06 June 2012

Circumcision Industry: Bioengineering, Devices, and Products



Yes, there is an industry that buys, sell, 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 and mohels into something more insidious -- a profit motive. Industry information is not readily available, at least not on the web. Who, how, where, and how much are open questions for a curious MBA to pursue. The video link below claims it to be a $400 million per year industry. Who knew?

Circumcision by David Gollaher, 2000, 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. 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.

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

Who Buys Baby Foreskins? [Short Video]




1 comment:

Samuel Coble said...

thanks for writing about this massive 'elephant in the room'--mass torture of boys in mostly UK, Australia and USA as a business for rich women (role-reversal of predation eh?). Taking this subject out of taboo for discussion means we all need to speak up to everyone.