Dr Death’s most gruesome inventions: How the controversial inventor behind the Sarco suicide pod has also come up with body implants that kill you if you forget to deactivate them, ‘exit bags’, and a ‘Deliverance Machine’
Australian euthanasia advocate Dr Philip Nitschke has courted controversy once again with his Sarco suicide pod, which has been used for the first time.
The coffin-like booth hosts a person’s final moments as they voluntarily end their life with a fatal dose of nitrogen, leading to ‘painless’ gas asphyxiation.
But this is not the first time someone has killed themselves with a device made by the doctor, who has been dubbed ‘Dr Death’ and ‘the Elon Musk of assisted suicide’.
From his ‘Deliverance Machine’ to ‘Exit Bags’ and barbiturate testing kits, Dr Nitschke has developed multiple ways to let ill people end their own lives.
While Dr Nitschke claims his devices give people the chance to end their lives in a ‘peaceful’ way, pro-life groups have warned his machines ‘glamorize suicide’.
Australian euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke (pictured), also known as ‘Dr Death’, is a former physician and head of the voluntary euthanasia campaign Exit International
SARCO SUICIDE POD
The Sarco suicide pod – an abbreviation for sarcophagus – looks like a cross between a one-man spaceship and a high-tech coffin.
The portable device is operated from the inside by the user who has decided to end their life and works by fatally reducing internal oxygen levels.
At the touch of the button, the controversial capsule fills with nitrogen to starves the occupant of oxygen, rendering them unconscious before they die ‘within seconds’.
Dr Nitschke – who is head of the voluntary euthanasia campaign group Exit International – told MailOnline: ‘The person will climb into the machine.
‘They will be asked three questions and they will answer verbally – “Who are you?”, “Where are you?” and “Do you know what happens if you press the button?”
‘And if they answer those questions verbally, the software then switches the power on so that the button can then be pressed.
‘And if they press the button they will die very quickly.’
An early version of the Sarco Pod, which can be operated internally and works by reducing oxygen levels. No one has yet used it. The final prototype is in the finishing stages of being prepared
He added: ‘When you climb into Sarco the oxygen level is 21 per cent but after you press the button it takes 30 seconds for the oxygen to drop to less than one per cent.’
The Sarco pod reportedly costs more than $700,000 (£540,000) to develop, but will cost each user as little as $20 (£15).
The device was used for the first time this week by an unnamed American woman, 64, who had suffered a ‘very serious illness that involves severe pain’.
It happened in Switzerland, where assisted suicide has been legal since 1942 unless it’s done for ‘selfish’ reasons by the assister.
But Swiss police said that several people were detained and that prosecutors had opened an investigation on suspicion of incitement and accessory to suicide.
DELIVERANCE MACHINE
Dr Nitschke’s earlier device from the 1990s, the Deliverance Machine, gave people control over their own lethal dose.
It consists of a laptop running a specially developed computer program called ‘Deliverance’, which is connected to a syringe.
The syringe – loaded with a lethal injection of barbiturates – would be injected into the user’s arm while they’d operate the laptop.
The machine consists of a laptop computer with the ‘Deliverance’ programme and a syringe driver. The patient operates the machine via a keyboard. Answering ‘yes’ to a set of questions releases a fatal drug. The Northern Territory passed a law allowing terminally ill people to end their lives and this machine was developed as a result.
Dr Philip Nitschke displaying the Deliverance Machine in his home in Darwin, Australia. The machine was used by the first person in the world to die under voluntary euthanasia legislation
Similar to Sarco pod, answering ‘yes’ to a series of questions triggers the release of a fatal injection of drugs from the syringe.
While assistance would be needed in connecting the machine to an individual, the user, rather than the assistant, would have the ultimate control over the fatal dose.
Dr Nitschke assisted four terminally ill people to end their lives using the Deliverance Machine, including the first user, Bob Dent, in September 1996.
Mr Dent had prostate cancer and had been on a self-described ‘roller-coaster of pain’ before ending his life with Deliverance Machine.
He had said: ‘If you disagree with voluntary euthanasia, then don’t use it, but don’t deny me the right to use it if and when I want to.’
Deliverance Machine machine was legally used used while the Australian Northern Territory’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995 was in effect.
But it was nullified by another Act in 1997 and now the device is on display in the British Science Museum in London.
EXIT BAG
Dr Nitschke’s ‘one-size-fits-all ‘Exit Bag’ was a large plastic bag with a drawstring allowing it to be secured around the neck.
Costing $30, it would suffocate its wearer by closing gently and automatically, typically after they first take a sleeping pill.
Dr Nitschke holds one of his Exit Bags during a demonstration of its operation at a suicide conference titled ‘Killing me Softly’ in Sydney, Australia, May 31, 2003
In 2002, Dr Nitschke’s company announced plans to manufacture the bags in Brisbane, Queensland, modelled after similar bags made in Canada that he feared would face import restrictions.
Dr Philip Nitschke said the bag method would be neither violent nor traumatic and more accessible compared with drugs.
‘Most people object to the horrible and grotesque death by tying something around your neck,’ he told the media at the time.
‘It’s not physiologically distasteful, but it is an aesthetically distasteful death.’
CO-GENIE
Similarly, Co-Genie or CoGen for short, would generate the deadly gas carbon monoxide which would be inhaled with a face mask.
Two decades ago, WIRED described it as ‘a coffee-can-sized canister, an intravenous drip bag and nasal prongs.’
It continued: ‘Chemicals are combined in the canister to produce carbon monoxide, which is inhaled.’
First built in Darwin in late 2002, it was seized by Australian custom agents in January 2003 when Dr Nitschke was on his way to a euthanasia conference in San Diego.
BARBITURATE TEST KIT
In 2009, Dr Nitschke launched his £35 barbiturate test kit, which lets potentially suicidal people make sure the drugs they plan to use are strong enough to kill.
Sold in the UK and other countries, it features chemicals that change colour when mixed with a lethal dose of barbiturates, indicating the drugs are strong enough.
Dr Nitschke holds his £35 barbiturate test kit following a workshop on assisted suicides, May 5, 2009 in Bournemouth
The testing kit let people check the strength of drugs they have bought in order to commit suicide
With the kit, Dr Nitschke wanted to avoid the risk of self-administered injections being non-lethal, which could keep the user alive while potentially causing an array of health risks.
The barbiturate test kit is slightly different to the others in that it doesn’t administer the lethal treatment itself but still assists it.
‘HOME BREW’ SUICIDE KITS
In 2017, the doctor got into hot water after selling suicide kits disguised as equipment for home-brewing beer for £257.
The equipment – a nitrogen regulator, pressure gauge and hose – could be used for brewing, but Dr Nitschke also penned a guidebook explaining how it could be used for suicide.
At the time, the anti-assisted suicide group Care Not Killing described the sale of the kits as ‘utterly deplorable’.
The kit could be used for brewing beer but Dr Nitschke penned a guidebook explaining how people could use it to take their own lives
The kits were sold on a website called ‘Max Dog Brewing’ which is no longer active, although it still has an X account (@MaxDogBrewing).
The X account says it offers ‘specialty home-brewing supplies featuring nitrogen for that extra creamy head’.
LETHAL IMPLANTS
In 2021, Dr Nitschke detailed his idea for future suicide technology that he is still working on.
One of these is small but lethal implants, which people could choose to have inserted into their bodies in case they develop dementia.
Like something from Black Mirror, users would have to press the button ‘regularly’, maybe once every day, to prevent a lethal dose of poison being administered.
If they developed dementia they would not have the capability to press the button, meaning the poison would be administered, ending their life.
‘When we get this device manufactured I will have to try it myself,’ Dr Nitschke told MailOnline last year, before adding that there would likely have to be some form of beeping to warn a person it was about to be activated.
The specific chemical the device would use to administer death is undecided, as his team are ‘having a lot of trouble with trying to find out what we can use’.
‘Death with Dignity’: Dr Philip Nitschke speaks in San Diego, California in January 2003
The doctor’s Sarco pod has caused uproar from certain ‘pro-life’ organisations, including CARE.
James Mildred, director of engagement at CARE, said: ‘Philip Nitschke’s device has been condemned by a broad range of commentators.
‘Many people feel that it trivialises, and even glamourises, suicide.
‘We believe that suicide is a tragedy that good societies seek to prevent in every circumstance. There are ethical ways to help human beings that don’t involve the destruction of life.’
Meanwhile, Dr Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of the alliance Care Not Killing, said: ‘The development of personal gas chambers marks a new low in the debate about whether or not to kill people via assisted suicide and euthanasia.
‘What is equally risible is the claim that these will give people a quick pain free death, as this was exactly what was said about the use of death row drugs in the handful of places that have introduced assisted suicide or euthanasia.’
- For help and support, call the Samaritans for free from a UK phone, completely anonymously, on 116 123 or go to samaritans.org.
