Americans can now get a tax-deduction for promoting assisted suicide. The world’s best-known assisted suicide activist, Australia’s Philip Nitschke, has drawn the curtains on a 501(c)3 non-profit called Exit Generation.

Donations, bequests, gifts will be tax deductible to the full extent of the law. Dr Nitschke says that “Exit Generation shares the same board as Exit International & will ensure that Exit has a truly international presence now, & in the future.”

The new venture’s first focus is developing the Sarco 3D-printed euthanasia capsule in Switzerland and then making it available in other countries. Sarco is Dr Nitschke’s brain-child – a 3-D printed capsule in which a customer can kill himself by inhaling nitrogen. The pod can then be used as a cost-saving coffin.

Nitschke has designed other suicide machines in the course of his career, beginning with the “Deliverance Machine” which was used patients in the Northern Territory in 1996. It is now on permanent display in the British Museum.