Featured Image Credit: Exit International
Topics: World News, Health, Science
Ella Scott
The creator of the controversial Sarco ‘suicide pod’ has unveiled a new collar device, with critics branding the invention ‘grotesque’ and ‘shameful’.
Euthanasia campaigner and founder of Exit International, Dr Philip Nitschke, is the creator of the Sarco pod, a 3D-printed machine aiding those who want to take their own life.
Colloquially referred to as the ‘suicide pod’, the device works by funnelling in nitrogen to trigger the hypercapnia alarm response, which leads to unconsciousness and eventually, death.
In September 2024, the first capsule suicide took place in the forest in the Swiss canton of Schaffhausen, with a 64-year-old American woman using it to end her life.
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The canton of Schaffhausen had made it known that anyone involved in using the capsule would face prosecution, while health minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider declared that the use of the machine was not permitted in the country.
Despite threats of jail time, Nitschke, 78, has detailed a new ‘suicide device’ - and this one is a collar.
The suicide collar is a new method for a ‘self-chosen end of life’ that the Exit International director described as ‘an important development in the assisted dying quest’.
“Fast, reliable, drug-free..and, importantly, unrestrictable!,” he added via X.
Dubbed the Kairos Kollar, this device aims to ‘create a simple, reliable, peaceful strategy for a DIY death at a time of one’s choosing'.
After hearing about the suicide instrument, one social media user wrote: “Demonic”.
A second typed: “The entire Universe weeps over this anti-human direction. This is shameful. Unethical. Beyond tragic.”
“What is most grotesque is that his event showcasing this was sold out - older people afraid of Australia’s institutional-based age care system, and the associated loss of dignity, safety and control,” commented someone else.
“Monstrous, and this drives me every day to press for a better world for our olds.”
“How is this even moral? Choke yourself to death? What a horrific person,” replied another X user.
At a ‘workshop’ in the Netherlands, the Aussie-native told event attendees that the device would work ‘like an airbag in the car, when you press a button, bang, faint and die’.
"It works in a clever way by putting pressure in two important points on your neck that does two things, the pressure stops the flow of blood to two important arteries,” he continued, as per the Herald Sun.
"The collar is put around your neck and when you press the button it suddenly puts pressure on the carotid and the vertebral artery and stops the flow of blood going up to your brain."
According to a report by the NL Times, the euthanasia device is ‘still in the testing phase', with Frans Copini, interim director of right-to-die-how-you-choose organization Coöperatie Laatste Wil (CLW), expecting it to be approved and ready by 2026.
Assisted suicide is legal in 12 US jurisdictions, including California, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Montana, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
The punishment for participating in physician-assisted death varies throughout the other states.
If you or someone you know needs mental health assistance, call National Suicide Prevention Helpline on 1-800-273-TALK (8255). The Helpline is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week.