Switzerland’s Sarco pod machine that assists in suicide.

Coffin-shaped machine

3D-printed capsule

Is activated from inside once the person gets into the capsule and lies down.

to assist a willing individual to end one’s life.

Once the person lies down they will be asked a number of questions and when they have answered, they may press the button inside the capsule, activating the mechanism in their own time.

The capsule is sitting on a piece of equipment that will flood the interior with nitrogen, rapidly reducing the oxygen level to one percent from 21 percent. The person will feel a little disoriented and may feel slightly euphoric before they lose consciousness.

The entire process will take about 30 seconds and death will take place through hypoxia and hypocapnia, oxygen, and carbon dioxide deprivation, respectively. "There is no panic, no choking, no feeling.

The organization is also developing a machine which will be equipped with a camera "that allows the person to communicate with the people outside. There needs to be a recording of the person’s informed consent.”

Aim: de-medicalize the dying process, which has largely been used in assisted suicide. The medical process includes ingestion of liquid sodium pentobarbital. After taking the drug, the person falls asleep within two to five minutes before slipping into a deep coma, followed soon afterward by death.

Currently, a doctor or doctors need to be involved to prescribe sodium pentobarbital and to confirm the person’s mental capacity. They want to remove any kind of psychiatric review from the process and allow the individual to control the method themselves.

They aim to develop an artificial intelligence screening system to establish a person’s mental capacity.

Developed by Exit International, a non-profit organization.

The law in Switzerland does not specifically legalise assisted suicide, but it makes assisted suicide punishable only if “selfish motives” are proven in the act.

Assisted suicide is not uncommon in Switzerland. According to Exit International, around 1,300 people died by assisted suicide in Switzerland in 2020 using the services of the country’s two largest assisted suicide organizations Exit (separate from Exit International) and Dignitas.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide are two different things. BOTH are illegal under Indian law.

According to UK's National Health Services (NHS) euthanasia is the act of deliberately ending a person's life to relieve suffering. In euthanasia, a doctor prescribes a ‘death drug’ to a terminally ill patient to end her suffering and pain.

Assisted suicide, on the other hand, is the act of aiding a person to end her life without a medical examination and prescription. In Switzerland, a non-physician can assist another person to end her life without selfish motives.

In the first case of legal euthanasia, the Supreme Court had in 2011 allowed Aruna Shanbaug to die by removing her medical life support system. Later in 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that a person enjoyed the right to refuse medical treatment.

The Supreme Court bench headed by then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra said, “We declare that an adult human being having the mental capacity to make an informed decision has right to refuse medical treatment including withdrawal from life-saving devices.”

This judgment is often cited as legalization of passive euthanasia in India.