A euthanasia campaigner and former GP nicknamed ‘Dr Death’ has said he plans to open a “pop-up office” in London to advise people on travelling to Switzerland to end their lives by assisted suicide.
Philip Nitschke, the controversial founder of pro-euthanasia organisation Exit International and inventor of the Sarco gas chamber assisted suicide pod, disclosed that he was considering setting up a “general Swiss referral service” in London to assist people in ending their lives.
“There is so much interest, it would be a pretty useful thing to have in London”, Nitschke said. “It will basically be a place where people can go and speak English to someone because, often, people have trouble trying to organise everything on the internet with the organisations in Switzerland”.
Reflecting on whether this service would even be legal in England, where it is a criminal offence to assist suicide, Nitschke said, “If you’ve got a lot of your population seeking information about assisted dying, then to try and use some form of censorship to try and stop people getting that information reflects pretty badly on any administration that would do that”.
Ahead of the event, MPs and campaigners called on the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, to prevent Nitschke from being allowed into the UK to host this event, in which he planned to demonstrate his Kairos ‘suicide collar’ device.
The collar, called “Kairos”, consists of two balloons that exert pressure on the carotid artery, leading first to unconsciousness and then to death.
Earlier this year, Nitschke said that he would conduct the first assisted suicide using the collar on a woman in Switzerland who would be his first “test subject”.
Ultimately, Nitschke hosted his workshop without the collar.
“I have left the device in the Netherlands. I feared it would be stopped at customs. We are under pressure from authorities about what they call ‘giving dangerous information to vulnerable people’”, he said.
“The device is not expensive to make but we are currently in the testing phase and it would be a real setback to lose it”, Nitschke added.
He has claimed that it is difficult for governments to stop because it can be built at home.
