to think body dysmorphia should never result in removal of healthy tissue

26 replies

Dancingsquirrels · 05/09/2025 08:34

People will rightly be horrified by this story about a surgeon taking steps that resulted in his legs being amputated https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yvpx20le2o

And yet when a young girl / woman wants her breasts removed, TRA think it's something that should be encouraged

I know I'm preaching to the choir here

The picture shows a person seated in a living room. They are wearing a blue shirt and have prosthetic legs. The room includes a coffee table and sofa.

Surgeon Neil Hopper jailed after amputation of own legs

Neil Hopper claimed that injuries to his legs were the result of sepsis and not self-inflicted.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yvpx20le2o

OP posts:

TheKeatingFive · 05/09/2025 10:05

Bagsintheboot · 05/09/2025 09:58

But the impact of action on outcome isn't remotely similar if we compare smoking with cutting off your own legs. Surely this is obvious?

It's directly analogous if you need a lung removing thanks to cancer or emphysema.

But the question here is whether they want to live in a society where people can wilfully and unnecessarily cut off their own legs?

He didn't cut off his own legs. He caused sufficient damage to them that they required removing surgically. I would hope we'd all agree that, no matter what the circumstances of the injury, we don't just leave people with necrotic tissue to let them die a slow painful death from sepsis. In this case amputation was required to save his life.

Which is why I said where do we draw the line?

Which line specifically are you referring to here? Because in this case the question the NHS was facing wasn't "is this cosmetic surgery too extreme?", the question was "do we amputate this dead tissue or do we leave this man to die?".

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It's directly analogous if you need a lung removing thanks to cancer or emphysema.

No it isn't. No amount of smoking will definitely lead to lung cancer and there are many other factors that would impact whether a person ends up needing a lung removed. This is not analogous to getting your legs cut off and disabling yourself. Again, this is obvious, so I'm not quite sure why you're trying to equate the two.

Yes, this case is slightly different. However there are people with body dysmorphia asking for amputation and I believe a few cases where it has been done. Is this something we can stand by, ethically?

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