Amal
Graafstra's RFID chip implant allows him to open his door and start his motorcycle
just by moving his hand near them
Photo
credit: Amal Graafstra, rfidtoys.net |
At
the intersection of medicine and mutilation sits, rather precariously, body modification.
Body modification is, at its essence, surgery for non-medical reasons. But a strict
definition is elusive: it includes surgeries ranging from the kinds of procedures
that the public and the medical community have come to accept — like body
piercing, facelifts and breast enlargements — to those that limn the borders
of what's socially acceptable and even, in some cases, brazenly and proudly transgress
such barriers, like having horns implanted in one's head, or metal objects placed
beneath the skin of one's chest. MODIFY
ME, DOC
For the physicians who encounter these patients, several important
questions must be answered. First, is the patient sane? Body modification can,
in some cases, fit the diagnostic criteria for body dysmorphic disorder, in which
a patient is obsessed with changing an aspect of his or her appearance. Second,
even if the patient is sane, do you feel comfortable doing the procedure? Many
doctors already perform cosmetic surgeries, so it becomes a question of where
you draw the line between what's acceptable and what's not. Another
consideration for some physicians may be whether patients will try to do it themselves
if you refuse. "If they want them enough they're going to get them, so they might
as well get them safely," says Wired Magazine journalist Quinn Norton,
who's spent the last year studying body modification culture, responding to questions
(fittingly enough for a tech journalist) via Instant Messenger chat. "There are
a lot of mods I'd like to see doctors take over doing, or collaborating with the
modding community to get them doing them safely." Ms
Norton types ominously: "Let me show you what I find to be one of the most interesting,
scary and a-shadow-of-things-to-come documents on the internet." She sends the
link for www.bmezine.com/ehs-faq.html, which is, as she promises, a truly horrifying
thing: a guide to Elective Home Surgery. "How do I know if a procedure is safe?"
asks the guide. The answer: "Generally, you don't." According
to Ms Norton, some body modification enthusiasts have attempted surgical procedures
using butter knives as scalpels and photographs they found on the internet as
their surgery textbooks. Many of the people who attempt
body modification are likely in need of psychiatric evaluation: a survey of regular
users of the body modification website bmezine.com was conducted by a team of
three American psychologists and published in the journal Death Studies
in 2006. They found a strong correlation between body modification and suicidal
ideation: 66% of the 4,700 people surveyed had considered suicide; 27% had made
at least one attempt. HUMAN
MAGNET
Ms Norton, as part of her research, decided to get a mod herself.
She chose a small magnet to be implanted into her fingertip. She visited body
modification artist Steve Haworth in Phoenix in 2005 who numbed her finger in
ice water and then used a scalpel to slice open a space to slide in the silicone-encased
magnet. The magnet is said to grant a sort of "sixth sense" — the ability
to detect electromagnetic fields, by stimulating somatosensory receptors in the
fingertips. But two months into the experiment, the
silicone casing developed a hole and Ms Norton's finger turned black and became
infected. She could no longer detect magnetic fields. She visited her family doctor
to see if he could take it out. He was fascinated and baffled, she says, but wasn't
able to remove the magnet. Four months later, the spot became even darker and
she regained her sixth sense. But a recent knee injury has made an MRI necessary,
so she's consulting with a hand surgeon — who was surprisingly unconcerned
by her admittedly strange decision, she says — to have it taken out for good. In
Ms Norton's research — including discussions with physicians who perform
body modification procedures, all of whom have asked to remain anonymous —
she found a worrying ethical double-standard in the medical community. "I asked
Steve Haworth [who did her mod] why plastic surgeons weren't the ones doing this,"
she says. "He told me the AMA [American Medical Association] said modification
towards societal norms was OK, but away was considered unethical." "I
found that a disturbing basis for medical ethics — it shouldn't be so tied
to fashion, I think," she says. CURIOUS
CYBORG
One cosmetic surgeon from Seattle was willing to speak openly
to NRM about performing a minor body modification surgery. Dr Virginia Stevens
had known Amal Graafstra, a computer technician, for some time. He bought an RFID
(radio frequency identification) chip and asked her to implant it in his hand.
"It was a minor insertion," she says. "Nothing surprises me, so I was up for doing
it." The procedure took about three minutes. "The webbed
space between the thumb and the finger is good — there's lots of play and
nothing important there," she says. "I sterilized the area, numbed it up with
some lidocaine, then you plunge the needle in, already loaded with the RFID chip.
Puncture the skin, then push the plunger that moves the chip out of the needle
into the hand." Dr Stevens has since performed about 10 more RFID chip implants. Mr
Graafstra had the implant to allow him to automate certain tasks. "I wanted to
be able to access my office door without getting my keys out of my pocket or any
of that stuff. I was carrying heavy stuff, so it was a pain in the butt," he says.
Mr Graafstra has not suffered any complications. "It's in biocompatible glass,
so the only issue is migration," he says. So far that hasn't happened. He's since
had his family doctor implant a second RFID chip in his other hand. But
Dr Stevens says she draws the line at procedures she considers "self-mutilatory,"
like some of the more extreme examples of body modification. "It's dysfunctional
and dysmorphic," she says. Toronto cosmetic surgeon
Dr Lorne Tarshis is even more categoric: "Personally I wouldn't do it. It just
sounds bizarre." He says he'll only perform cosmetic procedures to help people
make their appearances fit the way they feel and body modification does not meet
that criterion. But won't some of those people still
have the procedures done, but in a more dangerous environment, as Ms Norton has
suggested? "I don't think you can save the world, you know what I mean?" says
Dr Tarshis. "Each surgeon has to decide if it is something they feel comfortable
doing for themselves — not because someone might have something done less
safely elsewhere." | 
