“Suicide capsule” advocacy groups suspended the application process for its use as a criminal investigation into its first use in Switzerland concluded, according to AP News.
Applications totalled more than 370 last month. The president of Switzerland-based The Last Resort, Florian Willet, faced pre-trial detention, representatives of the group and Exit International, its Australian affiliate, reported.
Swiss police arrested Willet and several others after the death of an unidentified 64-year-old woman from the US Midwest. On 23 September, she became the first person to use the device, known as a “Sarco,” in a forest in the northern Schaffhausen region near the German border.
Switzerland has some of the most liberal laws in the world when it comes to assisted suicide, although the first use of the Sarco has sparked debate among lawmakers. The legislation allows assisted suicide if a person loses his or her life without “external assistance,” with those who help a person die not doing so for “any self-serving motive.”
Exit International invented a 3D-printed device that cost more than $1 million to develop. The Sarco capsule is designed so that the person sitting inside can press a button that injects nitrogen gas from a reservoir into a sealed chamber, allowing the person to fall asleep forever.
On the same day that the woman died, Swiss Health Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told parliament that it would be illegal to use the Sarco.
The woman reportedly suffered from a severe immune compromise. However, Exit’s lawyers in Switzerland considered the use of the device to be legal.
