Suicide Pod

[passenger]

Multiple arrests after U.S. woman uses controversial 'suicide pod' in Switzerland
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested.

The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border.
The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country but assisted dying has been legal for decades.
On the same day it was used, Switzerland's Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told lawmakers that the Sarco was "not legal".
Police in the northern Schaffhausen canton said several people had been taken into custody and face criminal proceedings.

- 'Peaceful, fast, dignified' -

The Last Resort, an assisted dying organisation, presented the Sarco pod in Zurich in July, saying they expected it to be used for the first time within months, and saw no legal obstacle to its use in Switzerland.
In a statement to AFP, The Last Resort said the person who died, who was not named, was a 64-year-old woman from the midwestern United States.
She "had been suffering for many years from a number of serious problems associated with severe immune compromise", the statement said.

The death took place "under a canopy of trees, at a private forest retreat".
The association's co-president Florian Willet was the only other person present, and described the woman's death as "peaceful, fast and dignified", according to the statement.
LINK ...... There's more...

 

[MamaFrankie]

Who the hell are Governments to dictate whether one lives or dies? They will happily campaign for the right to live for a clump of unformed cells, yet won't let terminally ill people die with dignity. The only reason they want us alive is so that they can hit us with more taxes and control us with more rules.

 

[PsychoticThoughts]

I don't really get it... if the government is against you leaving the world peacefully and on your own terms, then the government is wrong.

I mean... do they even know how much of a privilege that is? Most --if not all-- of us have endured the awful sounds and sights of a loved one slowly succumbing to a fatal disease, a tragic accident or even their own inner demons, and they are somehow telling us that witnessing (let alone living) that is the better option? Christ!

 

[Dead2009]

"Active euthanasia" is only legal in 3 countries and Switzerland is not one of them. Therefore they took the appropriate action.