Grisly suicide-pod tale blows up lies of dignity in assisted suicide

The news broke last week that an American woman became the first-ever victim of the Sarco pod — a ghastly device that suffocates the user with nitrogen at the push of a button.The “assisted suicide” occurred in Switzerland, reportedly under the auspices of the Last Resort, a local affiliate of pro-suicide group Exit International, whose founder and head, Philip Nitschke, developed the device. The American — pseudonymously called Jessica Campbell — leveled a number of ugly charges against members of the Last Resort before her death, accusing them of bilking her out of money and trying to use her death to juice their press profile.The group has denied these charges and, per the Swiss media, has presented evidence suggesting they’re untrue.  Which means one of two things happened. Either the group is guilty of what Campbell claimed, or it oversaw the death of a woman beset with paranoid fantasies — undercutting any claim she was compos mentis enough to assent to being killed via suffocation. No shock there: The pod’s inventor, Nitchske, is an Australian doctor who was once suspended from practice; he named one of his earlier suicide devices “the Deliverance Machine” — as though he were God himself dispensing mercy from on high.Indeed, somehow the terms under which people qualify for euthanasia (a misnomer if ever there was one) are always mysteriously expanding. Look at Canada’s MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) program: Since it went operative in 2017, its use has increased to the point that in some provinces it accounts for as much as 5% of deaths. And data suggests that people are increasingly using it because they’re poor. Or consider Holland and the case of Zoraya ter Beek, a healthy young woman whose suicide the Dutch state gave its blessing to. The reason for her desire to die? Mental illness. One Dutch former “death doctor” has explained in an interview with the Free Press about ter Beek’s case that he resigned from h...