The company behind a 3D-printed pod which can help carry out assisted suicide has said it is confident it could be used in Switzerland as early as next year.
Sarco commissioned a Swiss legal expert, who found that the machine did not break any laws in the country…
Assisted suicide, in which somebody is given the means to end their own life, is legal in Switzerland. About 1,300 people died there in this way in 2020…
The current method used in Switzerland is to provide the person with a series of liquids that, if ingested, will end the person’s life.
By contrast, the pod – which can be placed anywhere – is flooded with nitrogen, reducing the oxygen levels rapidly…The process would make the person inside lose consciousness and die in approximately 10 minutes.
All sounds perfectly reasonable and a helluva more civilized than the hoops folks have to jump through in most “advanced” Western nations.
💀 “Where the Despairing Log On, and Learn Ways to Die : It has the trappings of popular social media, a young audience and explicit content on suicide that other sites don’t allow. It is linked to a long line of lives cut short.” (NYT) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/09/us/where-the-despairing-log-on.html
💀 CDC: Suicide and Self-Harm Injury Data https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm
💀 “Suicide is the 10th-leading cause of death in the U.S.; in 2010, 38,364 people killed themselves. In more than half of these cases, they used firearms. Indeed, more people in this country kill themselves with guns than with all other intentional means combined, including hanging, poisoning or overdose, jumping, or cutting. Though guns are not the most common method by which people attempt suicide, they are the most lethal. About 85 percent of suicide attempts with a firearm end in death.” https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/guns-suicide/
💀 “Suicide by cop or suicide by police is a suicide method in which a suicidal individual deliberately behaves in a threatening manner, with intent to provoke a lethal response from a public safety or law enforcement officer.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_cop
“Résumé
Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful.
You might as well live.”
Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope (1929)