•Switzerland police arrested four persons recently for their involvement in the death of a 64-year-old American woman by a ‘suicide pod’.
•She reportedly suffered from an autoimmune condition for years.
•This incident has turned the spotlight on the contentious Sarco pod, engineered by Dr Philip Nitschke, an Australian physician who founded the pro-euthanasia group Exit International.
•Sarco pod, named after sarcophagus, the stone coffin used to bury ancient royalty, the Sarco is a coffin-sized, air-tight machine.
•First made in 2019, the Sarco pod consists of a 3D-printed detachable capsule placed on a stand with a canister of liquid nitrogen.
•A person lying inside it could press a button to initiate the dying process, flooding the air inside it with nitrogen gas.
•Switzerland’s laws on assisted dying and assisted suicide have made it a preferred destination for “death tourism”.
•Sarco Pod allegedly exploits a loophole in Swiss laws on euthanasia.