A crisp Monday morning in the quaint town of Amersfoort Netherlandswhile a group of elderly guests listens intently to the words of an Australian doctor.
Dr. Philip Nitschke, the first doctor in the world to administer a legal voluntary lethal injection and the inventor of the controversial Sarco capsule, unveils his newest gadget.
The Australian-born founder of Exit International, a non-profit organization that provides assisted suicide advice, sparked controversy in 2024 when a woman killed herself using a so-called suicide pod, in what appeared to be the first case of its kind.
But despite the bad press and people repeatedly calling him “Dr. Death” (a nickname he doesn't like), Dr. Nitschke is as passionate as ever about expanding access to euthanasia.
The 20 participants gathered for one of the 78-year-old's “exit seminars” which, according to his website, cover legal issues related to euthanasia, the physiology of death and methods of suicide such as “gases”, “drugs and other substances”, “the Swiss option (including discussion of Sarco)” and “the new Kairos Kollar”.
This is Kairos Collar, which Dr. Nitschke demonstrates live to his observant guests, but, of course, on a plastic mannequin with silver hair.
It works by putting pressure on the carotid arteries and baroreceptors in the neck, cutting off blood flow to the brain and causing the wearer to lose consciousness before death.
In a post on X, Dr. Nitschke could barely hide his excitement about the developing technology: “The release of Kairos Kollar, a major advance in the search for assisted dying… fast, reliable, drug-free… and, importantly, unlimited!”
Dr. Philip Nitschke with his new invention Kairos Kollar.
Dr. Philip Nitschke demonstrates Kairos Collar at one of his Exit International seminars.
Dr. Nitschke lies in a “suicide capsule” known as “Sarco” in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Death seminars typically last three hours, including a tea and biscuit break and an extensive Q&A with the euthanasia expert himself.
For a doctor, one of the most important considerations when developing a new technology is how it will circumvent what he sees as each country's restrictive laws on assisted suicide.
This is what makes Kairos Kollar such a “game changer,” according to his website.
“You can make yourself a collar and suicide is not a crime,” Dr. Nitschke told his guests, according to the report Herald of the Sun who attended the seminar in Amersfoort.
“It will work like an airbag in a car: when you press the button, you will explode, faint and die.”
In this particular collection, the Kairos Kollar is designed in a particularly vibrant color palette given its purpose – to be paired with a rainbow headband and bright orange tubes.
According to Exit International, the invention provides “peaceful, fast and secure passage,” is “cheap and easy to make,” and is “completely legal.”
This is important because Dr. Nitschke's Sarco capsule caused quite a stir among Swiss law enforcement when a 64-year-old woman went into the northern forest to commit suicide with a futuristic device.
Indeed, at the Amersfoort seminar, an Australian doctor was forced to present a human-sized inflatable version of the capsule because the real Sarco capsule was confiscated by Dutch police during a raid on his office last year.
Dr. Philip Nitschke, the first doctor in the world to administer a legal voluntary lethal injection, is pictured at the launch of the Sarco suicide machine in Zurich, Switzerland, July 17, 2024.
Dr. Nitschke (foreground) stands next to the “suicide capsule” known as “Sarco” in Rotterdam.
Last Resort member Fiona Stewart poses next to Sarco's suicide car in July 2024.
Dr Nitschke was born in the 1940s in Ardrossan, South Australia, into a family of schoolteachers.
He studied physics at the University of Adelaide and then received a PhD in laser physics from Flinders University in 1972.
He was training to become a doctor at Darwin Hospital when he heard a radio broadcast that changed his life: it was the chief minister of Australia's Northern Territory advocating euthanasia for the terminally ill.
He could not help but be convinced by this argument, and began a campaign in defense of the controversial case.
Although several doctors in Australia voiced their vehement objections, the Terminally Ill Rights Act – the world's first assisted dying law – passed by five votes and became law in 1996.
The law was short-lived and was repealed by the Australian Parliament in March 1997 after outrage from medical professionals and the church.
But in the short period he operated, four Australians in the Northern Territory died legally by lethal injection, and each time Dr Nitschke helped.
In 2014, the Medical Council of Australia suspended Dr Nitschke's practicing license after he supported 45-year-old Nigel Braley's decision to take his own life.
The doctor appealed the decision twice and the Darwin High Court ultimately ruled in his favor, overturning the decision that he posed a serious and immediate danger to people.
But restoring his medical license came at a price: He was allowed to practice again only if he met 25 conditions, including a ban on raising the topic of suicide with patients any longer.
An angry Dr. Nitschke called the terms “a heavy-handed and clumsy attempt to restrict the free flow of information about end-of-life choices” and responded by publicly burning his medical certificate, saying he would leave the profession.
An image of Sarco's suicide pod, which can be controlled from the inside and works by reducing oxygen levels.
In September 2024, Swiss police arrested several people on suspicion of inciting, aiding and abetting suicide after the first death was carried out using a Sarco capsule.
The 3D-printed coffin-like machine aims to offer patients the chance to die painlessly in just 10 minutes by depriving them of oxygen after they press a button that will fill the machine with nitrogen.
Dr. Florian Willet, founder of The Last Resort, which promoted the use of the capsule, was arrested in a Swiss forest and remanded in pre-trial detention for 70 days, with the prosecutor arguing that the capsule failed to work and instead the woman suffered injuries consistent with strangulation.
The right-to-die activist was subsequently released in December 2024 and was never charged with the premeditated murder of the woman.
Five months later, on May 5, he died. Dr Nitschke said his death was a suicide in Germany after his arrest left him “broken”.
“In the last months of his life, Dr Florian Willet shouldered more than any man should have,” the Australian doctor said in a statement, adding that the German euthanasia campaigner had suffered psychological trauma following his arrest.
Before his death in May, Dr. Willet fell from the third floor of his building, requiring surgery and “having to be looked after by a full psychiatric team,” Dr. Nitschke said.
The Australian activist expected police to be taken by surprise by the capsule, but was baffled by the arrest and temporary detention of the photographer and lawyers.
“I don’t see us breaking any laws,” he told Prospect magazine. He also did not agree with unfounded assumptions about marks of strangulation on the woman’s body.
“It’s really weird because we have this movie,” he said. “And the film makes it pretty clear that she climbed up there on her own, without any help. She pressed the button without any assistance. The capsule was not opened until the police arrived.”
It is reported that the woman was diagnosed with osteomyelitis of the skull base.
According to a person close to The Last Resort, who spoke to Swiss publication Neue Zuercher Zeitung, the illness may have manifested itself as a bone marrow infection, which could be responsible for the strangulation-like marks on her neck.
The doctor had previously faced backlash over the capsule from groups opposed to legalizing euthanasia, with some saying its futuristic design glamorized suicide.
General view of the officially sealed forest hut associated with the first use of the Sarko death capsule by the dying aid group Last Resort in Mörishausen, Switzerland.
View of the O2 detector and pure nitrogen release button in the Sarco suicide machine.
Dementia switch design created by Darab Jafari. According to Dr. Nitschke, the blue part is the microsyringe containing the lethal drug, the green part is the processor that provides timekeeping, and the white part is the lithium battery.
Early drawings of the switch provided by MailOnline show the various components it could include.
Despite resistance to his methods, Dr. Nitschke does not give up on his ever-evolving inventions.
He is currently developing a Sarco double capsule in an attempt to meet demand from couples who want to die in each other's arms.
Not only that, but he is also creating a “switch” implant that will allow dementia sufferers to fix the time of their death years in advance.
The mechanism will be sewn into the person's body (most likely in the leg) and will contain a timer that will beep and vibrate, alerting the person to turn it off every day.
If they were unable to do so due to deterioration of brain function in the later stages of the disease, Dr. Nitschke says, a deadly substance would be released into their bodies and kill them.
An aid-in-dying campaigner believes his new device could solve the “dementia dilemma” – a situation where a person with the condition is deemed unable to consent to their own death.
He is the co-author of an ever-expanding book compiling information on assisted suicide called The Peaceful Pills e-Handbook, which is updated six times a year, “providing subscribers with the best information available on end-of-life choice strategies,” according to his website.
This year he is exhibiting the Kairos Collar, but only time will tell what new device the doctor will invent next.
