December 21, 2024
Thing of 2024 – No one held her hand tight
The capsule is built from glossy panels and Plexiglas. You lie in it, tilted back like the pilot of a glider. It looks like a bobsled. Or the aerodynamic sidecar of a motorbike.
In the Haarlem workshop where Philip Nitschke (77), an Australian doctor, worked for years on the prototype of the Sarco, there is such a motorbike with sidecar.
His wife and he ride it to the Eurovision Song Contest every year. Those who get into the Sarco also embark on a journey. The last one.
There are people, young and old, who can think long and hard about their own death. There are those to whom, fortunately or unfortunately, that is not granted. There are those who are content with the end. There are many people who have to die, but don’t want to.
There are people who want to die but cannot. Because the law in their country prohibits euthanasia or their death wish is not recognised.
For the latter group, Nitschke invented the Sarco Pod: a machine that allows anyone to leave life independently ‘in a reliable, peaceful manner, and at a time of their own choosing’, without the intervention of anyone else, including a doctor.
Nitschke founded the forerunner of Exit in 1997 , an organisation that considers the right to suicide as a human right. Since then, he has invented and promoted all kinds of methods to help people in a self-chosen death.
From sedatives and a bag of helium gas to a computer you can programme to give yourself a lethal injection.
Nitschke is no longer officially a doctor, but his nickname is no surprise: Dr Death.
The idea for the Sarco dates back to 2012, but it wasn’t until 2024 that it bore fruit for the first time, so to speak. In September, a 64-year-old American woman boarded the Sarco somewhere in a forest north of Zurich, closed the window of the airtight capsule, and pressed a button that caused nitrogen gas to displace oxygen.
Within minutes, she became unconscious and died soon after.
She reportedly suffered from an autoimmune disease. No one held her hand.
Nitschke had made his Sarco available to The Last Resort, a related Swiss group.
Assisted suicide is allowed in Switzerland under very strict conditions. People from all over the world come to that country for it. After the first Sarco suicide, the chairman of The Last Resort was arrested.
Coöperatie Laatste Wil (CLW), the organisation that previously introduced the suicide drug ‘X’, nevertheless hopes that Sarco can be used in the Netherlands.
All kinds of conditions, including an age limit of at least 55 years, questionnaires and mandatory periods of reflection, should remove the objections to ‘drug X’ – risk of impulsive use, including by vulnerable and young people – CLW said last month.
But this would require changing the law that makes it punishable to ‘intentionally assist another in suicide’, ‘or provide the means to do so’. Or its violation to be tolerated in Dutch.
Nitschke got his idea for the Sarco in 2012 thanks to an almost totally paralysed British man, Tony Nicklinson, who litigated up to the Supreme Court to be allowed to die with the help of a doctor.
It is up to parliament to change the law, the court ruled, rejecting the request.
For Britons, any form of euthanasia is prohibited by law. But even there is now movement.
In late November, the House of Commons took a first step in legalising assisted dying (euthanasia) for terminally ill patients in England and Wales.
Nitschke settled on the Netherlands in 2015 because here, too, there is ‘open discussion’ about euthanasia without a medical basis and for people with dementia and mental illness.
But discussion is not yet consensus. And what he has come up with for that, such as a lethal implant that you have to have inserted in full wits with a timer that you cannot turn off once dementia has progressed too far, still seems to be mostly a thought exercise.
And in the non-ideal world of 2024, the Sarco exists. The airtight part should eventually be able to be 3D-printed from compostable material.
‘We are all stardust’ it has written on the side. Dust to dust, so to speak but more automatically.
On Exit’s website, you can already see the Sarco in different variants, purple, orange, with tinted glass.
‘The elegant design is meant to suggest a sense of a special occasion,’ says the designer.
Dying as a lifestyle?
Image: Cyprian Koscielniak