Suicide is stigmatized for good reason. It isn’t a cure for suffering from depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or any other condition, and normalizing suicide in any way only encourages others to take their own lives.
A 64-year-old American citizen died on Monday in a suicide pod in Switzerland. This is the first time such a capsule has been used. The Sarco pod allows a user to seal herself inside and press a button that releases nitrogen gas. The occupant will then lose consciousness and die shortly thereafter. It’s supposed to be a painless, dignified way to end one’s life. It is anything but humane.
The Sarco pod makes suicide easier for the person who is seeking a way out, and it is also meant to create a less devastating aftermath. Firearms are overwhelmingly used for suicides in the United States. In 2022, guns were used in 55% of all suicides. Needless to say, discovering someone has died by suicide in such a violent way has long-lasting repercussions. Among other motivations, inventors of the pod want to reduce accompanying trauma — as if developing a more sanitized version of killing makes it less bad. Nothing could be further from the truth.
We should not simplify the things that harm both individual people and society. It is not compassionate to allow a drug user to continue in his addiction. Encouraging an anorexic not to eat, just because doing so will bring about less confrontation, is cruel. It is not empathetic to allow someone with a gambling obsession to remain on a path of self-destruction. Internet access to pornography has not been a net positive for civilization. Removing the embarrassment and humiliation connected to these and other vices does no one any good. Experiencing difficulty and shame is often enough to turn someone toward recovery.
Philip Nitschke, the physician who created the Sarco suicide pod, has said that “his invention is a more elegant variant of people who kill themselves using gas in a bag over their heads,” according to the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant. But using technology to allow for easier achievement of our base instincts is not human development.
Life itself is filled with trouble: family dynamics, relationships of all kinds, work, health-related problems, and the like. It is through these journeys that we grow as human beings. We learn important lessons such as perseverance and commitment to others and to our duties. We learn how to admit wrongdoing. We apologize and receive apologies. We forgive and are forgiven. We turn away from the devastating effects of our own terrible choices toward renewal and health. This is the complete human experience.
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The first recorded use of a suicide pod is a grim moment in history. There is nothing to celebrate. Unfortunately, others are sure to follow this example and convince themselves that an “elegant” death is the way to exit this life.
Sanitizing suicide doesn’t make it better. The same goes for other decisions that leave a path of destruction in their wake. Simplifying the worst human impulses only moves society in the wrong direction.
Kimberly Ross (@SouthernKeeks) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and a contributing freelance columnist at the Freemen News-Letter.