The use of the Sarco suicide capsule, dubbed the “Tesla of euthanasia,” has been suspended just weeks after an American woman ended her life in the controversial morbid machine.
The Sarco was created by Dr. Philip Nitschke, the founder and director of the pro-euthanasia group Exit International. It was used for the first — and perhaps last — time on Sept. 24 to take the life of an immunocompromised 64-year-old woman from the Midwest.
Swiss officials have said that the Sarco had not been approved when it was used to take the unidentified American’s life. A criminal investigation into the pod is pending and all of the 371 active applications have been suspended, according to the National Review.
Switzerland is one of the few countries that permits travelers to legally take their lives under its assisted suicide practices, which do not require a doctor but can include outside help.
The pod requires the user to activate it themselves, with a modulated voice directing them to press a button if they “want to die.”
Once pressed, the capsule is flooded with nitrogen, which drags the user’s oxygen levels to deadly levels until they eventually enter a hypoxic state before asphyxiating.
“When she entered the Sarco, she almost immediately pressed the button,” Nitschke said, according to the National Review.
“She didn’t say anything. She really wanted to die. My estimate is that she lost consciousness within two minutes and that she died after five minutes. We saw jerky, small twitches of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then. It looked exactly how we expected it to look.”
Police arrested several people connected to the American’s death, including a Dutch photographer covering the assisted suicide.
It is not known if Nitschke was among those arrested.
Another Sarco applicant, a 55-year-old wheelchair-bound woman from Alabama, ditched her plan after accusing the company of exploiting her for publicity and stealing her life savings.
She was originally going to be the first person to use the Sarco.
“If I had known that the deeply heartless people who held my fate in their hands were mainly driven by their own media presence and marketing, I would never have subjected myself to this ordeal,” she wrote, according to the Swiss outlet Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
She died in July, leaving behind an accusatory letter to The Last Resort, an affiliate organization of Exit International.
