December 20, 2024
Everyone has the right to die, believes the inventor of the Sarco
Everyone has the right to die, believes the inventor of the suicide capsule. ‘There is nothing wrong with what I am doing’
Philip Nitschke worked on his suicide capsule, the Sarco, for ten years. Its first use led to a criminal investigation. Nevertheless, he continues. ‘You don’t have to be a doctor to understand death.’
by Susan Wichgers, 20 December 2024, 06:45.
In the lobby of a simple hotel in Germany, Philip Nitschke (77) watched live footage of a dying woman on his laptop. The 64-year-old American woman lay in a purple futuristic-looking capsule in the Swiss forests, filling with nitrogen gas.
September 23, the day the capsule was first used, was an anxious day, Nitschke says from the corner bench on his small houseboat in a village near Haarlem.
For ten years, he built the suicide capsule. The idea is to use it to offer people a dignified self-chosen death, provided they are 50 or older, or seriously ill.
A person lying in it will press a button, after which nitrogen gas will displace the oxygen in the capsule, resulting in loss of consciousness and eventually suffocation.
The decision to use the Sarco for the first time in Switzerland and not in the Netherlands, where it was made with a 3D printer, was well thought out. Assisted suicide is punishable in the Netherlands; in Switzerland, the law is much broader. There, assisted suicide is allowed unless it benefits someone personally or financially.
Still, the day turned to arrests and criminal investigations. Nitschke’s lawyers were arrested, as were a Volkskrant photographer and Florian Willet, the president of a Swiss death rights organisation, who was at the scene at the time of death. The office of Nitschke’s organisation Exit International in Haarlem was also raided.
Everyone has since been released, but the Sarco is still in Switzerland. The status of the investigation is unclear.
Are you worried?
‘No. At least, not anymore. I was worried about Florian being held for so long and that we would be suspected of murder. We don’t know if there is still a suspicion, possibly it is about assisted suicide for personal gain. For notoriety.
‘I wouldn’t know why the Swiss are reacting so violently, but there are a lot of theories going around. There is discussion in Switzerland, for example, about suicide tourism: foreigners come there to die, because they have that unique law. That might not fit well with the ‘come to Switzerland and behold the Alps’ image.’
The Last Will Cooperative (CLW) has expressed interest in the Sarco. The OM wrote in a press release that supplying it is punishable. Do you fear the same fate will soon befall you in the Netherlands?
‘The OM was not exactly enthusiastic. The handy thing about 3D printing is that I’m not going to give the CLW an object, just the software.
Telling someone about drug X (a suicide powder, ed.) is not punishable, supplying someone with drug X is. In that way, telling someone how to build the Sarco is also not punishable.’
The Sarco is not Nitschke’s first work when it comes to the self-determined end of life. That career began back in 1996, when he became the first doctor in the world to legally perform euthanasia. At the time, he was still living in his native Australia, where a new law allowing euthanasia came into force.
After eight months, that law was reversed due to criticism. In that short time, Nitschke performed euthanasia four times. He was one of the few doctors to support that law at the time.
Philip Nitschke is 77, and ‘very much’ concerned with his own death. ‘But I know I have control over it.’
At his first euthanasia, his shirt was soaked with sweat. He tried to eat a sandwich, but his mouth was so dry he couldn’t get it out. Will it all work? What if it doesn’t work, and the patient doesn’t die?
Later that day, he applied an IV to the patient, a man with an incurable disease. Nitschke went into another room. The patient answered three questions on a laptop using a system Nitschke himself had devised, after which a lethal fluid began to flow through the drip.
All went well, the man died in his wife’s arms. That day changed his life, Nitschke says now, 30 years later.
Why is it so important to you for someone to push that button themselves?
‘I think everyone has the right to make their own choice, but don’t ask me to agree with the decision itself. That is their business. All I will do is make it possible.
That was the idea behind that laptop. I didn’t see why I should be the executioner, so to speak, when they could also do it themselves.’
You had only been a doctor for seven years at the time. Why did the subject grab you so much?
‘On the radio I first heard about the new euthanasia law, I was in bed. Good idea, I thought, and I turned over again. A week later, I was surprised by the huge criticism from the profession I had only just joined. Doctors wanted nothing to do with it.
‘I was annoyed. I just belonged, and already they were going to tell me I shouldn’t do something. The public liked the idea, but doctors didn’t.
I was annoyed at the opinion they were imposing in a way they had no right to. You don’t have to be a doctor to understand death.’
There is some anti-authority thinking in that.
‘Yes, they patronised society. And I hated that, because in doing so, they were also patronising me.’
Do you sometimes doubt whether you are acting morally right?
‘I don’t think there is anything wrong with what I do. It’s just a matter of waiting for the rest of the world to join in. That also has to do with age. People in their seventies, eighties often change their mind about the end of life, they want control.
‘If you are able-bodied and you decide you no longer want the precious gift of life, then you have every right to say you don’t want to continue. It is not a gift if you cannot give it back.’
As human beings, don’t we also have a duty to care for life? And for each other?
‘As long as someone is able to weigh up the impact on their surroundings and rationally decides that they still want to take that step, we have a duty to respect that,’ he says.
‘In a way, that also shows in the law, because suicide is not punishable. It once was. But perhaps it is indeed not good for society, and society should not encourage it.’
Do you encourage it?
‘That is what people do say, that the Sarco looks too attractive. Yes, if it looks too much like a delightful, mystical experience, that will encourage vulnerable people.
But the issue is not whether someone is vulnerable. The only criterion is whether someone is willful.’
During the conversation, his partner Fiona Stewart (58) comes home, to the loud barking of their two small dogs. They have been together for 23 years.
Almost a decade ago, they traded their homeland Australia for the Netherlands, where the euthanasia law is most generous.
Together, Nitschke has been working since 2006 on an ever-changing handbook on methods of suicide. He does the scientific side, she is the editor.
Photo: Philip Nitschke & Katrina the Jack Russell by Patrick Post
Are you equally committed?
Stewart: ‘I head the publishing house, so am a bit more in the background. He is the foreman. Generally we agree on things, but sometimes not.
‘For example, he believes that everyone over 18 has the right to a self-chosen end of life. In an interview, he once said that all adults have the right to a lethal agent in the home. I don’t think that is politically tenable.’
Nitschke: ‘I know. But I believe in it.’
Stewart: ‘Yes, but it’s better to keep that to yourself.’
What happens if you don’t slow him down?
Stewart: ‘Oh, then he will be portrayed as someone he is not. I find that very painful. He’s actually a very nice, shy person.’
The book is only available to people who are over 50 or incurably ill. Why do you choose that limit?
Nitschke: ‘That’s a pragmatic choice. Personally, I think it’s a purer, more consistent and simpler position to make it available to anyone over eighteen. But Fiona and the rest of the organisation think there should be a higher age limit.
At 50, you have life experience, whatever that means.’
Philip Nitschke (born 1947, Australia) began his career as a physicist. He obtained his PhD in 1972. After that, he worked as a ranger. After fracturing his foot, he was forced to quit and trained as a doctor later in life.
Today, he is director of Exit International, an organisation fighting for the right to die.
With his partner Fiona Stewart, he is working on The Peaceful Pill, a handbook on suicide that is constantly being updated with new information. He is also working on a new version of the Sarco and other technological developments on dying.
Nitschke’s first euthanasia laptop, The Deliverance Machine, is now in the British Science Museum in London.
The Sarco will also be on display in a museum in the future: Rijksmuseum Boerhaave recently expressed interest in it.
The Sarco was his life’s work. Nevertheless, 70-year-old Nitschke is far from thinking about stopping working. ‘He is running out of time to do what he still wants to do,’ says Stewart.
What do you still want to get done?
Nitschke: ‘There is a thought experiment I want to put into practice: the dementia switch. The only thing you can do now in the Netherlands if you want to prevent dementia is to fill in a will stating that you want euthanasia as soon as it happens. That is a complicated request for a doctor to grant.
‘The dementia switch is an implant with a lethal agent in it and a switch that you can flip yourself for a certain time.
For example, for a year. After a year it does tick, tick, tick and you reset it for another year.
‘But if it starts ticking after a year and you are demented by now, you think, ‘hey, what is that thing?’, and you don’t flip the switch. Then it kills you. I’m working on production now. Once it’s made, I’ll have it implanted with a saline solution to test the system.’
What if you get dementia but are still quite happy?
‘Indeed, some people still seem to live quite a nice life when they get dementia. Even then, I don’t want it. That’s the choice you make: death, rather than endlessly grinning at the wall. Some will also choose this because they don’t want to use the limited resources available.’
Are you preoccupied with your own death?
‘A lot. But I know I have control over it.’