An alternate headline for this post: “Leg of Lamp”.
NRC Reader reports [in Dutch, auto-translated here into English]:
I Wanted a Floor Lamp
The right leg of Leo Bonten broke after a stupid accident. There was an infection, it was off. But Leo wanted to keep his leg per se. To make a lamp out of it.
That would be the final steps of his right leg thereof Leo Bonten was unaware. That in his living room a lamp containing his right leg would be two years later was at the time not at all through him….
Who is the owner of an amputated limb? That is legally a gray area. An amputated body part is officially “specific hospital” and is taken to a processing plant. Any other use than throw falls under the Law on Medical Treatment Agreement. It says that human tissue for research should be there if the patient does not object used, but also implies that if the patient consents almost anything may happen to the body.
Leo filed a request at the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam to get after the surgery. Leg back They were not immediately convinced of the plan. There were practical objections.…
Here are photos (by Stefanie Gratz, for NRC Reader) of the lamp, and of its owner, and of the doctor:
Frank van de Goot is the pathologist who preserved the leg. Willem Schaperkotter designed the lamp.
Thanks to Dr. Erwin Kompanje for bringing this to our attention. Dr. Kompanje will discuss the ethics of this, on the television program Studio Erasmus, on September 9. The man who made the lamp will also be on that program.
BONUS: An interview with Leo Bonten, about his lamp:
BONUS: News report saying a California boy wanted to have his amputated leg made into a lava lamp.