I have discussed the very disturbing and pain-causing mental illness of body integrity identity disorder here several times before. We have had spirited discussions about whether it would be appropriate to cut off healthy limbs because the ill person is obsessed with becoming an amputee. I have opined that it would be wrong to cut off health limbs, and warned that if it’s okay to cut off legs and arms as a “treatment” for a mental illness, why not render someone a paraplegic or quadriplegic if that is what they obsesses over.
Some told me it would never come to that. Now, just that situation has emerged. From the Daily Mail story:
A Cambridge University educated research scientist is so desperate to live the life of a wheelchair-bound person she is prepared to pay a doctor help her become disabled. Since childhood, Chloe Jennings-White has made several attempts at injuring herself so she can finally climb into her own wheelchair. In 2010 she even found a doctor overseas willing to help her become disabled by cutting her sciatic and femoral nerves, but she could not afford the £16,000 costs…
The Cambridge graduate believes both of her legs do not belong to her and dreams of being paralysed from the waist down.’Something in my brain tells me my legs are not supposed to work,’ she said. ‘Having any sensation in them just feels wrong.’
It’s just “choice,” right? No!