The ghoulish Australian “doctor” Philip Nitschke has long been obsessed with making suicide readily available to anyone who wants to die. Indeed, years ago, he told NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez that he wanted what he called “peaceful” suicide pills sold in supermarkets, even to “troubled teens.”
Nitschke also sold plastic suicide bags in Australia (which I helped cause to be outlawed when I busted him for his ghoulishness in the national media there in 2001). Subsequently, he traveled the world teaching how-to-commit-suicide classes and starred at international death-movement conventions. Awful.
More recently, Nitschke made world headlines in the assisted-suicide-boosting media for inventing a “suicide capsule” that asphyxiates the suicidal person with nitrogen. At first, Swiss authorities said it would be legal, and then they backtracked.
Legal or not, it appears the capsule was used by an American woman to become dead in Switzerland. From the AP story:
Exit International, an assisted suicide group based in the Netherlands, has said it is behind the 3D-printed device that cost over $1 million to develop.
In a statement, the group said a 64-year-old woman from the U.S. Midwest — it did not specify further — who had suffered from “severe immune compromise” had died Monday afternoon near the German border using the Sarco device.
It said Florian Willet, co-president of The Last Resort, a Swiss affiliate of Exit International, was the only person present and described her death as “peaceful, fast and dignified.”
Dr. Philip Nitschke, an Australian-born trained doctor behind Exit International, has previously told the AP that his organization received advice from lawyers in Switzerland that use of the Sarco would be legal in the country.
In the Exit International statement on Tuesday, Nitschke said he was “pleased that the Sarco had performed exactly as it had been designed … to provide an elective, non-drug, peaceful death at the time of the person’s choosing.”
Can you imagine people spending $1 million to develop a suicide pod? Was the capsule tested? If so, how? On animals? Who knows? Somehow, these questions don’t get asked.
A photographer was present to record the death — meaning to create images for suicide proselytizing. The story says several people, including the photographer, have been detained, but I would be surprised if anything came of it. Authorities rarely have the gumption to seriously punish suicide assistance unless in involves a teenager.
Here are the lessons: Nitschke’s (and Jack Kevorkian‘s) nihilism is infectious. Assisted-suicide promotion leads to increased suicide rates generally and eventually, suicide on demand — already the law in Germany because of a court ruling.
Unless we change course and unequivocally stand for suicide prevention and reject facilitation, we will see more of these tragedies.