Human Exceptionalism

Could Bioethics and Legal Relativism Lead to Cutting Off the Limbs of “Amputee Wannabes”?

As I mentioned a week or so ago, there is an obscure mental disease in which victims become obsessed with becoming amputees. As I write in this Center for Bioethics and Culture newsletter, some are now calling for the right of doctors to fulfill the wishes of these “amputee wannabes” by cutting off healthy limbs. But isn’t acceding to mental illness a form of abandonment? Unfortunately, as I demonstrate, the currents of bioethics and jurisprudence could lead to doctors being able to legally maim people–all in the name of “choice.”

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