Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health issues, help is available. In the United States, call or text 988, Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Globally, the International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Associations around the world have contact information for crisis centers around the world.
AP —
Advocates for the so-called suicide capsule announced on Sunday that it had suspended the process of accepting applications for its use, which numbered more than 370 last month, as a criminal investigation into its first use in Switzerland was completed.
Florian Willett, the president of Switzerland-based The Last Resort, has been held in pre-trial detention, the group and its Australian affiliate company Exit International, founded more than a quarter of a century ago, have announced.
Swiss police arrested Willett and several others after the death of an unidentified 64-year-old woman from the Midwest who was the first to use the device, known as a Sarco, in the forest on September 23rd. I was arrested. The northern region of Schaffhausen near the German border.
Others who were initially detained have been released from custody, authorities said.
Switzerland has some of the world’s most permissive laws regarding assisted suicide, but Sarco’s initial use sparked debate among lawmakers.
In the rich Alpine country, assisted suicide is permitted by law only if the person takes their own life without “external assistance,” and those who assist the person in death are also considered “selfish.” He did not commit suicide for any other reason.
The advocacy group said in a statement on Sunday that as of September 23, 371 people in Switzerland had "subject applications” for Sarco, and applications were suspended after the first use.
Exit International, whose founder Dr. Philip Nischke is based in the Netherlands, is behind a 3D printed device that cost more than $1 million to develop.
The Sarco capsule is designed so that when a person sitting in a reclining seat inside presses a button, nitrogen gas is injected into the sealed chamber from a tank below, allowing them to fall asleep and suffocate to death within minutes. Designed.
Exit International said Willett was the only person present at the woman’s death, which it described as “peaceful, swift and dignified.” These claims could not be independently verified.
On the same day the woman died, Swiss Health Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told parliament that the use of Sarco was not legal. The woman was said to be severely immunocompromised.
Exit said its Swiss lawyers believe its use of the device is legal.
“It was only after Sarco was used that we learned that Ms. Bohm Schneider was addressing this issue,” the advocacy group said in a statement Sunday. “This timing is purely coincidental and was not intended by us.”
