American woman becomes first to use new ‘suicide pod,’ leading to several arrests

Several arrests were allegedly made on Monday after a 64-year-old American woman used a “suicide pod” to kill herself in northern Switzerland .

The first-ever use of the Sarco pod took place “under a canopy of trees” near a woodland cabin in Merishausen, Switzerland. The American woman had reportedly been suffering from “a very serious illness that causes severe pain” and desired to die for “at least two years.”

The creator of the "suicide pod," Philip Nitschke, watched the woman’s death remotely from Germany by watching an oxygen and a heart rate monitor and a video feed of the Sarco pod. He reported that the dying process went “well.”

“When she entered the Sarco,” Nitschke recalled, “she almost immediately pressed the button. She didn't say anything. She really wanted to die.” The woman was examined by a psychiatrist prior to the assisted suicide. She was deemed competent and reportedly did not have a psychiatric history.

The Sarco capsule is designed to allow its user to press a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber. The user should fall asleep and then suffocate to death within a few minutes.

“My estimate is that she lost consciousness within two minutes and that she died after five minutes,” Nitschke, who has been nicknamed “Dr. Death” and “the Elon Musk of assisted suicide” for his work in the field, added. “We saw jerky, small twitches of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then. It looked exactly how we expected it to look.”

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Police officers from Schaffhausen, Switzerland, arrested a photographer who was following the case, and according to de Volkskrant, a Dutch newspaper, “the police may also have detained Director Florian Willet of the Swiss organization The Last Resort, who was present at the suicide.”

The Last Resort was founded in July 2023 for the use of the Sarco capsule under the idea that a good death is a “fundamental human right.” The group chose to organize in Switzerland because it has some of the most relaxed assisted suicide laws in the world. Nitschke serves as a technical adviser to The Last Resort.