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Friday, November 21, 2008

??!! Why, Yes, I Do Have a Face Full of Baby Foreskins

Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 2:29 PM

Popsci.com informs us of Vavelta, which is a skin smoothing product made out of newborn baby foreskins. It works basically like Botox.

Foreskins 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.

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recycling at its finest.

Posted by ellarosa on November 21, 2008 at 2:35 PM

So are they saying that they would rent out our football stadium in the off season to grow foreskins?

Posted by elenchos on November 21, 2008 at 2:41 PM

Can a man have his own foreskin removed and injected into his own face? How about a woman? How far to go for perfection? Vavelta sounds like Velveeta...mmmmm.

Posted by muggims on November 21, 2008 at 2:43 PM

A foreskin the size of a football field? The mind boggles!!!

Posted by Timrrr on November 21, 2008 at 2:44 PM

Now all I can picture is football players struggling to complete a play under the weight of a gigantic sheet of foreskin.

Posted by bronkitis on November 21, 2008 at 2:54 PM

I already lost the battle to avoid any "Hey there, dickface" jokes.

"Smooth as a baby's dick"

Posted by Karla on November 21, 2008 at 2:55 PM

Since the foreskin is apparently so healthy or whatever, why don't they just leave it on the damn baby?

Posted by Urgutha Forka on November 21, 2008 at 3:08 PM

Now I have "Bohemian Rhapsody" stuck in my head.

"Bris milah -- no, we will not let you go! (Let him go!)"

Posted by --MC on November 21, 2008 at 3:19 PM

@7

Because of this anecdote:

When I was in grad school in Holland I had a great friend from Sweden, who, like most non-Americans, was uncut. One night as we were drinking beer at his place before he went out on a date, he thought out loud whether or not he should take a shower and clean the cheese out of his dick before potentially going home with this girl later and sticking his cheesy peen in her what have you. Then he reconsidered, stating that he didn't really like her THAT much, not enough to do her the kindness of de-cheesing his shit, but that he planned on going for gold that night anyway.

Sure, he may be a cheesy dick himself, but he was in almost all measurable ways a really nice and normal guy.

Go ahead and leave that cheese-trapping foreskin on there, it probably won't do much to change the course of the kid's life, and a mouthful of lint-y forecheese probably never killed anyone.

Posted by jackie treehorn on November 21, 2008 at 3:21 PM

Did you hear about the Rabbi in NYC that was arrested for biting off the foreskin of newborns. I'm not joking.

Posted by Sargon Bighorn on November 21, 2008 at 3:35 PM

@ jackie treehorn: just reading the words and then imagining "a mouthful of lint-y forecheese" just killed me in itself. i am certain i could not handle the real thing, no matter how beautiful the swedes are.

Posted by super, super gross on November 21, 2008 at 3:37 PM

@9 Should have been using a condom for starters.

Also, he sounds like a slob and an asshole. Who doesn't clean their genitals on a regular basis? It's not like it builds up in a couple of minutes, showering properly every day should keep it nice and clean.

Posted by DK on November 21, 2008 at 4:10 PM

@12

Sounds like a confirmation that said cheese does exist and regenerates every 24 hours.

I wonder if this cheese is also rich in fibroblasts.

Posted by jackie treehorn on November 21, 2008 at 4:16 PM

@9: Jesus. Well, that kills the myth of clean-and-sophisticated Swedes. How hard is it to pull the thing back in the shower? Answer: not at all, unless you are a lazy bastard who doesn't care about crusty smeg building up.

Posted by Greg on November 21, 2008 at 4:16 PM

@14

I think staying clean is easy, I think this was more of a conscious decision to not clean because laziness occasionally trumps courtesy. And I would still consider the average Swede to be cleaner and more sophisticated than the average American. Consider my friend an edge case.

Is there an equivalently curdish pitfall with ladies' fibroblasts?

Posted by jackie treehorn on November 21, 2008 at 4:36 PM

Well, as gross as penischeese is, if guys had to remove everything that their partners found repulsive, some guys would be hackin off a lot of shit.

Posted by Urgutha Forka on November 21, 2008 at 5:06 PM

I send them downtown, and they make cops of of them.

Posted by Doug Nufer on November 21, 2008 at 6:39 PM

This is so unbelievably fraudulent. Just for a start, 1) the cells do not survive and won't grow in the new recipient, but 2) they could probably trigger an immune reaction of variable intensity (think kidney transplant with an unmatched donor), 3) any number of viruses (HIV; hepatitis A,B,C; herpes; CMV; Epstein-Barr, etc.) could be transmitted, 4) even if their "proprietary cell storage medium" is actually designed to dissolve the donor cells and kill infectious agents, it can't be 100% effective, 5) any collagen that survives in the injection is just stray protein and will be broken down and removed from the area by the recipient's immune system. Almost all cosmetic "science" and related advertising is pure bullshit anyway, but works to the tune of billions of dollars a year on a scientifically naive public.

I just lost any respect I might have had for editorial standards at Popular Science. Why isn't Golob chiming in on this? Is he on vacation or defending his thesis or on the wards or something?

Posted by rob on November 21, 2008 at 8:24 PM

This, of course, reminds me of a joke!

There was a rabbi. This rabbi had three sons. The rabbi was also his neighborhood's mohel. (For those of you who, like me, are not of the chosen variety, a mohel is the guy who does the cutting at a bris.)

He had been a mohel for over 30 years and was retiring. In that 30 years, he kept every baby foreskin he cut in a series of gallon jars in his attic. He was never sure why, he just did.

His three sons wanted to get him something nice for his retirement. One of them had the idea to take all those fireskins and have the local leathersmith make something nice.

So when the mohel was asleep, his children made off with the jars of foreskins to create a gift.

A month later the rabbi (who is also a mohel) is having his retirement party. Thousands of now-men whom he'd cut as infants paid their respects.

At the end of the party he was wondering why his three sons hadn't given him a gift yet. Everyone else had and had been very generous.

Finally the oldest came up and gave his father a square box rapped in tissue paper, maybe four inches to a side and about an inch tall.

The rabbi opened it. He liked gifts. Inside was an exquisite leather wallet.

The rabbi was a little disappointed. He said, "After 30 years of serving God you show thanks by giving me a lousy wallet?"

The oldest son took it and started rubbing it vigorously. He said, "But father, it's special. When you rub it, it becomes a briefcase!"

I apologize for that joke.

Posted by Matt Fuckin' Hickey (is in Las Angeles) on November 21, 2008 at 10:25 PM