In 2024, in a wooded area in northern Switzerland, an American woman climbed into a sleek-looking capsule, pushed a button, and ended her life. The capsule, called the Sarco, is designed to be a drug-free method of suicide. It allows the operator to release nitrogen gas into the pod, thus lowering the level of oxygen inside to lethal levels and, within minutes, suffocating the person inside.
The Last Resort, the Swiss assisted dying organization which offers the Sarco, says the capsule “represents the future of dying.” And on that Monday afternoon, the future arrived as this 64-year-old American became the first person to use it to end their life.
What leads a person to choose the time and manner of their own death by way of physician-assisted suicide, also called medical aid in dying? This first known user of the Sarco reportedly was severely immunocompromised. Others pursue PAS after being diagnosed with terminal illness or a neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s, or ALS. We humans tend to see our lives as a story, and naturally we want the story to end well—what psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls the “peak-end effect.” Good endings make for good stories, sometimes even if the story is abbreviated. Some see PAS as a better ending than facing the drawn-out experience of dying from a progressive illness or terminal diagnosis. So when a diagnosis begins to write the story for us, it becomes tempting to seek a pen—or a Sarco pod—to rewrite the ending to our own satisfaction.
