Education

TSA Full Body Scanners Can See Circumcisions

We all know the stories about uncircumcised males being embarrassed about their foreskins, at least in circumcised countries like America. Turns out the new full body imaging scanners being put in place by the TSA at airports across the country are so detailed that TSA will soon know the circumcision status of every dude who gets scanned. I haven’t yet heard if the anti-circumcision groups are up-in-foreskins, oops, I mean up-in-arms about this, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Keeping track of the nation’s uncircumcised males is one way to know who is the most likely threat to public health, I suppose. The TSA is obviously looking for objects and devices that can blow up planes, but I dare say that more people have died from foreskins infecting a male or his partners (especially female) with HIV, HPV, STDs, and other ailments than from a bomb on board an American plane.

Anybody think the day will come when the TSA will haul aside uncircumcised dudes and send them off to a doctor? I admit, that’s extreme. But you do wonder whether knowledge that a man’s circumcision status will be checked every time he goes through an airport has any impact on circumcision rates in the USA.

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“Foreskin on the Forehead : The Latest in Beauty”

A fellow named Buck Wolf posted that headline and the following article on Friday. Turns out the Brits have found at least one good use for the otherwise disgusting foreskin — grind it up and use it in skin treatments. The product is called Vavelta (not to be confused with Velveeta, the cheese product that foreskins and smegma might remind you of), and it apparently really helps damaged skin. So instead of discarding those ugly little pieces of foreskin, let’s recycle them to help our ladies!

“If you find the idea of taking Botox injections disgusting, why not try a little foreskin on the forehead? Scientific American is reporting that 150 patients in Britain have received injections of Vavelta, a skin treatment derived from the discarded foreskins of babies intended to rejuvenate damaged skin, including wrinkles, acne, burns and surgical incisions.

“It seems that Vavelta is brimming with fibrobrasts, a skin firming protein that becomes scarce with age. The treatment is approved in the U.K., but the F.D.A. has yet to approve the drug.
Of course, many boys have been circumcised for generations, and no one seems to ask where the foreskins end up. Some, we now now, end up on women’s faces. But if you support stem cell research (and I do), how can you oppose this?”

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UK Headline: Should All Boys Be Circumcised?

When a British newspaper, a country where circumcision was sadly abandoned a couple generations ago, headlines an article like this — “Should All Boys Be Circumcised?” — then you know that the overwhelming medical evidence to circumcise all boys is sinking in.

I love the reporter’s lead sentence: “If you were the parent of a baby boy and were told a minor operation could provide him with protection against three diseases (at least) that kill millions worldwide, would you be interested? It is safe to assume that you would. When, however, you discovered that the operation in question was circumcision, would your enthusiasm dwindle?”

In Great Britain, unlike America, the foreskin had a come-back, so being clean cut — while perfectly acceptable — is not the norm. At least not yet. The good news is that more British sons are being circumcised, as the growing evidence for universal circumcision mounts. So here’s a shout-out to our British cousins (who actually introduced circumcision to America a hundred years ago) who are following the medical science to a clean-cut country.

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