The space-age-looking Sarco capsule, first unveiled in 2019, replaces its oxygen with nitrogen, leading to death by hypoxia.
An assisted dying group expects a new portable suicide pod to be used for the first time in Switzerland to ensure unsupervised death within a few months.
The space-age-looking Sarco capsule, first unveiled in 2019, replaces oxygen inside it with nitrogen, leading to death by hypoxia, AFP reported.
The recently established organization The Last Resort said it saw no legal obstacle to its use in Switzerland, where the law generally allows assisted suicide if the person carries out the fatal act themselves.
"Since we really have people lining up to use Sarco, it's very likely that this will happen very soon." But that's all I can say," Last Resort CEO Florian Villet said at a press conference.
"I can't imagine a more beautiful way (to die) - to breathe air without oxygen until you fall into an eternal sleep," he added.
A person who wishes to die must first undergo a psychiatric evaluation of their mental capacity - a key legal requirement.
The person gets into the pod, closes the lid, and is asked automatic questions such as who they are, where they are, and whether they know what's happening when they press the button.
"If you want to die," says the voice in the processor, "press this button," says Philip Nitschke, a euthanasia activist and inventor of Sarco.
He said that after pressing the button, the amount of oxygen in the air drops from 21% to 0.05% in less than 30 seconds.
"They will then remain in this state of unconsciousness for ... about five minutes before death occurs," he added.
As for someone changing their mind at the last minute, Nitschke said, "Once you push the button, there's no going back."
The time, date and place of the first death have not been decided, nor who the first user may have been.
Such details will not be made public until after the event because "we really don't want a person's desire to die peacefully in Switzerland to become a media circus," said lawyer Fiona Stewart, who sits on The Last Resort's advisory board.
Asked if the first use would be this year, she replied: "I would say yes."
She said the only cost to the consumer would be 18 Swiss francs ($20) for the nitrogen.
But the potential use of the capsule has raised numerous legal and ethical questions in Switzerland, reigniting the debate over assisted dying. | BGNES
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