Euthanasia device

The most common devices are those designed to help terminally ill people die by voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide without prolonged pain.

Kevorkian assisted others with a device that employed a gas mask fed by a canister of carbon monoxide which was called "Mercitron" (mercy machine).

[3] In an interview Nitschke said that, even if it had been legal for a doctor to give a lethal injection, he preferred that the patient be in control of the administration of the drugs.

Nitschke states that nitrogen is also more physiologically inert than helium, with less chance of adverse reaction,[6] and that loss of consciousness is quick with death following within minutes.

[6] Close contact with an enclosed inert gas is lethal, but released into the open air, it quickly disperses, making the environment safe for others.

[14] Time to loss of consciousness in a bag filled with nitrogen is 15 seconds, according to professors Copeland, Pappas, and Parr, who campaigned for a more humane execution method in the US state of Oklahoma.

Compulsory self-execution booths were also featured in an episode of the original Star Trek TV series entitled "A Taste of Armageddon".

When a series of suicides were vigorously discussed in United Kingdom newspapers, critic William Archer suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines by which a man could kill himself.

[18][19] Following Archer's statement in 1893, the 1895 story "The Repairer of Reputations" by Robert W. Chambers featured the Governor of New York presiding over the opening of the first "Government Lethal Chamber" in the then-future year of 1920, after the repeal of laws against suicide: "The Government has seen fit to acknowledge the right of man to end an existence which may have become intolerable to him, through physical suffering or mental despair."

The booths have at least three modes of death: "quick and painless", "slow and horrible",[22] and "clumsy bludgeoning"[23] though, it is also implied that "electrocution, with a side order of poison" exists,[24] and that the eyes can be scooped out for an extra charge.

It then turns out that "slow and horrible" can be survived by pressing oneself against the side of the booth, leading Bender to accuse the machine of being a rip-off.

[26] A suicide booth reappeared in Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs where Bender once again attempts to end his life, but is saved when dropped into the League of Robots' lair.

[30] In the Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon", people who were deemed war casualties by the government of Eminiar VII were required to enter suicide booths.

Treaty arrangements require that everyone who is calculated as "dead" in the hypothetical thermonuclear war simulated using computers actually die, without actually damaging any infrastructure.

In the end, the computers are destroyed, the war can no longer be calculated in this way, the treaty breaks down, and faced with a real threat, (presumably) peace begins.

[citation needed] After the Heaven's Gate mass suicide event was linked by tabloids to an extreme fascination with science fiction and Star Trek in particular it was noted that multiple episodes, including "A Taste of Armageddon", actually advocated an anti-suicide standpoint as opposed to the viewpoint expressed by the Heaven's Gate group.

[31] In the seventeenth season The Simpsons episode "Million Dollar Abie", a suicide machine called a "diePod" (a pun on the iPod) is featured.

Being a direct parody of the aforementioned scene, Abraham Simpson receives the opportunity to select his final vision and musical accompaniment: 1960s-era footage of "cops beatin' up hippies" to the tune of "Pennsylvania 6-5000" by the Glenn Miller Orchestra.