Lady Gaga Amputated Her Leg as Fashion Statement? What's Next?

Multiple news reports surfaced Friday contending that pop star Lady Gaga chose to undergo amputation of one of her legs as a wacky fashion statement.

Last year it was predictable that every few weeks Google Trends would contain "[insert name of your favorite celeb here] dead" and the buzz would continue for days about whether said perfectly healthy celebrity had died. That trend seems to have run its course, since no one believes a celebrity dead anymore after reading such a headline. It's not surprising that the dead celebrity rumors have given way to other attention-grabbing but equally fictitious celebrity news, such as Friday's gruesome reports that Lady Gaga amputated one of her legs below the knee as a fashion statement.

With the Internet now abuzz about Lady Gaga's supposed fashionable leg amputation, did anyone stop to think about the ethical obligations of doctors and the procedures used by medical review committees to approve surgery? Even if Lady Gaga were mentally impaired to the extent that she would want to permanently sacrifice a limb for publicity's sake, what medical committee would approve the amputation of a healthy leg as a fashion statement?

The mindless response to the Lady Gaga leg amputation story is so bizarre it is almost a satire onto itself. The big problem is deciding whether the subject of the satire should be considered the crowd that salivates after these Internet rumors or Google Trends itself. For when a search term surfaces on Google Trends, articles galore will spring up trying to capitalize on those search terms regardless of whether there is a story of substance behind them. Lady Gaga allegedly amputating her leg in an out-of-control quest for publicity is a case in point.

While it's hardly worth mentioning because it should be patently obvious that Lady Gaga did not have one of her legs amputated to distinguish herself as wacky and weird, the origins of this story seem to be with the Daily Squib, a publication devoted to satire.

Sources:

http://www.longislandpress.com/2010/04/30/lady-gaga-leg-amputation-true-or-not/;

http://www.dailyworldbuzz.com/lady-gaga-had-amputated-one-of-her-legs/47676/;

http://www.dailysquib.co.uk/?c=122&a=2263.