"Sarco" - a 3D-printable suicide machine

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A controversial suicide pod that enables its occupant to kill themselves at the press of a button went on display at an Amsterdam funeral show on Saturday.

Called the “Sarco”, short for sarcophagus, the 3D-printed machine invented by Australian euthanasia activist Philip Nitschke and Dutch designer Alexander Bannink comes with a detachable coffin, mounted on a stand that contains a nitrogen canister.

“The person who wants to die presses the button and the capsule is filled with nitrogen. He or she will feel a bit dizzy but will then rapidly lose consciousness and die,” said Nitschke. The Sarco was a device “to provide people with a death when they wish to die,” Nitschke said.

The inventors put a model of the device on display, together with a set of virtual reality glasses to give visitors a true-to-life experience of what it would be like to sit in the pod, before ultimately pressing the button.

Nitschke said he aimed to build the first fully functioning pod before the end of the year.

After that, the design will be put online as an open-source document for people to download. “That means that anybody who wants to build the machine can download the plans and 3D-print their own device,” Nitschke said.

Asked about the controversy surrounding euthanasia and legal hurdles, Nitschke said: “In many countries suicide is not against the law, only assisting a person to commit suicide is. This is a situation where one person chooses to press a button … rather than for instance standing in front of a train."
Nitschke's 'suicide machine' draws crowds at Amsterdam funeral fair | Assisted dying | The Guardian
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I’m horrified. The implications of something like this are too awful to consider.
 
If the liberals won’t object to it on moral grounds, maybe someone could convince them that that would be an awful lot of plastic for a whole coffin, etc. So maybe argue against it using their religion: environmentalism.
 
It Is a horrific idea.Thank you for the alert.
It makes me feel nauseous that some like this discredited dr make it their life work to kill people.
 
That’s the worry, of course. If you read a few articles about euthanasia, you’ll see that there have already been some very controversial deaths in the Netherlands.
 
Not long, I expect.
Nor will it be long before the device is used to murder someone and the murderer will pretend they committed suicide.
 
Do you have any idea how expensive 3-D Printers are? There are easier and cheaper ways to obtain the old dirt nap.
 
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TOC, it won’t be long before they’ll be as cheap as chips, just as we’ve seen with every other electronic device. I paid £1400 for a home computer set-up in the 1990s, it was a massive investment. Nowadays, something a hundred times more powerful would only cost me a fraction of that amount.
 
I’m a Mac woman nowadays. 🙂 Actually, looking online I see that a standard home-use 3D-printer costs on average about $700 - which isn’t prohibitive for many people. It also says the prices have fallen a lot in the last 3 years.
 
I saw a video about this. They had it all set up in a beautiful field of wildflowers (like those dumb viagra commercials where they are holding hands in clawfoot tubs in the middle of a field). They make it look like such a picturesque way to end your life. I fear many desperate people will be deceived.
 
Where I live, there are several 3D printing shops. All one has to do is bring the schematics and only pay for the service and materials.
 
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