Charlotte Foster
Legal

"I don't call that a life": Couple sign up to die in double suicide pod

Warning: This article contains sensitive content that some readers may find distressing. 

A couple from the UK has signed up to be the first to die in a double suicide pod, invented by an Australian doctor, after 46 years of marriage.

Peter and Christine Scott, from Suffolk in England’s east, have shared their plans to travel to Switzerland to die together after Ms Scott, a former nurse, was diagnosed with early-stage vascular dementia.

After meeting at a jazz club, the pair married 46 years ago, and shared that they have opted out of potentially years of hospital treatment and the crippling costs of care which could eat into their life savings. 

“We have had long, happy, healthy, fulfilled lives but here we are in old age and it does not do nice things to you,” Mr Scott, 86, told The Daily Mail

“The idea of watching the slow degradation of Chris’s mental abilities in parallel to my own physical decline is horrific to me,” the former Royal Air Force pilot added. 

“Obviously I would care for her to the point I could not, but she has nursed enough people with dementia during her career to be adamant she wants to remain in control of herself and her life”.

“I would not want to go on living without her,” he said of his 80-year-old wife. “I don’t want to go into care, to be lying in bed dribbling and incontinent – I don’t call that a life”.

As English law does not allow for euthanasia, the couple have planned their trip to Switzerland for the procedure, where Ms Scott has planned out her final days with her husband. 

“I’d like to go walking with Peter in the Swiss Alps, by a river. I’d have a beautiful plate of fish for my last supper, and enjoy a great bottle of Merlot,” she said. 

“I’d make a playlist including Wild Cat Blues and The Young Ones by Cliff Richard and I’ve found a poem called Miss Me But Let Me Go, which sums up exactly how I feel”.

The suicide pod, known as Sarco, can be turned on with a simple flick of a switch from inside the futuristic capsule that resembles a modern car.

The machine was invented by Australian Dr Philip Nitschke, who has long been behind a number of initiatives to allow legal euthanasia in Australia.

The 3D printed Sarco capsule ends the lives of those inside by pumping the pod with nitrogen which replaces the oxygen in the pod, which renders the occupants unconscious within about a minute without, its claimed, any panic or distress. 

With falling oxygen, the person eventually suffocates.

Dr Nitschke said the machine is activated by a button from inside the pod. 

“The capsule for two people works exactly the same as the single Sarco but there is only one button so they will decide between them who will push it,” he told The Daily Mail

“Then they’ll be able to hold each other”. 

Image credits: Courtesy of Exit International

Tags:
legal, euthanasia, couple, dementia