Surgeon Neil Hopper, who wanted his legs amputated

[madnessallaround]

was watching a documentary (on Amazon i think) about this vascular surgeon in Cornwall who is currently serving out a 3 year sentence in prison. In court, when he admitted to putting his legs in dry ice for hours to force an eventual double amputation, his lawyer said he’d had body dismorphia and felt his legs/feet weren’t part of him and were unwelcome. Oh and also that he felt like and wanted to be a female from a young age.

So, one is a mental health condition, but the other is a gender identity ? How? Make it make sense.

Just a correction - he was convicted for fraud, but also for the extreme pornography he was watching.

'I am loath to describe the videos Hopper was watching – which I learned about when I attended his criminal court hearing via video link – but the broad details are relevant to his patients. Hopper was performing surgery on them in his professional life while watching people writhing in agony in his private life; this was pornography so sadistic and extreme that possession of it added 10 months to the 22-month prison sentence he received for insurance fraud.'

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/01/neil-hopper-surgeon-amputated-legs-fetish-extreme-mutilation-patients-questions

Also from that article:

'His defence barrister told the court that Hopper had suffered from lifelong gender dysphoria, as well as body dysmorphia, which manifested in a loathing for his feet.'

Trans people aren't mentally ill, and it's none of your business what others choose to do with their bodies.

Trans people are a very small minority, e.g. about 1 in every 634 women are trans. As if there is some shadowy force trying to 'trans' young people.

If it was trans surgery was a business then it would go bust quickly. Simply not enough demand.

https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/sex-reassignment-surgery-market

'Sex Reassignment Surgery Market size was valued at USD 722.2 million in 2023 and is set to register growth at 11.4% CAGR from 2024 to 2032.'

Yep, two totally different things.

Being trans is innate, body dysmorphia is an illness.

Should people with BIDD have limbs amputated? On the NHS?

Ah. The gendered soul.

People with BID are already the amputees they know themselves to be. They may modify their appearance to reflect this, but many do not. It is not a longing to become an amputee, it’s a desire for the outer to reflect the inner.

How are they different? One bunch are people who think their bodies are wrong, that surgery can correct it and the other want their feet cut off. The odd thing is surgeons can make a physically healthy person an amputee. No amount of drugs or surgery can do anything except at best turn a man into a simulacrum of a woman.

Its interesting that your angrier posts are always in response to accusations of parents indoctrinating their children and encouraging their “trans” identities.
Very interesting.

I have met him before. Came across as a very normal bloke. Huge shock to many.

Does anyone know this man’s name please?

Especially when you have read TPAs description in her own words as to her own sexuality and how she managed her female child when she was young.

Charlie Kirk said that if you are over 18 and think you can change sex you are mentally ill, if you are inder 18 then your mother is mentally ill.

then he got shot, and I learned who he was.

I think he had a good point. Rejecting your body, being distressed by your body, wanting to remove parts of your body for sexual satisfaction - these are all examples of being unwell,

humans cannot change sex. It’s a fundamental observation and no matter how much you want to change sex, tough, it can’t be true, it is never true and if you try to chase this impossibly you will become mentally unwell because it can never happen.

Which man?

The thread is about a man whose name is in the thread title.

it doesn't consume their lives.

Well that's my irony meter broken

@ArabellaScott

I remember that figure of 11% compounded annual increase, but fair to say, that was before the trickle (soon a flood?) of detransitioner compensation cases? Which may (hopefully) put the brakes on a bit.

it's none of your business what others choose to do with their bodies.

Actually, it IS very much my business when chopping perfectly healthy parts off autistic young adults becomes seen as an entirely normal thing to do. It damages young people, and it costs the NHS money that it doesn't have to spare (I've been on a waiting list since about April...)

It was very much my business when a young relative of mine chose to go down this route. I worried a lot about the young person in question, justifiably as it turns out, as they now find it very hard to find a romantic partner.

We are all parts of wider society, and individuals' actions have repercussions that spread like ripples from a thrown pebble.

Mine too, Janes

Mine's gone well into the red but it seems to be holding together.

He amputated many, many people’s limbs as a doctor, telling them it was medically necessary. Then he was found to have a deeply disturbing fetish around this. Very worrying and upsetting for anyone who was treated by him. The NHS has said no one was mistreated. But I think we can imagine as a patient how we would feel about that response.

Awful. Before this thread I didn't know about his sadism fetish. It's all truly dreadful for anyone who was operated on by him 😠

Agree @EdithStourton

If our taxes are helping to pay for traumatised/autistic/vulnerable/mentally ill young women to take excess amounts of testosterone/have mastectomies/phalloplasties as ‘treatments’ for their mental health crises, it is everyone’s business. And it is everyone’s business that the NHS will also be funding revision surgeries (phalloplasty is a pretty primitive procedure with many potential risks) and lifelong medical care for these very damaged young women. And that’s before you even get on to the detransitioners and the physical and mental health care that they will need through their lives.

I don’t find it acceptable that public money is spent on treatments which have so many risks, and for which there is an extremely weak evidence base, if any at all. The success criteria is surely: ‘do these treatments improve people’s mental state?’

Where is the evidence that they do? We don’t have it. So weighing up the risks vs the potential benefits looks very uneven indeed.

Try a little critical thinking, and read back what I actually posted.

Trans people often don't change their appearance that much. They are pressured to do so by societal expectations of what men and women should look like.

Lots of trans people are not at all gender-conforming in how they look or dress.

Dysphoria is eased when trans people are accepted for who they are. For example, trans boys bind less when accepted as themselves by family and friends.

If you know yourself to be a trans woman, you will want to be accepted as one.

If trans men alter their appearance, anti-trans activists condemn them. If they don't, they're told they don't look sufficiently like men.

Trans people just want to get on with their lives, because being trans is a tiny part of their story. The man who wanted his legs removed was deliberately harming himself and sabotaging his life, the complete opposite.

So is the report into that public?