“Enhancement” normally connotes adding powers beyond normal human functioning. However, there are dark kinds of enhancement which remove them. 

A Norwegian national living in England has just been found guilty of several counts of grievous bodily harm for running a castration website catering for men who want to be “nullos” – males without genitals. 

Marius Gustavson, 46, and others carried out many mutilations through his “eunuch-maker” site, which had about 23,000 subscribers around the world. According to the BBC, the site earned him about US$375,000. He and his assistants would film the procedures and post them on the website where they were available on a pay-per-view basis.

Gustavson had his own penis amputated (which he kept in a drawer at his home) and also his nipple and his leg. 

According to his lawyer, Gustavson fell into this dark world after the collapse of his marriage in 2011. “When it came to an end it sent him into a spiral,” he explained. “He had a desire to be the architect of his own body. His modification led him to feelings of empowerment.” 

“It is impossible to know how many procedures took place in the years when the Eunuch Maker website was active,” the prosecutor told the court. “Gustavson was involved in a minimum of 30 procedures.”

“It is an incredible feature of this case the website operated in plain sight, not on the dark web, but accessible to anyone who stumbled upon it and had the inclination and the means to view the gruesome footage.”

Six other participants in his scheme are to be sentenced with him. The police say that they are safeguarding 13 victims. 

There is an obvious bioethical angle here. There was no hint in the media coverage of this gruesome story that men were castrated involuntarily. Penectomies and orchiectomies are performed regularly by surgeons on men who want to be “nullos”. These procedures have even been endorsed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. So is it just the medical profession’s monopoly that turns Mr Gustavson’s business into a crime?