Switzerland has approved a 3D-printed “death pod” for legal use in the country.
This assisted suicide machine called “Sarco,” short for sarcophagus, promises a “painless death” and can be activated simply by blinking. Critics reportedly say the biodegradable pod, which has a futuristic look and can be taken anywhere — even a beautiful cliffside — without the need for tubes or monitoring equipment, is glamorizing assisted suicide. Others have compared it to a gas chamber.
The pod’s sleek design was chosen to “suggest a sense of occasion: of travel to a ‘new destination’ and to dispel the ‘yuk’ factor,” Exit International, the company that created the machine, says on its website.
With Sarco, there is no need for specialized skills, medical involvement or even expensive or difficult to obtain drugs, the company says. “The goal of Sarco is to remove the need for any assistance. This ensures any use of the Sarco is legal.”
The non-profit organization was founded by an Australian physician, Dr. Philip Nitschke, who says he was the first in the world to give his patients a legal, lethal, voluntary injection. In 1996, he helped four terminally ill patients die under Australia’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act.
Nitschke told SwissInfo how the pod works: “The person will get into the capsule and lie down. It’s very comfortable. They will be asked a number of questions and when they have answered, they may press the button inside the capsule activating the mechanism in their own time. The whole thing takes about 30 seconds. Death takes place through hypoxia and hypocapnia, oxygen and carbon dioxide deprivation, respectively. There is no panic, no choking feeling.”
According to a press release from Exit International, once the individual has triggered the mechanism, the pod “starts the process of flooding the inside with nitrogen, which will reduce the oxygen level from 21 per cent to 1 per cent.”
Nitschke says the person will “feel disoriented and slightly euphoric before losing consciousness.”
Nitschke wrote in 2018 that he now believes that everyone should have the right to “die with dignity,” not just terminally ill people.
“My vision has shifted from supporting the idea of a dignified death for the terminally ill (the medical model) to supporting the concept of a good death for any rational adult who has ‘life experience’ (the human rights model),” he wrote for HuffPost. “We interpret that to mean anyone over 50 years of age.”
The Sarco design, which allows activation by eye movement or voice control, was inspired by Tony Nicklinson, who suffered from locked-in syndrome after a stroke in 2005. Locked-in syndrome is a neurological condition where the individual has complete paralysis of all voluntary muscles, except those that control the eyes.
Nicklinson’s lawyers approached Nitschke to see what possible options he had, but the machine was not completed before Nicklinson died in 2012 after he refused to eat or drink anything after catching pneumonia.
Jeroen Kramer, president of the Westekerk church board in Amsterdam, told the Independent that the church is against the use of the machine.
“We will not and cannot support any suggestion of using such equipment,” he said. “Westerkerk will never support people offering equipment as promoted by Dr. Nitschke and we seriously wonder whether this contributes to a thorough and careful discussion about the issue.”
Nitschke told the Independent that some people have compared the Sarco pod to a gas chamber. “Gas may never be an acceptable method for assisted suicide in Europe due to the negative connotations of the Holocaust,” he said. “Some have even said it’s just a glorified gas chamber.”
Assisted suicide is only legal in seven countries in the world — Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Spain, the Netherlands and Colombia — and most of those countries require the person be terminally ill or to have an incurable illness. The United States hasn’t made it legal across all states, but eight states have. Other countries have bills in the works to decriminalize euthanasia, such as Argentina, Chile and Uruguay.
Nitschke wrote in HuffPost that he expects Sarco will soon be available to the world.
“The open-source plans will be freely available on the internet. I would like to think that it will find broad appeal and be able to help reframe conversations about, and people’s experiences, with death.”
HD Editor’s Note: Why Is This News Biblically Relevant?
In 2 Timothy Chapter 3, the apostle Paul describes what the character of mankind would be like in the last days. These characteristics would serve as a sign that Jesus’ return is fast approaching. Among this list is a “Loss of Natural Affection.” This prophetically predicted characteristic is on full display as the murder of the weakest among us (through abortion, euthanasia, etc.) is celebrated and fought for by our godless society.
Answers in Genesis in their Article “Is Euthanasia a Biblical Solution to Terminal Illness or Suffering?” wrote:
As people around the world grapple with the issue of whether euthanasia (“mercy killing”) and physician-assisted suicide should be legal, it is the desire to retain control over our lives until the end that motivates many to push for a legal “right to die” on their own terms. When we realize that this is tantamount to asking for murder-on-demand, the sanitized sounding word euthanasia takes on its true colors.
How should we as Christians view this issue? Whatever direction the legal systems of this and other nations take—and whatever unhappy surprises our own lives may hold for us as individuals and for those we love—how can we be certain that our thinking on this issue is correct? It is quite easy to be caught up in the emotional rhetoric surrounding this subject and to be overwhelmed by emotional distress when we hear bad news from our doctors. Without a firm foundation in the Word of God, the decisions we make and the beliefs we hold about these complex issues may be swayed by emotions and governed by the fallible pronouncements of secular ethics committees or even resource utilization guidelines. Therefore, to prepare ourselves for the unexpected, it is important to base our thinking on the Word of God from the very beginning. Let’s get this straight in our minds now.
From the beginning—back in the Garden of Eden—human beings have wanted to take control of their lives. We see this in the historical account of Eve’s yielding to the serpent’s temptation to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5) and in Adam’s decision to follow her in rebellion to God.
The Bible does not condone the taking of one’s own life or euthanasia. It simply does not. God exhorts us to defend the “speechless … who are appointed to die” (Proverbs 31:8–9), not to kill them. God forbids murder (Exodus 20:13). Euthanasia—the destruction of another person’s life even to end their suffering—is a form of murder. It is wrong to do it and wrong to ask someone to do it for you. Having the choice to “shuffle off this mortal coil” through our own hand or the hand of another is not God’s plan for us. We human beings do not have the authority to make that decision for ourselves or our loved ones.
Yet despite all the appealing talk of “dying with dignity”—and who in their right mind would desire to die without dignity—suicide, even when assisted by a physician’s lethal prescription, and euthanasia—which is just a nice word for murder with a presumably merciful motive—are not acceptable options unless we are nothing more than animals.
But we are not just animals! We—every one of us—are all made in his image and therefore all human beings have lives of special value to God, so much so that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, gave his own life for us (John 3:16; 1 Corinthians 15:22; Hebrews 2:9–10). God’s account of creation recorded in the Bible is consistent with what wesee in the physical world and validates his ownership of humanity and his right to set our standards. And apart from a source of truth from someone greater than man, no person’s moral judgments are more valid than another’s. Human beings have many ideas about right and wrong, but as described in the biblical book of Judges, when God’s Word is ignored, everyone does what is right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25), and that is a recipe for disaster as much now as it was during the days described in the book of Judges. Only God who created mankind is justly in a position of moral authority over all mankind.
We must not, therefore, yield the ground to those exhorting us to embrace death prematurely—much less to put subtle pressure on others to do so—but rather focus on how we live in the light of God’s truth until life’s end.
This is a complex issue, and this article is not intended to address every aspect, much less to review the legal ramifications of laws and court decisions that can change in a day. This is, instead, a reminder that we need to base our thinking on the Word of God, which never changes and can be trusted to guide us through life and death.
