Dr. Philip Nitschke considers himself the Elon Musk of assisted suicide—and his latest death machine, the Sarco, is his Tesla.
Newsweek spoke with the 70-year-old doctor immediately after the state of Victoria in Australia, his home country, voted this week to legalize euthanasia. Many are billing this as the first law of this nature Down Under, but Nitschke performed his first assisted death in 1996, during a brief period of legality in the country’s Northern Territory.
As a young medical school graduate, Nitschke found himself drawn to the world of euthanasia and the work of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the most famous euthanasia proponent in the United States. Inspired by Kevorkian's death machine, Nitschke set out to create an updated version that he dubbed “the Deliverance.” The machine was rudimentary, comprising only a laptop hooked to an IV system, but it worked. A computer program would confirm a patient's intent to die and then trigger a lethal injection of barbiturates. It successfully ended four lives before Australia repealed the bill that legalized euthanasia in 1997.
But ending legal euthanasia “didn’t stop people from coming to me saying that they wanted to die,” said Nitschke. “I’ve spent the last 20 years fighting for the legislation that just passed.”
Nitschke has aided in hundreds of what he calls “rational suicides.” In 1997, he founded Exit International, a nonprofit that advocates for the legalization of euthanasia, and in 2006, he published the Peaceful Pill Handbook, which instructs on the most painless and efficient ways to commit suicide.
All the while, Nitschke continued to innovate his death machine. He created his version of an “exit bag,” which acts as a bizzaro breathing mask, with carbon monoxide replacing oxygen. These bags are highly effective but not very appealing, Nitschke said. He calls it the “plastic bag factor.” People don’t want to leave this world in such an aesthetically displeasing way, he explained.
His latest machine, the Sarco, is the answer to those aesthetic problems. The machine is sleek, and Nitschke stresses, luxurious. The finished product resembles a spaceship, intended to convince its user that he or she is journeying to the great beyond, he said. It consists of a base that contains canisters of liquid nitrogen and a removable capsule compartment, which can be repurposed as a casket. The whole operation will be open-source and could theoretically be 3-D printed anywhere in the world. It is, in short, the Model S of death machines.
Here’s how it works: Potential users fill out an online survey that tests mental fitness, and if they pass they receive an access code that works for 24 hours. After the code is entered and an additional confirmation is given, the Sarco capsule will fill up with liquid nitrogen to bring the oxygen level down to about 5 percent. Within one minute, the user passes out, and a few minutes later, death comes.
Nitschke vows that the death is relatively painless—there is no asphyxiation and the user breathes easily, he said. He compares it to an airplane cabin depressurizing. The model is scheduled to become widely available next year, and Nitschke is already in talks with some suicide clinics in Switzerland to license the machine.
Fighting to Die
Over the past 20 years, the right to physician-assisted has been legalized in Washington, California, Vermont, Oregon and a several European countries. Nitschke believes that the change in attitude stems from the aging Baby Boomer generation. “I’ve seen a marked difference between generations,” he said. “Boomers want to be in control of their own deaths. They don’t like the idea of someone patting them on the head and telling them what to do.”
Full article here: Meet the Elon Musk of assisted suicide, whose machine lets you kill yourself anywhere
Just take a bullet to the head you old pansies.
