Claims that the first person to use a so-called suicide pod could have been a victim of “intentional homicide” have been blasted as “ridiculous and absurd” by the machine’s inventors.

On September 23 the first user of the Sarco suicide pod, 64-year-old American woman, climbed into the device, which had been set up in a woodland in Switzerland, and pushed a button causing the chamber to flood with nitrogen, suffocating her to death, the machine’s creators say.