The Doctor Behind the ‘Suicide Pod’ Wants AI to Assist at the End of Life

October 15, 2024:

“I see [technology] as important in democratizing the process and demedicalizing the process,” says Nitschke, adding the Sarco is not reliant on heavily restricted drugs to operate. “So all of those issues are ways to make the process more equitable.”

In Switzerland, where the Sarco was used, Nitschke’s arguments about access to assisted suicide are not particularly radical. Residents and visitors can already access assisted suicide even if they are not terminally ill. But in Nitschke’s adopted home country of the Netherlands, the Sarco reflects an ongoing debate about assisted suicide’s place in a medical system that dictates only people facing unbearable suffering or an incurable condition can proceed. Nitschke also believes the promise of machines is to take the burden away from the doctor. “I’m passionate about a person’s right to have access to help-to-die, but I don’t see why they should turn me into a murderer,” says Nitschke, who earned a medical degree in 1989.

Theo Boer, who spent nine years assessing thousands of assisted suicide cases on behalf of the Dutch government, disagrees that gatekeepers are a bad thing. “We cannot just leave this to the market,” he says, “because it is dangerous.” Yet he is more sympathetic to Nitschke’s point that doctors should not be burdened with the emotional stress in countries where assisted suicide is legal. “Even though what he does is weird, it contributes to the much needed discussion in the Netherlands, whether or not we need this heavy involvement of doctors,” says Boer, who is now a professor of health care ethics at the Groningen Theological University.

“We cannot burden the doctor with solving all our problems.”

For three decades, Nitschke has been an agitator in the right-to-die debate. “He’s a provocateur,” says professor Michael Cholbi, founder of the international association for the philosophy of death and dying. Cholbi is skeptical about whether the Sarco would ever become normalized, but he believes Nitschke’s creation, even if it strikes some as irresponsible, raises important questions. “He’s trying to catalyze a perhaps difficult conversation around people’s right to access suicide technologies,” he says.

Now 77, Nitschke first explored the idea of delegating assisted suicide to machines in the 1990s. After Australia’s Northern Territory became the world’s first jurisdiction to legalize the process, Nitschke was preoccupied with the risk people would see him or his colleagues as “some evil doctor delivering lethal injections to a moribund patient who didn’t know what was happening,” he says.

Source link

tags

Abkhazia Afghanistan Africa Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Curacao Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Fiji Finland France French Polynesia Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Grenada Guam Guatemala Guinea Guyana Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North Korea North Macedonia Northern Cyprus Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Republic of the Congo Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Lucia Samoa San Marino Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Togo Tonga Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Uganda UK Ukraine United Arab Emirates Uruguay USA Uzbekistan Vatican City Venezuela Vietnam Western Sahara Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe