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It's a sign that a much-needed procedure in South Africa is really working.
The recipient of the world's first successful penis transplant will soon be a father, according to the South African outlet News24. His surgeons were recently informed that his girlfriend is pregnant.
The surgery took place just six months ago, three years after the 21-year-old had lost his own organ after infection caused by a botched ceremonial circumcision. Stellenbosch University urologist, Prof. Andre van der Merwe, who led the historic surgical team, explained at a March news conference that South Africa has a particular need for such a surgery: Members of the Xhosa ethnic group often practice adult circumcision, and poor sanitation leads to some 250 amputations every year.
To get permission to use the penis that has now facilitated a pregnancy, van der Merwe's team had to fashion a new one out of abdominal skin for the deceased donor to be buried with. One day soon, we may not need donors at all: Last year, researchers reported progress in lab-grown penises built with the recipient's own cells to avoid organ rejection.
This is good news for men who lose their penises to cancer and accidents, too.
[Ed note: We recently ran a story about a woman who succeeded in having a Live Birth After Autograft of Ovarian Tissue Cryopreserved During Childhood.]
Original Submission
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Sunday June 14 2015, @04:39PM
I see where you are going with this. Now I want to see how far you can go before you offend somebody's delicate senses. (I do not mind, I think I am the only black person here and I am only 1/4 black so I say run with it.)
So, then, we have established that. Now, where, exactly, are you going with this? ;-)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 4, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 14 2015, @05:04PM
I know where I would go with it. Forget about race - anyone who trusts the local shaman/witch doctor to use a knife on his penis is pretty much undeserving of procreating. I would say the same if this were an Asian, a European, or an aborigine from the Americas or Australia. And, the same would apply for the green men who were supposed to live on Mars.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Sunday June 14 2015, @05:16PM
I must be honest and that I am admit mostly trying to get an amusing response or two seeing as I am bored.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 3, Informative) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Sunday June 14 2015, @05:41PM
Without the circumcision, he would be considered a child. His peers would openly treat him with contempt and he would be unable to marry or procreate, which defeats the purpose of avoiding the procedure. In ancient times an uncircumcised man having sex was a capital offence for both parties, according to my limited knowledge of the Bantu oral histories.
PS: Getting the witchdoctor* to do it would make some sense. Unfortunately these initiation "schools" tend to put any random schmuck in charge of performing the circumcisions. (Especially the illegal ones, of which there are many.) Many people nowadays get circumcised at a hospital before going. It is probably safer but carries its own risks, since the "schools" sometimes decide they don't accept such things and perform a second circumcision. You can imagine how that can end up.
Personally I'm against genital mutilation in all its forms (unless for good medical reasons) but try telling that to someone who believes that the ancestors insist.
* "Sangomas" object to being called witchdoctors.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday June 14 2015, @07:27PM
I'm sure the one performing the operation anesthesizes himself before operating
;-)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 15 2015, @01:27AM
For what it's worth I would be unwilling to even a Western doctor near my penis with a sharp instrument.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @05:32AM
Generally, having doctors use sharp instruments on you isn't much of an option, unless being dead sounds like a good deal to you.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Tuesday June 16 2015, @02:48AM
Really I wasn't going anywhere with it. I don't care what color a group of idiots is, as long as they are a group
of idiots I think they should have less(no) children.