Neil Hopper of Cornwall, UK, was a respected vascular surgeon with more than a decade of experience before he was exposed for deliberately causing his own disability for a disturbing reason.
It was revealed in March 2023 that his below-the-knee limb loss was not caused by sepsis, as initially believed, but resulted from him dunking his legs in ice and dry ice to damage them and fulfill his fixation with amputation.
Highlights
- Neil Hopper froze his own legs with dry ice to induce amputation, fulfilling a longstanding fixation.
- He was sentenced for fraud and for possessing three graphic videos from the EunuchMaker website depicting genital mutilation and castration.
- Although NHS investigations found no evidence that he harmed patients, a former patient is now calling for an investigation.
- I’m not sure
Now, more than three years after the revelation, the daughter of a patient he operated on has broken her silence, saying she refuses to believe that “there weren’t ulterior motives behind the operations he carried out.”
“I feel sick that he was even near my mom,” she said.
The daughter of a former patient has recounted her mother's experience under Neil Hopper's care
Hopper operated on 72-year-old Liz Spooner in 2022, amputating one of her legs at Royal Cornwall Hospital.
Her daughter, Faye Harrison, told The Guardian on August 1 that the procedure lasted 11 hours, despite the family being told it would take five to six hours.
When her mother regained consciousness, she was delirious, claiming there were ghosts in the recovery room. She also refused food and medication, which concerned her family.
However, they were told that such reactions were common side effects of anesthesia and that there was no reason to be concerned.
Hopper later met with the family to reassure them, marking the first time Faye interacted with him.
She then noticed that he had prosthetic legs.
“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,” she recalled.
“I thought, blimey, he’s operated on my mum, but he’s also an amputee.”
Faye said Hopper's own experience initially led her to believe that he would have particular empathy for Liz.
Learning what he had done to himself completely changed her perception of him
Faye said she had not questioned anything at the time because of her faith in the National Health Service, which she attributed to her own experience as a therapist.
However, she now believes Hopper should be investigated over concerns that he may have wronged patients.
Her suspicions remain despite the Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust issuing a statement on the day of Hopper's conviction.
“We want to reassure the public that our exhaustive investigations have found no evidence whatsoever to indicate any risk or harm to patients at our hospital,” it said.
Faye said she had lost trust in the findings, asking, “Who gets their own legs amputated when there’s nothing wrong with them?”
The fact that her mother remained in the operating room significantly longer than expected has also fueled her concerns.
“He hasn’t been punished for what he’s done to patients,” she said, expressing her strong belief that he may have harmed them during his practice without being caught.
Neil Hopper was sentenced for fraud unrelated to his patients and for possession of explicit material
At Truro Crown Court in September 2025, Judge James Adkin sentenced Hopper to 32 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud by false representation and three counts of possessing adult content.
The fraud involved false insurance claims totaling nearly £467,000 over his amputation.
The explicit media recovered during the investigation was from the EunuchMarker website. The material depicted graphic genital mutilation and extreme body modification involving men.
In addition to the prison sentence, the judge imposed a 10-year S**ual Harm Prevention Order.
Hopper's medical license was also revoked after the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) ordered his erasure from the General Medical Council (GMC) register, permanently preventing him from practicing medicine in the UK.
Another patient of Neil Hopper addressed his conviction last year
Jason Abbot, who underwent an amputation in November 2022, spoke positively about the care Hopper provided.
“He was great, very supportive of the situation [he gave] me loads of information about it and told me to have a really good think about it and I did,” he told the BBC in September.
While Abbot said he had no concerns about the procedure itself, he admitted he was stunned after learning about Hopper's actions.
“I never thought he would do anything like that,” he said.
"I thought I'd seen it all," a netizen said
