“We believe (technology) is important in democratizing and demedicalizing the process,” Nitschke said, adding that Sarco does not rely on highly restricted drugs in its operations. “So all of these issues are ways to make the process more fair.”
In Switzerland, where Sarco was used, Nitschke’s arguments about access to assisted suicide are not particularly radical. Assisted suicide is already available to residents and visitors, even if they are not terminally ill. But in the Netherlands, where Nitschke is based, Sarco reflects an ongoing debate about the place of assisted suicide in a medical system that says only people facing intolerable suffering or incurable illnesses are allowed to commit suicide. There is. Nitschke also believes the promise of the machine is to take some of the burden off doctors. Nitschke, who earned his medical degree in 1989, said: “I’m passionate about people’s rights to assisted dying, but I don’t understand why they have to make me a murderer.” speak
Theo Boer, who spent nine years evaluating thousands of assisted suicide cases on behalf of the Dutch government, disagrees that gatekeeping is to blame. “We can’t leave this to the market, it’s dangerous,” he says. But he is more sympathetic to Nitschke’s point that in countries where assisted suicide is legal, doctors should not be subject to mental stress. “Even though what he is doing is strange, it contributes to a much-needed debate in the Netherlands about whether such a huge involvement of doctors is necessary,” said Dr. said Bohr, a professor of medical ethics.
“We can’t burden doctors with solving every problem.”
Nitschke has been an instigator of the right-to-die debate for 30 years. “He is a provocateur,” says Professor Michael Cholbi, founder of the International Philosophy of Death Society. Although Chorbi is skeptical that Sarco will become the norm, he believes Nitschke’s creation raises important questions, even if some feel it is irresponsible. “He’s trying to facilitate a potentially difficult discussion around people’s rights to access suicide technology,” he says.
Nitschke, now 77, first explored the idea of delegating assisted suicide to machines in the 1990s. After Australia’s Northern Territory became the first jurisdiction in the world to legalize the process, Mr Nitschke said he and his colleagues were afraid people would “give lethal injections to dying patients who don’t know what’s going on.” He said he was concerned about the risk of being seen as an “evil doctor”. Say.
