Regulating bodily integrity: Cosmetic surgery and voluntary limb amputation

Abstract

Cosmetic surgery and voluntary limb amputation share a number of features. Both procedures are patient-driven forms of body shaping that can only be performed by surgeons, and therefore the procedures require the imprimatur of the medical profession to be lawful. Both invoke identity construction as a central legitimating factor that renders the procedures therapeutic. The legal regulation of surgery is subsumed within general principles regulating medical practice, where autonomy and consent are constituted as fundamental authorising principles. The legitimacy of consent to surgical intervention operates unevenly in relation to these two forms of surgery. Amputation of healthy limbs is presumed to be non-therapeutic. Capacity is closely interrogated and minutely scrutinised. Consent to cosmetic surgery, by contrast, is presumed to be a valid expression of autonomy and self-determination.