Moderator Note
Keep in mind that this is in the GQ forum, which is for questions with factual answers. Let’s focus on the factual aspects of the topic and leave judgements and opinions about the health of the gene pool to more appropriate forums.
No warning issued.
Speaking as a career physician in the US, there is no chance this would happen in any legitimate facility interested in keeping its license.
It is not a credible hypothesis that an underlying desperation to have an extremity amputated would be considered anything but a variant of a mental disorder, and that the putative benefit of amputation would be a plausible net benefit.
Moreover, finding an entire team of clinicians willing to do this is substantially more difficult than finding a single clinician, and an amputation takes a team. Each would consider the risk of harm to their career (not to mention the liability) and discard the idea on its face.
The big problem for a doctor in the USA especially, would be lawsuits.
It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to see that if a person changed their mind (or fixed it) and decided to sue a few years later - they would not have a difficult time persuading a jury that they were obviously not of sound mind and the doctor should not have agreed to a request made by a mentally unsound person.
It’s the same reason doctors are reluctant to do vasectomies or sterilizations unless the person has thought about it for a while and usually has enough kids they won’t regret a missed opportunity; and why a lot of counselling and preparatory therapy is in order before transgender surgery. At least breast removal in anticipation of a very high risk of cancer has a lot more sane logic behind it than “I don’t like my left hand…”
Sex-reassignment surgery (gender congruity surgery, whatever it’s called now) is intended to remodel the genitals that someone was born with into normal-appearing genitals appropriate for their actual sex. As Broomstick points out, male-to-female SRS isn’t simply removing the penis - it’s major reconstructive surgery that involves turning the penis inside-out to form a functional vagina. Usually the scrotum is is used to create natural-looking labia as well. The ultimate goal is to produce as ordinary-looking a result as possible. Conversely, many female-to-male transpeople don’t bother with genital surgery precisely because the results are rarely comparable, visually or functionally, to natural male genitalia.
The kind of elective amputation described in the OP, however, isn’t about refashioning a biologically typical, but unwanted, body part into a biologically-typical-looking, desired body part. The person who has an unwanted arm (for example) removed isn’t bothered by the fact that they will not have a typical appearance afterward. That person doesn’t want a different, but natural-looking, arm. That person will only be comfortable when there is no arm there.
The Hippocratic Oath is an entirely voluntary creed, without the slightest legal validity and no more force than any two people agree to give it. I always chuckle a bit when I see it referenced in discussions like this as if it is somehow part of medical and civil law. It’s no more so than the Pledge of Allegiance is a binding commitment to military service.
Off topic, but absolutely correct. It’s just an anachronistic nod to tradition.
What binds our behaviour as clinicians are the following:
The popular citation from the Hippocratic Oath: “I will…never do harm” is ridiculously outdated. Medicine has moved from interventions that are relatively benign and ineffective to ones that are increasingly dangerous but potentially effective.
Calling a sex reassignment surgery sex change is offensive. A transexual woman is not actually a men - she is a woman, she always was and she always will be. This surgery gives her life quality, happiness and will always be one.
Voluntary amputation is allowed in some cases of spinal cord injury. I dont know what the specific protocols are but I’ve known more than one person who has had this done. And it was purely voluntary; no medical *necessity * for the surgery.
Isn’t the justification for that greater ease for the person having maneuver a paralyzed body around?
I’ve also heard of voluntary amputation to allow a better fit for a prosthesis.
Even in those cases, where it’s not medically necessary, isn’t the justification to allow better functioning on some level? Whereas what I think most of the folks referred in this thread wind up with is being much less functional.
Maybe when prosthetics are truly the equal of healthy natural limbs it won’t matter anymore, but unless the outcome is better functionality I can’t so OK to this sort of thing.
[url=http://web.archive.org/web/20010406023028/http://www.geocities.com/FashionAvenue/6914/ABOUT_ME_PAGE_1.html]For your consideration.](A somewhat disturbing link... - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board)
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Even then I think you don’t just go in and say, “oh hey, I want to have SRS” – you have to go through counseling and other stuff first, right?"
From what I recall, there are several years of seeing a psychiatrist, two medical recommendations, a year of living as the sex you identify with and probably other things. There are certainly more qualified people here on the board to be more precise.
Not so much anymore. The WPATH standards are here. Also, DSM-5 has a much less offensive/bizarre set of criteria for diagnosis than did DSM-IV-TR.
As pointed out above, the usual argument against this surgery is that it worsens function. I do, however, see some parallels with SRS in that one of the major arguments for SRS is the psychological anguish caused by being transsexual which has clinically been shown to be resistant to any other treatment. However, also as noted above, most SRS does not remove function, and in many ways is more analogous to correcting a congenital deformity such as a cleft palate.
That said, and while I believe that many of those who seek voluntary amputations have psychiatric illnesses, I do wonder about those that have true neurologic disease that causes them to see part of their body as “non-self”. Oliver Sacks gives an example here. I think an argument could be made that with this type of neurologic disorder, only amputation will restore a functional life. I certainly couldn’t do it, or recomend it to any patient but the argument could be made.
What about religion? If a guy reads his books and realises that he has to remove his letf leg… Would that be ok?
Certainly they have the foreskin removed voluntarily. Most often, though, it is without consent.
I understand it. Wanting to have a healthy limb amputated I want my arms amputated
When did this urge first get it’s hooks in you?
Just hug it out