Surprising though it may seem, it is a general legal principle that a person does not own his or her body or its individual parts – in short, there are no property rights in one's body. This is broadly true so long as property is defined as something you can deal with as you wish – which would include selling it or using it for barter. The law as applied to the body is, however, extraordinarily vague and is sometimes contradictory. No-one, for example, would deny that you can cut off your hair, and even sell it, say, to a wig-maker. At the other end of the scale, the law would certainly step in – and most people would say rightly so – if you decided to cut off your hand for any reason other than for medical treatment. Much of the current law is based on a very old case – dating from 1603 – involving just such a scenario in which a beggar had his hand removed so that he might attract more sympathetic donations. He and his collaborator were found guilty of the offence of maim. Similarly, in recent times, a group of men who were indulging in sado-masochistic practices were found guilty of inflicting criminal harm on each other and the propriety of the charge was upheld in the European Court of Human Rights – this despite the fact that the men concerned had given their free consent and the activities took place in private (R v Brown (1996)).