TheAgitator.com
Mohels Aren’t Paid Very Well, But They Get To Keep the Tips!
Monday, November 24th, 2008Foreskins have long been treasured by cosmetic dermatologists because they are rich in fibroblasts, tiny cells that play a crucial role in healing wounds and generating collagen and connective tissue. (One foreskin can be bioengineered into a piece of lab-grown skin the size of a football field.) The makers of Vavelta extract them by finely dicing the foreskins and treating them with enzymes. Then the fibroblasts are suspended in a proprietary cell storage medium and injected into “problem areas” with a fine gauge needle. In preliminary studies, Vavelta has worked well at eliminating wrinkles and scars without any side effects other than mild redness and itching (and the weirdness of knowing that you’ve got a foreskin in your face).
Insert “dickhead” joke, here.
In all seriousness, as the PopSci article points out, this does raise some interesting ethical issues. Who owns your son’s foreskin? If you leave it with the hospital, or with your rabbi, can they then sell it to a pharmaceutical company to be diced, treated, and injected into Joe Biden? Should they be required to notify you about what they plan to do with it? Is it in a kid’s best interest to allow his parents to sell off his foreskin, given the fierce debate over the possible health benefits/drawbacks of circumcision?
Kerry Howley delved into some of these issues last year in her terrific reason feature, “Who Owns Your Body Parts?”
Thanks to Tom Hynes for the . . . um . . . tip.
The makers of Vavelta extract them by finely dicing the foreskins and treating them with enzymes.
I first read this as Velveeta, and was freaked out.
Also. I want foreskin royalties from my circumcision.
Have you driven a Royal Deluxe II lately?
The makers of Vavelta extract them by finely dicing the foreskins and treating them with enzymes.
I first read this as Velveeta, and was freaked out.
Also. I want foreskin royalties from my circumcision.
I think the bigger ethical problem is if the baby boy owns the foreskin or if his parents have the right to perform cosmetic surgery on their kids before the children can consent themselves.
The cleanliness issues are debunked, the cost benefit analysis comes down against circumcision (http://www.cirp.org/library/procedure/vanhowe2004/), and all major medical organizations now recognize it exclusively as a cosmetic procedure. (In the US, individual doctors often have not caught up yet, and will recommend it for unnecessary reasons because they just aren’t experienced with intact penis care.)
However, the baby can’t give consent, and may well come to regret the removal of skin important to sexual function. http://www.sexasnatureintendedit.com/ (nsfw, but not porn, just graphic)
I don’t see how ethically parents have the right to perform cosmetic surgery on babies who can’t consent, whether or not it is profitable for them or the hospital or whoever ends up profiting from these amputated foreskins. It’s certainly not the child’s future sex life…
Thank you D. You just made all the arguments against circumcision that I would have made. I’ll just add one:
Isn’t it interesting that the primary impetus for male/
female circumcision is religious? Isn’t it, in effect, Man
saying that God fucked up when he designed genitalia?
Parents can legally make medical and ethical decisions for their children- if someone objects, make a referral to the hospital’s ethics committee.
No reputable hospital can sell foreskin. It goes to pathology where it is disposed of.
The larger question is DNA specimens. The unused portion can be used for reasearch. And, if drawn by the law, can be used against/for the person forevermore. I fyou ever voluntarily give blood for DNA, ask specifically what it will be used for.
Forget the dick jokes, man. I want to see this foreskin football field they mentioned. Do you think the Redskins play there? And it’s shirts and skins? And it…ah, I’m a shell of my former self.
I’m feeling queasy.
http://rightklik.blogspot.com/
I knew this guy was buddies with Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan is obsesed with birds.
Pris,
Your statement should read:
Parents can legally make medical and ethical decisions for their male children. Parents can legally make a subset of those medical and ethical decisions for their female children.
The ethical problem is the unequal gender protection. If it’s really about the parents and not the child, what basis exists for anti-FGM laws?
To call it a medical decision is hardly valid, anyway, since most circumcisions in America are imposed on healthy male children. Proxy consent for surgery should at least require an actual need or indication for the surgery. Otherwise, (male) children are little more than parental property.
What if this skin gets used on a damaged eyelid? Will the patient end up “COCK-EYED”?!!!! (Just could not resist the tempation) I know BAAAD!
Weirder than a religious reason… when my ex was pregnant with our son we went to the Lamaze classes. One session the person in charge asked “If it’s a boy, are you going to have him circumcised or not and why?”
One couple answered that they were going to have him circumcised because his father was and they felt they should match.
I was flabbergasted. I wondered if they were going to walk down the street together with their flies open, dangling in the wind, and Daddy would point and say, “See! He’s my son!”
We did not circumcise our boy.
Before opening mouth and inserting foot, read:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/63744.php
Or you could, you know, just not engage in risky unprotected sex practices instead of preemptively amputating parts from every baby boy.
That said, those studies are iffy anyway, they were done on full-grown men in Africa and there is a lot of contention over whether the circumcision helped or whether it was the enforced sex-free recovery time that actually affected the statistics and that the rates went back up after the sex practices were resumed.
14 posts and nobody asks how big the football-sized bit of foreskin becomes when you rub it. Classy bunch.
(One of my sons has a twoskin — he was circumcised at the hospital, before I could get there, and almost half of the foreskin remains. He’s a few years from being penis-centric, so we can ask him then how he feels about not matching Dad, and in a few more years he can ask the ladies.)
About 20 years ago, I went to see my doctor and this woman with an empty infant seat was sitting in the waiting area while a baby was sobbing uncontrollably behind an exam room door. Noticing the empty seat and hearing the baby, I asked her if that was her baby crying? She said yes it was. Wondering why she wasn’t in there with her baby, I asked what’s happening to him?
She told me he was being circumcised!
I thought to myself, this woman is allowing her child to be mutilated (and most likely, without any form of anesthesia!) and she doesn’t have the guts to be in there with him!
Wow, couldn’t do it.
If it ain’t broke – DON’T fix it!
Look up the case of John Moore and his hairy-cell leukimia. Been a while since law school but if I recall he was the only party who had no right to his own body’s cells.