Switzerland: Police investigate 1st use of 'suicide capsule' – DW – 09/24/2024
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Swiss police say they have detained several people and opened a criminal case a day after the first use of the "Sarco" capsule to end a person's life. Assisted dying is legal in Switzerland in some circumstances.

Swiss police say they have detained several people and opened a criminal case a day after the first use of the “Sarco” capsule to end a person’s life. Assisted dying is legal in Switzerland in some circumstances.

Police in the northern Swiss canton of Schaffhausen said on Tuesday that several people had been detained, and a dead body taken for examination, following the apparent first use of a capsule designed to help people end their lives.

The “Sarco” capsule, made in the Netherlands and in development for several years now, is supposed to allow a person reclining inside to press a button, after which most of the oxygen in the sealed chamber is replaced with nitrogen.

According to the group that promotes its use, Exit International, this triggers first mild disorientation and euphoria, then unconsciousness, and in a few minutes death by asphyxiation.

  • interurbain1er@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    35·
    3 months ago

    Swiss law allows for assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no “external assistance” and those who help the person do not do so for “any self-serving motive,” according to a government website.

    So you can get help or not?

    • Droggelbecher@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19·
      3 months ago

      You can get help setting everything up, but you have to be the one to push the button, pick up the lethal medicine, etc

      • Cossty@lemmy.worldEnglish
        116·
        3 months ago

        But you have to pay to use this machine. So the people who made it are self-interested in you dying because they want your money.

        • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          26·
          3 months ago

          In the article from de Volksrant

          According to The Last Resort, the woman paid nothing for the Sarco, with the exception of 18 Swiss francs for the nitrogen tank and her funeral costs. ‘Using the Sarco is free’, Stewart states. ‘That is part of our philosophy. We don’t want to make any money on this. ’

        • Droggelbecher@lemmy.worldEnglish
          41·
          3 months ago

          Pretty sure you have to pay if you back out as well, so that’s not an incentive to kill you either.

            • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
              3·
              3 months ago

              How the fuck did you read that as anything but a joke? Like seriously, how? What did you think I was saying with that comment?

              EDIT: And just to be clear, I am an anarchist and I think it’s absurd that any state has the hubris to tell anyone that they’re not allowed to die. FOH.