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March 22, 2005
Yeah, yeah, "Stranger than Fiction"
People, that is. Here's a New York Times article about people who WANT to have limbs amputated. The article talks about the attempts of psychiatrists to come up with a good name for the situation and the pros and cons of getting it included in the D.S.M. The main doctor interviewed compares this to gender identity disorder -- and the rationalization of a Scottish surgeon who is "helping" people with the problem sounds analogous to early surgical sex changes:
"The Hippocratic oath says first do your patients no harm," he said in the film "Whole." But maybe the real harm, he said, is to refuse to treat such a patient, "leaving him in a state of permanent mental torment," when all it would take for him "to live a satisfied and happy life" would be to amputate.
The Columbia university psychiatrist, after all, suggests that the surgery doesn't cure the underlying problem. He doesn't seem to have proved that it doesn't, but nothing the surgeon says suggests that he has anything other than anecdotal amputation satisfaction to prove his point.
Oh, well. It'll be a while before insurance covers this one, I think.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at March 22, 2005 9:19 AM