Swiss government sees no need for special law on Sarco suicide capsule

The Sarco capsule. Keystone-SDA

Following the first use of the Sarco assisted suicide capsule in Switzerland in September, the government sees no need for legislative action for the time being. It wants to await the results of the cantonal investigations.

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“An explicit special legal ban on this assisted suicide capsule is not considered expedient,” read the statement published on Thursday by the government in response to a motion by parliamentarian Nina Fehr Düsel. She is calling for the examination of a legal provision that would ban the use of the Sarco suicide capsule in Switzerland.

The government waved it away. It wrote that such a ban would only prevent the use of the Sarco capsule in its current form. However, other conceivable instruments and procedures would not be covered by the regulation.

+ Why liberal Switzerland is opposed to the Sarco suicide capsule

The government also refers to the current provisions. Accordingly, the Sarco suicide capsule is not legally compliant in two respects, it said: first, the capsule does not meet the requirements of product safety law and may therefore not be placed on the market. Second, the use of nitrogen in the capsule is not compatible with the article stating its purpose of the Chemicals Act.

Ongoing investigations

Finally, the government notes that cantonal investigations into the use of the capsule are currently pending. It is of the opinion “that the results of these investigations must be awaited in order to decide whether and where there is a need for legal regulation”.

At the end of September, the euthanasia organisation The Last Resort used the suicide capsule for the first time in Switzerland, at a forest hut in Merishausen in canton Schaffhausen. The emergency services seized the capsule and took the deceased, a 64-year-old American woman who had suffered from an immune deficiency for many years, to Zurich for an autopsy.

Several people were arrested. The public prosecutor’s office initiated proceedings for incitement and aiding and abetting suicide. Florian Willet, co-president of The Last Resort, has been in custody since then. The other people arrested have been released.

+ Assisted suicide: Sarco inventor defends himself against killing rumours

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

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