Former patient’s daughter speaks out on NHS surgeon who ‘cut off his own legs’
An NHS surgeon who lied about a severe illness to get sexual gratification from having his own legs amputated, has had a former patient talk about the crime that landed him in prison.
Neil Hopper used to be a celebrity of sorts as a well-respected NHS vascular surgeon who had even appeared on This Morning to discuss how sepsis had cost him his legs.
However, the truth only came out after Hopper was arrested in March 2023 and then charged with two counts of fraud as well as three counts of possessing extreme pornography.
It was found that the pornography in question was videos created by the ‘Eunuch Maker’ Marius Gustavson, who was sent to prison for amputating the genitals from what he claimed were consenting men for fetish purposes.
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But before he was apprehended for watching the material, he allegedly operated on 72-year-old Liz Spooner, amputating her leg at the Royal Cornwall hospital in Truro back in 2022.
According to her daughter, Faye Harrison, the surgery was a lot longer than expected.
And when her mother came to after surgery, she was delirious because of the anaesthetic and morphine, and apparently refused both food and medication.
Because of this, a consultant surgeon spoke with her in a side room, and she revealed that the consultant in question was Hopper.
“He was smiley. He came across as quite charming and caring,” Faye told the Guardian.
“I remember looking down – you look down at the floor a lot when you have these kinds of conversations – and I noticed he’d got metal sticks coming out of his trouser legs.” Faye recalled. “I thought, blimey, he’s operated on my mum, but he’s also an amputee.”
Hopper ceame an amputee in 2019, following what he claimed was suspected sepsis, which meant he had to undergo double below-the-knee amputations.
From then on, it became his identity, and he used @bionicsurgeon as his online handle to document life after losing his legs.
But he didn't stop there.
Hopper had also applied to the European Space Agency in the hopes that he could be thew first astronaut with a disability.
For Faye, his disability was something she thought made him someone with 'amazing empathy'.
She went on to admit she told her husband about the interaction, noting: “It’s awful, really, but I remember saying, ‘He’s got prosthetic legs – and his name’s Hopper.’ Because, in times like that, you look for anything that’s going to make you laugh.”
Sadly, the 11-hour surgery was something that was odd to Faye, who thought she was supposed to expect between five and six hours for the leg to be amputated.
She insisted that her mum was never the same after coming out of the room, with her delusions and delirium.
Unfortunately, Liz would pass away days later after contracting pnumonia during her stay in hospital.
Faye claimed no one ever explained why her mum’s procedure had taken so much longer than anticipated.
Three years later, when she heard the news of Hopper's arrest, she said it knocked her sick, as she said: “Oh my God, I felt sick that he was even near my mum.”
“He hasn’t been punished for what he’s done to patients,” claimed Faye. “I just refuse to believe that there weren’t ulterior motives behind the operations he carried out.”
Britt Jones