Several people were detained in northern Switzerland where a 64-year-old woman from the U.S. ended her life in a suicide pod that replaces oxygen with nitrogen gas.
Police said the unidentified woman’s death occurred Monday in a forest hut using a newly marketed 3-D printed Sarco “suicide capsule,” according to the Associated Press. Prosecutors are investigating possible incitement and accessory to her suffocation.
A law firm reportedly notified authorities that a woman from the Midwest who has not been identified by name had died inside the pod where users position themselves in a reclining seat, then push a button that fills the unit with nitrogen.
An affiliate of the Netherlands-based suicide advocacy group Exit International said the woman who ended her life Monday died a “peaceful, fast and dignified” death after ailing health due to severe immune compromise.
Enabling a person to commit suicide is legal in Switzerland, though physically providing “external assistance” to a person wishing to die is not. Swiss law allows foreigners to enter the country for the purpose of ending their life.
Critics of such practices argue Swiss laws on the matter are open to interpretation and recommend closing what they see as loopholes.
One person arrested in connection with the woman’s death is a photojournalist who wanted to take pictures of the Sarco vessel, according to that person’s employers at the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant.
Exit International said the co-president of its Swiss affiliate, The Last Resort, was the only witness to the dead woman’s final breath. Swiss lawyers told Exit International use of the Sarco capsule is legal in Switzerland, according to that group. The pod is said to have cost more than $1 million to develop.
Euthanasia, terminating the life of a medical patient, is illegal in the U.S. Ten states allow assisted suicide.