The Mass Production of Living Tissue 157
An anonymous reader sends in this moderately disturbing quote from Gizmodo:
"I'm touching a wet slab of protein, what feels like a paper-thin slice of bologna. It's supple, slimy, but unlike meat, if you were to slice it down the center today, tomorrow the wound would heal. It's factory-grown living tissue. The company behind the living, petri-dish-grown substance known as Apligraf hates my new name for it: meat band-aid. 'It's living,' Dr. Damien Bates, Chief Medical Officer at Organogenesis, corrects me. 'Meat isn't living.' But no one argues with me that this substance is really just a band-aid. A living, $1500 band-aid, I should say. Apligraf is a matrix of cow collagen, human fibroblasts and keratinocyte stem cells (from discarded circumcisions), that, when applied to chronic wounds (particularly nasty problems like diabetic sores), can seed healing and regeneration. But Organogenesis is not interested in creating boutique organs for proof of concept scientific advancement. They're a business in the business of mass tissue manufacturing — and the first of its kind."
Science Fiction Reality (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Science Fiction Reality (Score:5, Informative)
Many a SciFi story I've read has used this kind of thing for wounds. I wonder how soon until they have it to the point where these slices are vacuum packed and you can open it and stuff it into a wound in the field?
A little while.
There are two main approaches to using non-autologous grafting approaches. One is the matrix approach, where the material grafted is not tissue per se, but rather an organic matrix that is suitable for colonization by the autologous tissues and provides an environment conducive to growth. Such matrices are already being used in fields of orthopedic surgery and surgical dentistry to cause bone growth.
The second approach, which appears to be this company's goal, is to create graftable tissues in-vitro. Please note that this isn't really a new idea, since ex-vivo grown "skin" has been available for at least a couple of years now. While the method described in TFA is potentially both more effective and has a wider range of use, it seems to me that it would likely require careful surgical grafting in order to supply the graft with blood vessels, so it's unlikely that we'd be able to just stuff it into the wound right away.
However, given how quickly our knowledge of the mechanisms of angiogenesis (blood vessel growth and proliferation) has expanded in the last decade due to the research into tumor progression, I can envision that in the relatively near future we would be able to embed sufficient angiogenesis-mediating factors into the ex-vivo grown tissues that under.
Re:Science Fiction Reality (Score:5, Informative)
Correction: last sentence should read:
" ...I can envision that in the relatively near future we would be able to embed sufficient angiogenesis-mediating factors into the ex-vivo grown tissues that under the right conditions they would generate a sufficient blood supply of their own in-situ. "
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I honestly thought this was a joke response about the absurdity of the in-vivo angiogenetic-microphoroesis gel therocopmanders.
HAHAhahahahah...wut?
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That reads like the opening sentence of the necrogastronomicon.
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TraumaCure WoundStat 3D Animation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G7W2_YCsWg [youtube.com]
Apligraf featured at St. Francis Wound Care
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_Zd5_Eiqkw [youtube.com]
Regenerative Medicine: Re-Growing Body Parts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwcT1ViM-hw&feature=related [youtube.com]
Now for the creepy stuff
Battlefield Surgery 2025 part 1/3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4wjAlprgBc&feature=related [youtube.com]
Quikclot Combat Gauze training
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3TUKKx0cus&feature=related [youtube.com]
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it seems to me that it would likely require careful surgical grafting in order to supply the graft with blood vessels, so it's unlikely that we'd be able to just stuff it into the wound right away.
I lit my hand on fire a couple years ago, kind of like that taco bell commercial, and I was literally leaking blood after the burn was de-roofed. Blood vessels to the wound weren't an issue, healing enough to keep the blood and serous fluids from dripping out were; luckily the burns weren't circumferential and I didn't need skin grafts.
Cannibalism (Score:4, Funny)
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Obligatory genious from "The Parking Lot is Full" :
http://plif.courageunfettered.com/archive/wc263.gif [courageunfettered.com]
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Re:Cannibalism (Score:4, Funny)
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I wonder when this thing will be included in a kit with a tendon stapler (of Johnny Mnemoic fame).
Re:Science Fiction Reality (Score:5, Funny)
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I wonder how soon until they have it to the point where these slices are vacuum packed and you can open it and stuff it into a sandwich.
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I wonder how soon until they have it to the point where these slices are vacuum packed and you can open it and stuff it into a wound in the field?
Or slather on some mayo and put it on whole wheat for a battle ready meal.
Arrgh! Sarge! Iv been hit!
Here solder, take my sandwich!
(takes bite of sandwich and then mushes it onto wound)
Thanks sir! That was delicious!
Oscar Mayer should look into this.
from discarded circumcisions (Score:5, Funny)
So when you rub your scars you induce swelling!
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So when you rub your scars you induce swelling!
I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg in regards to this technology's potential.
Yes but... (Score:2, Funny)
how does it taste?
Re:Yes but... (Score:4, Funny)
Pretty good with mustard, mayo and american cheese on white bread.
Re:Yes but... (Score:4, Insightful)
In vitro meat will be the confounding of dogmatic, righteous vegans everywhere.
For the more reasonable vegans it'll be that long-lost opportunity to finally eat some goddamned bacon again. Mm... I love the piggies.
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I was kind of thinking that. Obviously wound treatment is the first market for this kind of thing, but it will surely be used for food production sooner or later -- basically, as soon as the cost of a pound of lab-grown beef falls below the cost of a pound grown the old-fashioned way as part of a cow. I suspect that will be a while yet, but it seems inevitable. At which point we will see food wars like nothing we've seen yet. You think people get passionate about genetically engineered plants? Heh.
Re:Yes but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I knew this post would elicit a comment like this, so much obliged. (First, a minor quibble - I think you mean "vegetarians", rather than "vegans." The latter not only don't eat meat, but any animal byproduct, eg. dairy.)
As you implicitly acknowledge, there are a lot of different types of vegetarians and vegans, who have chosen to omit certain things from their diet for various reasons. A vegetarian who is one for health reasons won't be terribly interested in eating meat, regardless of it's origins.
There are other arguments for vegetarianism, of course. Sustainability is one (although this would imply more that we should eat far less meat, from animals raised in ways that are environmentally friendly and don't negatively impact our ability to produce other foods.) The level of cruelty involved in factory farming, which is required to sustain our voracious appetite for meat is another, but this has the same caveats. I've known organic farmers that take better care of their animals than some do their children.
The one that seems to cause meat eaters the biggest problem is ethics. Is it defensible that we take life away from other sentient creatures for our own pleasure simply because our sentience is more highly evolved? I became a vegetarian for health reasons, but after dissociating myself from a meat diet and no longer needing to justify it, this question become easier to contemplate. I cannot in good conscience cause pain and take away the life from another living creature when I don't need to for my own survival. I consider us fortunate that we have this option, that we do not need to cause harm to continue to exist.
(Douglas Hofstadter expounds on this quite eloquently:
)
For myself, I am looking forward to the day when we find vat grown meat at our grocers, and fervently hope that one day this will supplant "naturally grown" meat. I believe that most vegetarians would agree, and not have a particular problem with people consuming non-sentient cell tissue.
As an aside, I was recently at a friend's place, and we were making caesar salad, hers with bacon, mine without. In the interest of science, I tasted a piece. It was the single most revolting flavour I've ever tasted, something like carrion. You do lose your taste for meat over time, and there are many vegetarians that really don't miss the nasty things you meat eaters put into your bodies ;)
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A correction to your quibble, pardon me:
A vegetarian who is one for health reasons won't be terribly interested in eating meat, regardless of it's origins.
That's one impetus for vegetarianism, as you say. So I don't mean this kind of vegetarian. And the foundation of veganism is not anti-meat, it's anti-animal suffering, so I do mean vegan. ("[T]he word 'veganism' denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude -- as far as is possible and practical -- all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals...") And this is also why I say it'll be the confounding of dogmatic vegans. Because dogma dictat
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Point taken - I'm going to go check up on the semantics of "veganism" as soon as I'm done posting, so cheers!
The zealous, dogmatic types bug the heck out of me, too. I've known more than a few and it's sooo hard not to poke at them. Just too much fun to be had. (Not to mention that I don't think they do their cause any favours by being so unpleasant.)
I would agree, too, that a creature existing in perpetual suffering deserves to be relieved from it. (Queue someone to jump in with some silly slippery-slope a
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Magical pig?
Make it go fast?
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Heh. Obligatory Simpson's reference:
Lisa: I'm going to become a vegetarian
Homer: Does that mean you're not going to eat any pork?
Lisa: Yes
Home: Bacon?
Lisa: Yes Dad
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: Dad all those meats come from the same animal!
Homer: Right Lisa, some wonderful, magical animal!
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"I would annihilate it because I care."
That would look good on an emo-industrial T-shirt.
But as a guide to ethical living? Not sure I'd really want to go there. You saw Season 6 Buffy right?
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Veggies aren't really food -- they're what food eats. You guys will be delicious when we run out of cows.
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That is an interesting thought...there could be a cornucopia of undiscovered meat flavours just waiting for the discerning palate. For those that have moved off meat but still would enjoy it, it would be a great thing.
The one thing I do still miss is sushi. I couldn't comfortably process it any more, but damn! That was the one meaty thing I did have trouble giving up.
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By 2012... (Score:2, Funny)
...this tech will finally deliver fully realized COTS pornstar-branded vaginas. At which point the world will end.
Hopefully portends more (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like incredibly great news for burn victims, given development.
Modern Science at its best... (Score:4, Insightful)
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This sounds highly promising for traditionally traumatic and fatal wounds, particularly burns. It will be interesting to see if this product increases the rate of survival in burn victims and other similar traumas. You have to love modern medicine.
Welcome to the future. Almost everything that was once 'science fiction' is becoming plausable and even probable in science.
Even 20 years ago we could never have dreamed what we are doing now and will be doing in the next 20-30 years!
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Where's my flying car, then?
We're still trying to figure out how to make it run on coal.
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Flying a light aircraft is pretty easy. Most of the time (i.e. all of the time apart from taking off and landing, and occasionally flying through very busy airspace or formation flying) you are so far away from the nearest other thing that you have at least a minute to react to things. I've flown at 140 knots paying so little attention that if I'd been driving at 30 miles an hour in the same condition I would almost certainly have crashed.
The difficult things about building a flying car are:
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Literature much? (Score:2, Informative)
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However, introducing cells thus cultured in vitro to a living patient is probably the more difficult part, and I'm not entirely sure that much has changed in this reg
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their product has been used on a 1/4 million people so it isn't new.
New ending to that movie: (Score:4, Funny)
Soylent Green is Wankers!
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Re:New ending to that movie: (Score:5, Funny)
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SOYLENT (Score:4, Funny)
Band-Aid®?
they have done this before with tragid results.. (Score:5, Funny)
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That's ok think of the foresight they'll have!
Slashdotters RUN FOR THE HILLS (Score:2, Redundant)
Chopping up virgins' bits and pieces and turning it into a medical treatment!
Human horn is real!
Could you clarify? (Score:2)
Now, is this the new protein or the bologna?
hotdog bandaid (Score:2)
Apligraf is a matrix of cow collagen, human fibroblasts and keratinocyte stem cells (from discarded circumcisions)
I expected them to follow that list up with 'and a few other things'.
Screw 'meat bandaid', call it 'hotdog bandaid' instead.
The story behind Apligraf (Score:5, Informative)
I am not sure why this item was introduced as "moderately disturbing". If you will permit me, I will explain what it is, since I use it regularly. (I have no stock nor other biased affiliation with the company or product.) The product first came on the market in 1998, over 10 years ago. It has a well-established place in the treatment of chronic wounds. It is not the only product in the category of "living cell therapies" for chronic wounds. The other product is Dermagraft, similar, and likewise around for nearly 10 years. When Apligraf first came out, it was promoted as skin-graft-in-a-box. It is not. It is allogeneic material (recipients will reject it), and thus it does not "take" to the body like an autogenous skin graft. In its earliest years, when the company was promoting it as a skin graft, it got some high profile press because it was put to good use as readily available biological coverage for burn victims of the 9-11-2001 twin towers catastrophe. The company that makes it, Organogenesis, partnered with pharma giant Novartis for marketing and product management, and under them, they listened to customers who told them it was not skin grafts in a box, and they redefined its marketing for chronic wounds. The product management has been back in the hands of Organogenesis for about 3 or 4 years now.
The material is essentially a poly-pharmaceutical packaged in a living material. The raw materials come from donated foreskins. Extensive safety testing is done. Pure extracted fibroblasts are put into cell culture, where they do their business and re-form a collagen matrix equivalent to normal dermis. After that, pure keratinocytes are cultured on top of the dermis, and an epidermis forms. The product is shipped in its petri dish, as a circle of 44 sq cm area. The Gizmodo article shows a picture of it. As a living material, its procurement and handling are a bit different than most medical devices, but it is easy to get and apply.
The juvenile cells in the material make a broad spectrum of growth factors and other biochemicals which have a positive pro-proliferative effect on wounds. The role for this material is for chronic and pathological wounds. The company got its market approval and indications from the FDA for studies done on diabetic and venous ulcers, but the material is useful for chronic and pathological ("cap") wounds of any cause. Like anything else, it does not work for all wounds or patients, but it is fairly predictable, and its results can be rather dramatic. When a cap wound of whatever cause has been treated to the point that disease is quiet, inflammation is gone, and the wound should be healing but it is not, then that is when wound stimulatory therapies are applied. There are several available, and Apligraf has been one of the flagship products in this category for 10 years now. Many wounds which simply will not budge no matter what will take off and heal once this is applied.
Organogenesis has its first new product coming out soon, for oral mucosa and gingiva, so perhaps that is why they are trying to stir up some attention with articles like the one quoted. However, it is not Brave New World nor Coma nor any other meat factory. It is just on the leading edge of biological therapeutics in the 21st century. And if Slashdotters want to make lots of jokes as they often do, like "put Viagra in the petri dish to grow more", well, we've already heard them all.
(All very timely, since I just gave a presentation on this last week (and have been for 8 years). If you want to learn more, I posted a copy of the presentation on the website I use for posting talks and presentations and whatnot. This particular talk has a mix of my slides and company slides. It is NOT yet annotated with full text on each slide, so some will just be pictures and you will have to infer what you can, but text should be coming one of these days:
http://www.arimedica.com/content/arimedica_apligraf_(partially%20annotated)_2005-1006.pdf [arimedica.com]
Again, I have no investment nor bias here, I just use this stuff in practice because it works and it's an important product.)
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I am not sure why this item was introduced as "moderately disturbing". [...] The material is essentially a poly-pharmaceutical packaged in a living material. The raw materials come from donated foreskins.
Heh, I believe you have your answer.
Yum! (Score:2)
Somehow I was reminded of this story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8360569.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Just what I've been waiting for! (Score:2, Funny)
Apligraf is a matrix of cow collagen, human fibroblasts and keratinocyte stem cells (from discarded circumcisions), that, when applied to chronic wounds (particularly nasty problems like diabetic sores), can seed healing and regeneration.
Finally, a band-aid made out of human penises!
Can't believe I didn't think of it.
Marketing is everything (Score:2)
They should trademark it as "4Skin".
Donated? Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
So what's the big deal, boys are going to be circumcised anyway, why not profit from it?
It's the profit motive that's the problem.
Parents report being pressured by hospital staff to circumcise their newborn sons. In fact, the anti-circumcision organization IntactAmerica.org was originally funded by couple in response to their disg
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So can all the guys who have been amputated via Circumcision be regarded as amputees?
Maybe the idea of a prosthetic penis is not to far away, maybe a detachable one at that...... Just don't loose it.
I was gong to make a joke about amputee pr0n, because now most all pr0n with males in can be classified as Amputee pr0n.....\\
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No one pressured me to circumcise my son, my wife and I made the choice long before we went to the hospital. And it was done with a local, so almost pain-free.
I also wasn't given the option to donate it, which I would have done if I had known about this.
Can they grow Spines and Hearts? (Score:2)
Because if they can grow spines and hearts then they are desperately needed in Washington D.C. stat!
With apologies to Charlton Heston: (Score:2)
"Solyent Green is Foreskins! Solyent Green is discarded Foreskins! No. Really. They collect them for the keratinocyte stem cells. It's all quite safe."
Doesn't have quite the same punch, but at least it's corrected for accuracy.
The price of meat (Score:2)
Can this be the start of the price of hamburger going way down? Meat without need for the cow, the chicken, or the turkey could be a boon to the entire world. It could also give us a use for all the abandoned factory space in America. Now if they can grow nice leather I could use some new upholstery.
This is going to be so wrong... (Score:2)
You idiot, that's not the band-aid... that's the lunch meat!!!
Then what the hell did we have for lunch with the soup!!!
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Wank off. We'll save $20
Don't laugh... (Score:3, Funny)
...it's a real growth industry.
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Hehe "spam" spam. =)
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Don't give Hormel ideas.
Re:UNlike mean?? WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
but unlike meat, if you were to slice it down the center today, tomorrow the wound would heal.
Yeah, because there never even was a animal who cut itself, and where then the wound healed...
FAIL
That would be called a fleshwound. A wound to its flesh or tissues. Meat is the same tissue, but terminally locked into 'deadness'.
There is a difference.
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I never understood why people are so against circumcision.
I don't think many people are against circumcision per se -- if you want one, have one. What people are against is forcibly circumcising people who did not agree to be circumsized.
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This I take it is a dig against vaccination?
If it is, then you're missing an important part of the social contract : you get your health care free at the point of use regardless of whether you pay taxes for it in return for your cooperation in controlling the spread of diseases. That means not shitting
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But there is usually no medical reason for circumcision, and it is those cases that I, and I assume the GP, am opposed to.
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Take the flu vaccine for example. How many kids have a needle stabbed into their bodies, and disease injected when they were not going to get the flu anyway, and even if they did, it would just be a minor inconvenience. Or wors
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But do you even remember being intact? If you have nothing to compare it to, you wouldn;t know what you are missing.
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But do you even remember being intact? If you have nothing to compare it to, you wouldn;t know what you are missing.
You're right -- I don't remember being intact, and I don't know what I'm missing. I'm not sure how that's relevant though; if someone had cut off my legs at birth, I wouldn't now know what it's like to have legs either -- but that wouldn't mean it was acceptable to chop off infants' legs.
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That was more or less my point. He should care, because it is unacceptable.
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you seem to assume that the nerve endings that were removed during circumcision don't reconnect, I tent to assume circumcised males have more nerve ending per unit of area make the sensations more concentrated and maybe you don't know what you are missing.
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The various parts of the penis, including the foreskin, form a functional whole. The foreskin is the primary sensory tissue of the penis. The ridged band of the foreskin is built to trigger orgasm and ejaculation.
There are specialised structures in the ridged band which detect the gliding action of the glans.
Even if the nerves have some function after circumcision, they would be severely damaged and buried under a layer of scar tissue, and would not function in the same way. (This ignores whether any partic
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One good reason to be against circumcision is the high propensity of the botched circumcision, often not noticed until adulthood.
http://www.mothersagainstcirc.org/botch.htm [mothersagainstcirc.org]
The most scary case is this one:
http://www.moss-fritch.com/medical_error.htm [moss-fritch.com]
Where one Baby boy was snipped way too much and the doctor's decided to give him hormones to become a girl instead.
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I didn't mean couldn't "feel" entirely. I'm sure they plenty enjoy it too, but you can't tell me cutting off a bundle of nerve endings has no affect.
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the large penis would have near enough the same number of nerve endings as a smaller one, just spread out over a larger area. That doesn't really make a difference though, since the whole thing is getting stimulated.
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The claim that the number of nerve endings in humans is fixed irrelevent of size, or even amongst people of the same size is highly dubious, and certainly needs some sort of citation.
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He may well have had an excessively tight circumcision, in which case the proper gliding action of the penis would have been lost, meaning there is only the rubbing left to produce any stimulation. I seem to recall a post implying that you are circumcised, in which case if you have a loose circumcision you should be very thankful.
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The notion of using *healthy* tissue harvested from *unconsenting*, helpless children for sale to manufacture products raises serious ethical concerns and questions. It is treating children and their bodies like objects, like agricultural products to be harvested and exploited for the benefit of others. This is nothing less than organ trafficking, no different than the harvesting of other body parts from a child for sale on the market. This technology is already illegal (as organ trafficking) in many countr
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destruction of a healthy part of a childs body, without the proper justification that is required for amputation, a serious or life threatening disease requiring immediate treatment which is present and current and cannot be treated by lesser invasive means
So, I take it you have ethical problems with haircuts too then?
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Totally invalid comparison. 1) Hair regrows. 2) Hair is not a living part of the body. Using your flawed argument it would be ok to chop off a childs arm because this is not not different on an ethical level to cutting hair. The difference is arm, skin, parts of a boys genital flesh, and other organs are living parts of the body and do not regrow, thus cutting them off is permenant. If you removed the hair follicles from a childs scalp so the hair could not regrow, this would be an ethical problem.
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I would also add i do not hear too many people trying to legitimise female genital mutilation which is equivalent to male circumcision (clitoral hood removal), with the argument that it is no different from cutting a childs hair. I think such a conclusion would be laughed at because it should be obvious that cutting off a living part of a childs body that cannot grow back is much different than cutting a childs hair which does grow back. As well, it is also unethical to give a child a tattoo, cut off their
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if all the thousands of nerve endings and other complex structures were able to regrow to form an intact foreskin in only a few years, the way hair does (because hairs fall out, and get replaced), then my opposition to circumcision would be far less, since it would be trivially reversible. However, there is currently no technique capable of restoring those destroyed tissues, only poor substitutes.
If you seriously think that irreversibly destroying living tissue of any kind, let alone the most sensitive part
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It is a slippery slope. The fact that circumcision has been now been monetised as a organ harvesting adds financial reasons to continue what is essentially an unethical practice that destroys a healthy part of a little boys body, that has nothing wrong with it, a part they are born with, not to treat a current medical condition. We have ended up in a position where indeed this corporation is involved with the extraction of healthy body parts from a child's body. The fact that genital mutilation of boys bega