In my opinion, you have to understand objectivism in relation to collectivism. The scenario you create must have been engineered by collectivists because you were never given a choice about being drugged and undergoing an operation. I also think it is rare that an individual would have difficulty in assessing their own best interest. Your example is more of the nature of having to select a choice in which consequences cannot be forseen. Neither an objectivist or a collectivist would have enough information to make an informed decision, so the question sheds no light on objectivism.
If you want to see objectivism in action I suggest you join a group like Neo-Swashbuckler Island (a Yahoo group). They actually have identified a temporary Galt's Gulch and provide the longitude and latitude in their group description. Objectivism can best be understood in real world applications.
Congrats on your willingness to learn!
Greg,
Thank you for your interest. The difference between the Neo-Swashbucklers and looter, statist, socialist zombies is that Neo-Swashbucklers do no actually steal. We simply joke about stealing on the high seas, we do not actually steal on the high seas.
If we were ever to slip into piracy, we would then only privateer against socialist shipments and we would never use the police power of the state to do our pirating for us; but it is unlikely we will become real pirates unless we get our hooks on some really bad rum.
If I was in that situation, I would demand that my brain and my body remain unseperated unless it is in my self-interest to do such a sepearation. I would not have accepted to be threatened into taking a stance on something that goes against my own values, since it would be ultimately self-defeating. I think that the logical fallacy in the thought experiment is in assuming that there is a dillema, when there are in fact other solutions than the ones you present. Besides: in a truly rationally egoistic society, man would respect his fellow man's right to freedom, and the situation would not have arisen in the first place.