Swiss authorities suspected Florian Willet, and others at the Last Resort organization, of illegally prompting a woman to take her own life.
Euthanasia activist Florian Willet committed suicide last month in Germany after he was arrested late last year for facilitating the Sarco suicide-pod-induced death of a 64-year-old American woman.
Willet, 47, was the only other person present when the Sarco pod’s inaugural kill took place in a Switzerland forest last September. He was the president of the Last Resort, an organization created to help patients use the notorious Sarco suicide pod — a high-tech capsule that fills with deadly nitrogen when users step inside and press a kill switch.
Swiss authorities quickly arrested Willet and some of his colleagues after the woman’s death. Although assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, authorities found strangulation marks on the woman’s neck and suspected Willet of murder, they said. Willet was held for 70 days until prosecutors dismissed the murder charge. Authorities still suspect that Willet, and others at Last Resort, illegally prompted the woman to take her own life.
The arrest “changed” Willet, his colleague and the inventor of the suicide pod, Philip Nitschke, said.
“Gone was his warm smile and self-confidence,” Nitschke continued. “In its place was a man who was deeply traumatised by the experience of incarceration and the wrongful accusation of strangulation.”
Willet suffered from an acute polymorphic psychotic disorder after his release. His spirit was “broken,” Nitschke said. Willet died shortly after “with the help of a specialised organisation.”
“In the final months of his life, Dr Florian Willet shouldered more than any man should,” Nitschke added. “He was bravely present when the Sarco was used. Everyone needs a Florian by their side in their final moments. Florian has now paid the ultimate price – his life – for his compassion.”
Willet’s own “right-to-die” advocacy was inspired by his father’s suicide. The elder Willet committed suicide when Florian was just 14, which made the boy “extremely sad.” But having been raised in an atheistic household that placed a heavy emphasis on logic over empathy, “I understood immediately my father, he wanted to do this because he was a rational person, which means that expecting him to remain alive just because I need a father, would mean extending his suffering,” Willet said in an interview last year.
“Keeping my father alive just because I need him as a young person is like being on a farm using horses or animals to get the work done. Abusing a living being. It’s horrible,” he said.
It’s difficult not to see irony in the way Willet’s death has been presented by an organization that proudly supports individuals’ supposed right to choose when their life ends. Last Resort’s guiding principle is autonomy — the idea that man should be author of his life and therefore his death, no matter his physical, psychological, or social circumstances. In remembering their colleague, Last Resort admits that Willet’s death was tragic because his life was valuable. One wonders if the organization extends that assumption to their patients’ lives.
Some memorialize Willet as an acclaimed scientist, a courageous victim of an “unjust” legal system, an activist who made sacrifices to aid the great cause of self-determination. Others will remember him as the man who died before he could innovate more ways to kill others. R.I.P.