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Another Alternative Lifestyle

Well, it has happened. We always joked about punk rockers with their fishing tackle boxes hanging from their face: "If they wanna mess themselves up, why don't they get serious and amputate an arm? That's really messed up." It turns out some people are doing just that. According to this article, there are people who want to amputate perfectly-healthy body parts--like legs and arms. Most physicians think the condition is a psychiatric disorder that should be treated, but a few think it's a legitimate request and an issue of freedom.

"Dr. Smith, the Scottish surgeon who removed the legs of two men before his hospital forced him to stop, is trying to get the disorder formally recognized so that the amputations can be covered by the National Health Service.

"'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."

Heck, maybe it'll become all the rage. Most people (way back in the Dark Ages, twenty or so years ago) viewed the gay "sex act" as a type of mutilation and degradation, and now certain quarters want to celebrate it openly.

In any event, you gotta give these amputees credit. They carry out their self-loathing. They talk the talk and walk the . . . never mind.

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