Circumcision Series - World's Most Controversial Surgery

 

Yes, there is an industry that buys, sells, and processes foreskins. No doubt the mystics and ancients were aware of the curative attributes of infant foreskins, and this knowledge has now been cultivated into industrial use – skin grafts and wrinkle creams. Perhaps the ritual of circumcision, buried in religious dogma, has been merely a ruse for gathering this miraculous commodity. This transforms the historical and current role of doctors, mohels, and Islamic equivalents into something more insidious.

 

Industry information is not readily available. Who, how, where, and dollars are open questions for a curious industry analyst to pursue. 

 

Circumcision by David Gollaher, 2000, Edited Excerpts

 

Foreskin Bioengineering

 

Advanced Tissue Sciences [ATS] in California and at Organogenesis and BioSurface Technology in Massachusetts engaged in the study of wound healing using neonatal foreskin cells called fibroblasts derived from newborn foreskin tissue. From a single foreskin no larger than a postage stamp ATS could produce 250,000 square feet of Dermagraft, a bioengineered skin replacement product. With one foreskin, you can grow about six football fields’ worth of skin through current cell culture techniques. The patient’s own vessels migrate into the new tissue to nourish its growth.

 

Life Cell Corporation managed to grow foreskin keratinocytes into a universal dermal tissue graft.

 

 

Clamps and Devices

 

The Plastibell device, the Gomco clamp, and the Mogen clamp remain the most popular instruments for circumcision.