Robert Smith Case Study Essay

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Recommended: Medical law and bioethics

The case study involving Dr. Robert Smith and his patients is a very intense, yet gruesome study that involves much analysis. When you first hear about amputating completely healthy limbs, it's deemed as a very bizarre request. For most people with common sense, you would think that people who want to do that are crazy and shouldn't be allowed to. However, looking further into why a person may want that done can change your judgement. In this case regarding Dr. Smith, he was okay with performing operations on his patients no matter how strange the situation was. Although Dr. Smith had already done two procedures, he was stopped from doing a third amputation from the hospital board. I believe that the hospital board was not morally justified in their decision to refuse permission for Dr. Smith to perform a third amputation for several reasons involving bioethics. First of all, people that want to have amputations are not always as psychotic as they may seem. To begin with, there is an actual disorder for people who feel like they want to get rid of their limbs. Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) is a psychological disorder where a healthy individual feels that they are meant to be disabled (1). People with BIID are normal …show more content…

The principle of nonmaleficence is for doctors to have the duty not to harm (4). Those who oppose may say that doing good, like beneficence, which is when doctors should act in a way that is most beneficial to their patient (5), isn't actually “good” or beneficial because you are intentionally creating havoc or harm in the end by hurting the person. I would say that although it is true that doctors would be harming their patients by doing procedures, they are not intentionally causing the harm. Dr. Smith was doing this out of his best interest and was asked to do his procedures by the people themselves and in the end it made them feel

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