"Am I therefore become your enemy,because I TELL YOU THE TRUTH...?"
(Galatians 4:16)

SIGN of the TIMES:When patients take surgery into their own hands

"Extreme body modification divides physicians along ethical lines..."
At the intersection of medicine and mutilation sits, rather precariously, body modification. Body modification is, at its essence, surgery for non-medical reasons. But a strict definition is elusive: it includes surgeries ranging from the kinds of procedures that the public and the medical community have come to accept-like body piercing, facelifts and breast enlargements-to those that limn the borders of what's socially acceptable and even, in some cases, brazenly and proudly transgress such barriers, like having horns implanted in one's head, or metal objects placed beneath the skin of one's chest.For the physicians who encounter these patients, several important questions must be answered. First, is the patient sane? Body modification can, in some cases, fit the diagnostic criteria for body dysmorphic disorder, in which a patient is obsessed with changing an aspect of his or her appearance.Second, even if the patient is sane, do you feel comfortable doing the procedure? Many doctors already perform cosmetic surgeries, so it becomes a question of where you draw the line between what's acceptable and what's not.Another consideration for some physicians may be whether patients will try to do it themselves if you refuse."If they want them enough they're going to get them, so they might as well get them safely," says Wired Magazine journalist Quinn Norton, who's spent the last year studying body modification culture, responding to questions (fittingly enough for a tech journalist) via Instant Messenger chat."There are a lot of mods I'd like to see doctors take over doing, or collaborating with the modding community to get them doing them safely."Many of the people who attempt body modification are likely in need of psychiatric evaluation: a survey of regular users of the body modification website bmezine.com was conducted by a team of three American psychologists and published in the journal Death Studies in 2006. They found a strong correlation between body modification and suicidal ideation: 66% of the 4,700 people surveyed had considered suicide; 27% had made at least one attempt
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As in the days of Noah...