BIID

I believe that to treat BIID the first course of action should be trying medication and therapy and if that doesn’t work than amputation should be considered. In the article Dr. First mentioned, “ The largest goal is to figure out the treatment for the people who have it… clearly, surgery has helped some people more than anything else. That’s a fact.”( Cutting Desire)  If something is helping someone feel better , why not let them do it, but even that is fraught with issues, because it insulting to the disabled community which did not choose to have the disability and maybe wouldn’t choose I if given the choice.

Furthermore, the article also mentions that from brain scans it was found that. “ They have found some variation in the right parietal lobe, the area of the brain responsible for creating a “map”… the image of where one’s body exists in space” and that “ So, for a leg, for example , they can feel it’s there but it doesn’t feel like it should be there.” ( Cutting Desire) So there seems to be a legitimate scientific reason behind this. I feel like it is something as many with BIID claim, should be part of the DMS. People with this seemingly terrifying disorder deserve recognition and help just like anyone else with any other disorder. This isn’t a one-off person claiming this. There are many who claim to have this disorder, and they seem to be suffering very much and have taken dangerous routes such as the, “ one patient [who]… froze his leg off with dry ice [and]… a man traveled to Mexico and paid 1,000 dollars for an illegal amputation, only to die of gangrene.” (Cutting Desire) This is all the making of a very serious disorder and if these people are being forced to do this, than it is more ethical to provide the amputations medically, it will at the very least save lives. I don’t see what the fact that mostly middle-class men have anything to do with anything really. Some disorders are just more common in one gender than another; For example, Depression has a higher rate in women. Not to mention the fact it also depends on where they took the demographics, like do they have a large enough data pool to make this assumption.

Personally, I feel like it is insensitive to war veterans who had no choice but to get an amputation, and considering the fact how hard life gets after an amputation it seems like a decision that one really should not make. But I also feel sympathy because these people really seem to be unhappy with their bodies and everyone deserves to feel content with the body they have. So I’m split, I believe it is unfair to people who had no choice to get amputation and unfair to the people who just want to be comfortable in their body. The issue is a sea of gray area, and I’m not really sure which group’s pain outweighs the others.