The subject raises issues as to the extent to which it is proper to treat adults with psychiatric or psychological disorders with radical surgery, particularly where the appropriate diagnosis and treatment of the underlying disorder is uncertain or disputed; the limitations which ought to be placed upon consent as a means of rendering surgery lawful and whether the criminal law ought to have a place in controlling operations provided by qualified surgeons upon competent adults with their consent.
Patients with the controversial diagnosis of body integrity identity disorder (BIID) report an emotional discomfort with having a body part (usually a limb) that they feel should not be there. This discomfort is so strong that it interferes with routine functioning and, in a majority of cases, BIID patients are motivated to seek amputation of the limb. Although patient requests to receive the best available treatment are generally respected, BIID demands for amputation, at present, are not. This paper criticises the appropriateness of the particular analogies that are thought to shed light on the allegedly unproblematical nature of BIID demands and argues that a proper understanding of the respect for autonomy in the medical decision-making context prohibits agreeing to BIID demands for amputation.
PSYCHOLOGY Cutting Desire A rare condition compels its sufferers to want to amputate, or paralyze, their own healthy limbs. Inside the strange world of what sufferers call Body Integrity Identity Disorder.
On my way back from an appointment at the hospital where I was being treated for a rare giant cell tumour in my left foot, my phone rang. It was my publisher saying that she'd found an image of a rather lovely pair of feet to go on the cover of my first novel. They were nothing at all to do with the book but, she thought, they somehow caught the spirit of it.