A 64-year-old American woman recently died in Switzerland, after using ‘Sarco’, a specially designed suicide capsule with nitrogen.

The woman has specifically travelled to Switzerland to die, because assisted suicide is legal in the country, as long as the person takes his or her life with no “external assistance”, and those who help the person die do not do so for “any self-serving motive”, according to a government website.

She died at a private forest retreat in the canton of Schaffhausen in northern Switzerland, and recorded her death wish on a video hours before she stepped into the Sarco. Then, she pushed a button, the machine filled the cubicle with nitrogen, and died.

The Australian inventor of the ‘Sarco’, medical doctor Philip Nitschke, reportedly followed the woman’s death via online video in Germany, as well as the readings from an oxygen and heart rate monitor attached to her.

He told Dutch newspaper the Volkskrant that she had lost consciousness “within two minutes” and had died after five minutes. “We saw sudden, small twitches of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then”.

The director of the pro-euthanasia group Last Resort, which is reponsible for the suicide project, Florian Willet, is thought to have been the only person present at the woman’s death.

Arrests made

Schaffhausen police confirmed the death of the woman and arrested several people against whom they have launched “criminal proceedings for incitement and aiding and abetting suicide”.

Among those currently arrested are Florian Willet, two lawyers and a Dutch journalist who accompanied the first use of the ‘Sarco’ suicide capsule.

A spokesperson said it was also investigating whether other criminal offences had been committed.

Media reports say the machine operators could face prison sentences of up to 5 years.

Furthermore, officials sent to the suicide scene seized the capsule while the body of the woman was taken to the forensic institute in Zurich.

Reactions

The Swiss interior minister, Élisabeth Baume-Schneider, questioned the moral and legal status of the ‘Sarco’, stating that it would not meet product safety requirements and that nitrogen in the Sarco does not meet the rules of the Chemicals Act, reported Swiss newspaper NZZ.

Many voices has also raised their voice in Switzerland against the device. One of them was Markus Zimmermann, titular professor of moral theology and ethics at the University of Fribourg and chairs the National Ethics Committee in the field of human medicine.

"Dying like this, cut off from the environment, from your fellow human beings, is a very inhumane way of dying. Sarco trivialises and trivialises this moment. Modern hyper-individualism is taken to extremes", he said.