Dr. Strangelove Syndrome

We’ve heard about inner struggle and battling against one’s self, but anarchic hand syndrome (aka Dr. Strangelove Syndrome) makes the statement a tad more literal than we’d like to believe. Much like science fiction portrayals of self-attacking body parts, the Anarchic Hand Syndrome is a rare neurological disorder that makes one hand’s functions involuntarily. The victim of the disorder is completely unaware of the hand’s action. While the example above may be extreme, people who suffer from AHS have exhibited similar symptoms in certain cases. Having your own hand pick a fight with you and grab you by the neck without your consent or control seems laughable and creepy. Loosing control over one of your limbs seems taken out of a naive horror movie; however, Dr.Strangelove syndrome is very much present in Humanity’s journals of medicine. The first clinically cataloged ever recorded dating back a century, anarchic or alien hand syndrome (AHS) might have been many times mistaken as part of a much larger mental problem in patients.

Symptoms for AHS include involuntary reaching and grasping, touching the face or tearing at clothing. The more extreme cases have recorded involuntarily food stuffing in the mouth, preventing the other hand from completing tasks and self-inflicted punching or choking. The difference between AHS and other involuntary limb movement conditions is the actions of the limb (hand) have a purpose and a goal. The alien hand can perform a task or pick up an object to use it regardless of what the person is doing. Even when patients do have sense of feeling in the alien hand, there seems to be a feeling of strangeness towards the hand, as if it weren’t theirs.

After a while some patients even develop weird behaviors like talking the hand out of doing something it isn’t supposed to or even talking about it in the third person (as if it weren’t a part of them). While there is no cure for alien hand syndrome, patients have come up with ideas as to “keep it busy.” Giving the hand something to hold or tying it to their backs are two of some of the solutions they have had to come up with in order to control the disorder.

While you read and wonder whether I’m pulling your leg or not, I ponder about the option of getting away with an innocent “I have AHS” line when the girl at the dinner walks by. Maybe I’ll run into a hot AHS girl who will “unvoluntarily” make use of my generic Viagra. Odds are I won’t though. After all, there have been under fifty cases reported since first discovered.

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