Shabana Mahmood has been urged to portray a controversial right-to-die campaigner named ‘Dr. Death’ from visiting Britain to promote its new ‘suicide collar’ ahead of a vote on assisted dying.
MPs and campaigners have called on the Home Secretary to prevent Dr Philip Nitschke from coming to Britain to demonstrate his Kairos suicide collar at an event in Britain. London on Saturday.
The euthanasia campaigner – who is also behind the controversial Sarco suicide capsule – has said his macabre technology could come to Britain if Parliament votes for it. legalize assisted dying.
His visit comes as MPs prepare for a new round of voting. The End of Life Act for Terminally Ill Adults, which ran out of time during the last session of Parliamentwill appear in the House of Commons on September 11.
Dr. Nitschke plans to take his ‘suicide collar’ device to Britain to demonstrate it at a public event on September 5 – just six days before MPs vote on the revived bill.
However, MPs and campaigners have called on Ms Mahmood to use her powers as Home Secretary to ban him from entering Britain.
Controversial right-to-die campaigner dubbed ‘Dr Death’, Dr Philip Nitschke, with his new invention, the Kairos ‘suicide collar’
Dr. Nitschke to lie down in a ‘suicide capsule’ known as the Sarco in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 2024
Senior Tory MP Sir John Hayes said it is ‘deeply disturbing’ that Mr Nitschke plans to ‘advertise his latest sinister suicide device in this country’.
‘I call on the Minister of the Interior to urgently reconsider the wisdom of allowing Mr Nitschke into the country for this reason. We should not promote suicide,” he said.
‘The planned event is also a sobering reminder of how an assisted suicide industry would likely emerge and be promoted if MPs voted to change the law in this area next week.’
Alisdair Hungerford-Morgan, CEO of Right To Life UK, said: ‘Just days before MPs vote on the assisted suicide bill, Philip Nitschke plans to come to Britain to demonstrate his new ‘suicide collar’.
‘We call on the Home Secretary to act urgently to prevent Mr Nitschke from entering Britain to demonstrate and promote this dangerous device.’
The Kairos suicide collar consists of two balloons that put pressure on vital arteries, leading to unconsciousness and then death.
“It works like an airbag in a car: press the button, it pops, you pass out and die,” Dr. Nitschke said of the device.
A model of the most recent Kairos ‘suicide collar’
A photo of Sarco’s suicide capsule, which can be operated internally and works by lowering oxygen levels
Earlier this year, “Dr. Death’ yes performed the first assisted death using the collar on a woman in Switzerland who would be his first ‘test subject’‘.
Dr. Nitschke caused controversy in 2024 when a 64-year-old woman used his Sarco suicide pod to end her life in the first case of its kind. Police in Switzerland arrested several people in September 2024 on suspicion of inciting and complicity in suicide after death.
The revived assisted dying bill would allow the use of a “medical device” to allow patients to self-administer a deadly substance. Legal academics have confirmed that, if the bill is passed, it could be legal to use the Kairos collar or Sarco pod in an assisted death.
The assisted dying bill was first introduced in October 2024, but was automatically withdrawn after time ran out at the end of the last parliamentary session.
But it returned to parliament after Labor MP Lauren Edwards came second in a vote that allowed MPs to put forward their own policies and opted to pass a near-identical version of the old bill.
The proposal proposes that adults in England and Wales who have less than six months to live can apply for assisted death, subject to the approval of two doctors and a panel of experts.
The Home Office said it does not routinely comment on individual cases.
