What is MAID?
Did you know that there are now 11 U.S. states, plus Washington, D.C., that have legalized the euphemistically named MAID, or medical aid in dying?[1]
This is really physician-assisted suicide. The American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics describes physician-assisted suicide as the process where a physician provides “the necessary means and/or information to enable the patient to perform the life-ending act.”[2]
The idea of assisted suicide is fraught with moral questions. Will the elderly choose assisted suicide if they feel like a burden to their families? What about the Hippocratic oath? Won’t this lead to assisted suicide requests from those with mental illnesses?
These are all valid concerns and have real-world implications. In 2023, in the state of Oregon, the concerns of those who died by assisted suicide (which included non-residents of Oregon) were not primarily pain, but “loss of autonomy” (91.6%), “loss of dignity” (63.8%), and “burden on family, friends/caregivers” (43.3%).[3]
Notice how those dying from assisted suicide in Oregon were not primarily choosing death because of pain but because of other extraneous, often emotional, factors.
Tragically, assisted suicide continues to expand in our nation and around the world as Delaware’s governor recently signed into law a bill which approved assisted suicide for “terminally ill adults.” New York’s legislature has passed a similar bill, and Canada’s assisted suicide law is set to expand to allow “medical aid in dying” for cases solely due to mental illness in 2027.[4]
New Forms of Assisted Suicide
As if the expansion of assisted suicide by itself was not enough, shockingly, a new form of death has been invented by one Dr. Philip Nitschke. He has proposed the invention of a “kill switch,” to make it easier for dementia patients to take their own lives if they lose a capacity for consciousness. This “kill switch” would work in the following way. It would be
implanted into the person’s body—most likely in the leg—and fitted with a timer that emits a beeping sound and vibration as a daily reminder to deactivate it…Once a patient reaches a predetermined stage of cognitive decline, such as advanced dementia, the device would automatically release the substance and end their life (emphasis added).[5]
Not only has Nitschke created this “kill switch,” but he is the infamous creator of the Sarco death pod, which “enables users to commit suicide by pushing a button to release nitrogen, causing death by hypoxia.”[6]
The death pod killed a 64-year-old American woman with bone marrow disease last year in Switzerland. Horrifyingly, the woman was still alive six minutes after pushing the button! The story gets worse as the company president of Sarco, Dr. Florian Willet, died by his own assisted suicide after facing investigation for the American woman’s death as her body reportedly had strangulation marks.[7]
Who is Philip Nitschke?
The man behind the “kill switch” and the death pod is a radical proponent of the so-called right to die.
Nitschke grew up in Australia, the first country to have an assisted suicide law enacted in 1996. He assisted in the deaths of four individuals under the law before it was repealed in 1997.
For the first assisted death Nitschke facilitated, he ate lunch with his patient beforehand. The Prospect Magazine describes this fateful lunch:
Nitschke’s first patient was Bob, a man dying of prostate cancer. Bob invited Nitschke over for lunch on a Sunday before his death that afternoon. It was a difficult meal. Nitschke didn’t know what to talk about: obviously, any mention of a future beyond the afternoon was off limits. It wasn’t a particularly hot day, but his shirt was drenched in sweat. Nitschke sat in silence, his mouth too dry to eat his ham sandwich.[8]
Following his participation in facilitating assisted suicide, in 1997, Nitschke founded Exit International. The group later published information online about how to commit suicide. Additionally, Nitschke was directly involved in giving advice on how to commit suicide to a man suspected of murdering his wife in 2014. Nitschke “saw no problem with advising Brayley [the suspect] to do what he did.”[9]
Though Nitschke’s online suicide advice can be accessed and enacted by anyone, including teenagers, Nitschke is on record saying: “‘I often get asked about that [teenagers committing suicide],’ he says. ‘But what about these thousands of 80-year-olds who want to have this information, and if they get it, will live longer?’” By this, he implies that explaining how to commit suicide online will actually help the elderly be less worried about death.[10]
Disturbingly, to Nitschke, there should be a “fundamental human right to suicide.”[11]
This is why Nitschke views the proposed “kill switch” as “being really the only workable solution to the dementia dilemma.” This is because doctors even in highly liberalized nations like the Netherlands sometimes hesitate to follow an advanced directive for assisted suicide for dementia patients.[12]
A Euphoric Death?
Despite claims by Nitschke that assisted suicide by the Sarco pod or other assisted suicide methods would be painless and “euphoric,” the reality is far worse.[13]
While Nitschke is currently unsure of what lethal poison he plans to use in the “kill switch” (common lethal poisons in euthanasia can also fail to induce a coma or unconsciousness, thus not being very “euphoric”),[14] death by hypoxia, which is currently used in the Sarco pod, can be very painful.
For example, one man on death row, Kenneth Smith, was executed by nitrogen hypoxia in 2024 and thrashed around for two minutes, after being conscious beforehand when the nitrogen was first administered.[15]
Regardless of one’s views on the death penalty, the claim that assisted suicide by nitrogen hypoxia would be “euphoric” is unfounded.
Death by nitrogen hypoxia physiologically affects the body by creating an “intense air hunger with involuntary diaphragmatic contractions” in the individual.[16] This is not the definition of a euphoric death.
Life, not Death, is the Answer
While assisted suicide might seem like a viable option for those with terminal illnesses, those with mental illnesses, or the elderly, the reality is that assisted suicide – whether as a “kill switch,” by physician-assisted suicide, or a Sarco death pod – demeans the worth of human beings made in the image of God.
Human beings possess a fundamental right to life as the Declaration of Independence states, not a right to die.
Only God is the Creator of life. He alone possesses the right to give and take away life. God through Moses says in Deuteronomy 32:39, “See now that I, even I, am He, and there is no god beside Me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of My hand.”
The debate over assisted suicide is fundamentally a battle between good and evil, between worshipping the one, true God and trying to be one’s own god.
So, as Christians who care deeply about defending the Imago Dei, let’s stand on the side of life and protect those at risk of death by a kill switch, death pod, or “medical aid in dying.”
We are the ones who must stand for those who have no voice.
You can show your support to protect every human life by signing the Personhood Petition at https://tinyurl.com/grtlpetition.
Sources:
[2] American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics
[3] Oregon Death with Dignity Report 2023
[4] Delaware Law, New York Assisted Suicide Law, and Canada’s MAID Law
[6] Ibid.
[7] Sarco Pod Death and Dr. Willet Death
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Progress, Potential, and Possibilities. 2022. “Dr. Philip Nitschke, MD, PhD – Founder, Exit International – The Future Of End-Of-Life Technologies.” YouTube video, 52:49. March 7, 2022. https://youtu.be/lx0BGXl4lsM?si=t6lPbScfcaAoV82V
[12] Ibid. and Prospect Magazine
[13] Ibid.
[14] The Independent Article and
Kim, Elizabeth, and Richard J. Levy. 2020. “The Role of Anaesthesiologists in Lethal Injection: A Call to Action.” Lancet 395, no. 10225: 749–54. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7416913/.
[15] Poole, D. C., and D. M. Bailey. 2024. “Death by Nitrogen Anoxia: On the Integrated Physiology of Human Execution.” Experimental Physiology 109, no. 7: 1009–1014. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11215468/#eph13521-sec-0120.
[16] Ibid.
Brooke Robyck
Georgia Right to Life
Project Coordinator