.”
Nitschke told media he watched the woman’s death live online from Germany, describing seeing “jerky, small twitches of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then.”
Nitschke first promoted the device, a futuristic 3D-printed full body-length capsule that causes death by suffocation, with an Australia-wide tour in 2019.
At the time, he told 7 News that after its first use in Switzerland “there’s no reason they can’t be printed here in Australia and used immediately” by anyone with a 3D printer and several thousand dollars.
Dr Symons said he thought Nitschke’s Sarco design and its promotion exposes the “cult-like nature of some elements within the assisted dying lobby.”
“Let’s not forget that the original name of Compassion and Choices, the leading US pro-euthanasia lobby group, was The Hemlock Society,” he said.
“These people are not just interested in pain relief for patients with terminal illness. This is about exercising radical control over death so that you can craft the aesthetics of your own death.”
If you’re concerned about a friend or loved one, ask them how you can help. Please reach out to a doctor or other healthcare professional, or the organisations below.
Lifeline www.lifeline.org.au 13 11 14
Beyond Blue www.beyondblue.org.au 1300 22 4636