Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Well, it certainly ain’t pod racing.
First, a little soylent scene:
Carrying on…
The already infamous “suicide” pod, where a person gets inside and pushes a button to die, has been used for the first time.
“The ghoulish Australian ‘doctor‘” Philip Nitschke has long been obsessed with making suicide readily available to anyone who wants to die. Indeed, years ago, he told NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez that he wanted what he called “peaceful” suicide pills sold in supermarkets, even to ‘troubled teens.’
“Nitschke also sold plastic suicide bags in Australia (which I helped cause to be outlawed when I busted him for his ghoulishness in the national media there in 2001). Subsequently, he traveled the world teaching how-to-commit-suicide classes and starred at international death-movement conventions. Awful.
“More recently, Nitschke made world headlines in the assisted-suicide-boosting media for inventing a “suicide capsule” that asphyxiates the suicidal person with nitrogen. At first, Swiss authorities said it would be legal, and then they backtracked.
“Legal or not, it appears the capsule was used by an American woman to become dead in Switzerland.”
The pod iteslf was placed in a forest, in a suicide reminiscent of that from the movie “Soylent Green”.
“The first person to use the Sarco suicide pod got into the device and ‘almost immediately pressed the button’ to take her own life, its creator has claimed.
“The capsule is designed to allow a person inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber, causing hypoxia and death soon after.
“It was set up in a woodland near a cabin in Merishausen, northern Switzerland, with the pod’s window allowing the 64-year-old American woman 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, the pod’s inventor, told Dutch media.
“’We saw sudden, small contractions and movements of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then.’”
It turns out that the bad press has gotten the Swiss police involved.
“Swiss police say they have opened a criminal investigation and arrested several people after the suspected death of a woman in a so-called suicide capsule.
“According to local reports, the capsule, named the Sarco Pod by its inventor, was used for the first time on Monday afternoon in a forest close to the German border in the Swiss town of Merishausen.”
What for? Perhaps it was because the person who died didn’t die alone and others had a reason to publicize their death pod?
“Well, Swiss law makes suicide legal, even for foreigners and tourists, but only so long as the individual takes their own life absent any ‘external assistance’ — particularly from those acting on a ‘self-serving motive.’ In this case, some of the people in attendance wanted to make sure the device worked, including a photographer who allegedly took pictures of the capsule. So, the witness’s crime was to attempt to secure proof that this suicide machine actually worked.
“If Swiss law was scrupulously observed, this woman should have died utterly alone — unaided by anyone, her final thoughts known only to her maker. If that’s best practice, maybe the problem isn’t with how this device is used but the fact that it exists at all”
Or maybe it was just getting caught up in the red tape.
“On Monday, Health Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider was asked in Swiss parliament about the legal conditions for the use of the Sarco capsule, and suggested its use would not be legal.
“‘On one hand, it does not fulfill the demands of the product safety law, and as such, must not be brought into circulation,’ she said. ‘On the other hand, the corresponding use of nitrogen is not compatible with the article on purpose in the chemicals law.’”
One thing is for sure, this isn’t likely to be the last time this is used.
TTFN.
