It's a no brainer if the only alternative is death.

Suicide rates would argue otherwise.

For me personally, there's not a lot of things that I think would stop me, but I don't think I would operate on myself.

Possibly, if I had the skills I would feel differently, but honestly, I think I would feel the same way.

Suicide is largely based on anguish or some internal factor rather than due to imminent death or acute but transient pain.

The typical person is not actively suicidal. So conditional odds suggest in most cases a person would prefer to live

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide#/media/File:Suicide_ca...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide#Risk_factors

I recognize that suicide is not particularly related to the operating on oneself. I was using it as proof that sometimes avoiding death is not a no brainer, as is suggested above.

Edit to clarify: There exist situations which would drive one actively toward death, I could understand a refusal to do surgery on oneself being a passive decision leading toward death.

Well the point is it’s a completely different sort of phenomenon. In a normal human (and normal animal) the will to survive is extremely strong.

The situations you allude to are almost exclusively mental situations. Having to operate on oneself, while mentally taxing, is a fundamentally physical dilemma. It produces fear and stress, but not existential ennui.

A good point. I have no contest, except for that I would have described the idea of operating on myself with the same sort of feeling as the other situations.

After having read the OP and the other cases people have linked, I no longer feel that way.

Thanks for the great conversation, it's caused me to think quite a bit!

I can see a more passive person preferring death easily.

For some of us the idea of cutting into ourselves is definitely not a no brained. I could easily see myself be paralyzed by fear in such a situation.

Amputated his own hand to survive: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aron_Ralston

> his own hand

...if only:

> prepared to amputate his trapped arm at a point on the mid-forearm in order to escape.