The first person to be terminated via a Sarco Suicide Pod was a 64 year old woman from the US who was reportedly suffering from a 'serious illness' before her suicide a Dutch Newspaper has reported.
The woman, said to be 'the first of many' to use the Sarco suicide pod in the near future, got into the device and "almost immediately pressed the button: to take her own life', its creator has claimed.
The Pod is designed to allow a person inside to execute their own death by pushing a button that injects nitrogen gas directly into the chamber, causing hypoxia and, soon after it is claimed, death.
Dr Death
The pod's design belies its sinister purpose, looking like a 1990s imac, the purple and white plastic capsule is the brainchild of Philip Nitschke (Dubbed Dr Death) whose medical licence was revoked by several countries when he originally revealed his design in 2021.
"Quick and Painless"
The first person to be euthanised by the method is a 64 year old woman from the United States who was reportedly suffering for a 'serious illness' . There were no other details given about the woman but Nitschke claimed that her death was 'quick and painless'.
According to reports in the Dutch media the 'Suicide Pod' was set up in a woodland close to a cabin in Merishausen, northern Switzerland, with the pod's 'window' allowing its 64-year-old inhabitant to see the trees and sky above her before she died.
'It looked exactly as we expected it to look. My guess is that she lost consciousness within two minutes and that she died after five minutes,' Dr Philip Nitschke, told Dutch media.
'Only' five minutes of seizures
Nitschke reportedly watched the woman gas herself and appeared to take some pleasure in seeing the woman having seizures as she was starved of Oxygen. Nitschke said: "We saw sudden, small contractions and movements of the muscles in her arms, but she was 'probably' already unconscious by then."
The woman, believed to be a mother-of-two from the American mid-west, had reportedly been suffering with 'a very serious illness that involves severe pain' and had wished to die for 'at least two years'.
Nitschke wants Death Pods as part of a 'progressive society'
Nitschke has repeatedly attempted to sell the 'death pods' as part of a progressive society's palliative healthcare plan with the World Economic Forum showing particular interest in his idea.
However, after being notified of her death, police swooped on the forest, where they are said to have arrested Nitschke, director of Swiss firm 'The Last Resort', along with two lawyers, and a photographer who had been taking pictures of the event.
According to Dutch daily newspaper de Volksrant, which had been following the case, the woman made an oral statement to The Last Resort saying it was her own wish to die. In the four-minute recording, she reportedly said that she had a death wish for 'at least two years,' ever since she was diagnosed with a 'immune compromised illness' and had been in 'severe pain'.
Nitschke, announced news of the pod's premiere on X, saying: 'An idyllic peaceful death in a Swiss forest where The Last Resort used the Sarco device to help a US woman have the death she wanted.'
He added of the arrests in the aftermath: 'What Swiss police didn't mention was that those arrested included the Director of The Last Resort, two lawyers providing legal assistance to TLR, and a Dutch journalist!!'
According to Last Resort, the woman's death had been 'peaceful, fast and dignified', though it is debatable just how peaceful and dignified when she suffered fitting for five minutes solid in a device that resembles a child's fairground ride.
Nitschke said that the woman's dying process went 'well' and that 'as soon as she lay down in the Sarco, she almost immediately pressed the button. 'She really wanted to die. She didn't say anything anymore,' he said.
He added in a statement that his device 'had performed exactly as it had been designed to do,' saying it had provided a 'non-drug, peaceful death at the time of the person's choosing'.
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