Rare disorder surgeon Neil Hopper suffers from which drove him to amputate own legs as part of fetish

A gripping new documentary delves into the dark world of a celebrated surgeon who lied about a severe illness to get sexual gratification from having his own legs amputated.

Neil Hopper was previously a well-respected NHS vascular surgeon who had appeared on shows such as This Morning to discuss how sepsis had led to him losing his legs, having carried out hundreds of amputations himself.

People were therefore shocked when Hopper was arrested in March 2023 and charged with two counts of fraud and three of possessing extreme pornography, with the pornography being videos created by the ‘Eunuch Maker’ Marius Gustavson, whose arrest led to Hopper being caught.

The surgeon and Gustavson’s crimes are discussed in Prime Video’s An Amputation Obsession: The Monster and the Surgeon, and includes interviews with the victim who exposed Gustavson’s horrific operation, but also features experts discussing the health condition Hopper had, which may have contributed to his fetish for amputation.

What is Body Integrity Identity Disorder?

Neil Hopper had a rare disorder (Instagram)

Body integrity identity disorder (BIID) is an ‘extremely rare phenomenon of persons who desire the amputation of one or more healthy limbs or who desire a paralysis’, with Hopper’s defence team, in mitigation during sentencing, claiming he identified with this disorder.

In the Prime Video documentary, court transcripts are read out discussing how his legs felt like an ‘unwelcome extra’ on his body and referred to the disorder as body integrity dysphoria.

Michael First, a professor of clinical psychiatry, speaks in the documentary about the disorder, stating that Hopper is an obvious case of the condition.

He explained that in these ‘extremely rare’ cases, people’s bodies do not feel right if their limbs are attached.

Hopper isn't the only sufferer. A medical case report from 2006 details how a 51-year-old civil servant amputated his left hand with an axe, using an elastic stocking as a tourniquet, before an ambulance rushed him to A&E.

A 2022 case report described a 24-year-old man who also amputated his own left hand, describing 'deep-rooted and persistent feelings that this hand was not a part of his body'.

In 2015, Vice spoke to a 30-year-old man with BIID who self-amputated his left leg. He said: "It’s hard to describe what it was like to have a limb that didn’t belong. Every step felt odd and it even felt odd sitting.

"When it was done, I was awash with relief. It was over and I was free."

Hopper ordered extreme pornography from the ‘Eunuch Maker’

Hopper purposely caused the damage which led to his legs being amputated (Instagram)

Hopper got his legs amputated by using dry ice to damage them to the point where an amputation was required.

He lied to the NHS and his insurance about this, saying he simply got ill. This led to him gaining almost half a million pounds from his insurance.

Once Hopper discovered the existence of the Eunuch Maker’s amputation and castration videos, he was ‘sure that it was probably irresistible to him not to order one’.

He stated that Gustavson would have been a ‘major factor’ in his decision to go through with amputating his legs.

The fetish for having your legs amputated is called apotemnophilia and was actually the clinical term which predated BIID before that term was created.

One study specifically linked this to a sexual fetish, saying that in some cases ‘studies link the desire for amputation to a sexual disturbance, attribute its origin to a paraphilic disturbance [an atypical sexual interest], and describe mostly individuals of male gender'.

Hopper admitted in court that he had a ‘sexual fascination’ with amputation.

One of Hopper’s colleagues, Harvey Chant, is a retired consultant vascular surgeon and worked with the team that decided to amputate Hopper’s legs.

He told Prime Video in the doc: “I suppose what worries me about the whole affair is there are a lot of patients out there who possibly believe that they were treated by him in good faith and had the wrong operations, or the wrong treatment or wrong advice.”

Olivier Verngault, the senior reporter for Cornwall Live who covered Hopper extensively, spoke about how many patients became concerned in light of the allegations that Hopper had amputated their limbs for his ‘own sexual gratification’.

A solicitor, Mike Bird of Enable Law, speaks in the documentary about how we ‘may never get these questions answered’, but has called for an independent review into his patients.