Excuse Me, You Have Some Foreskin On Your Face

It’s true. That face cream you have sitting in your bathroom could have traces of infant foreskin in it. This isn’t a debate on how you feel about circumcision, I really don’t care, but this is more about what is done with the leftover skin. Turns out that infant foreskin has unique cell properties, like those found in stem cells, which makes them extremely versatile and can even cultivate skin cells! So, what do hospitals do? They sell them of course! Hospitals can get thousands of dollars for each small piece of skin.

Here are some of the examples of what’s done that the good people at The Stir dug up on what happens after the snippage.

1. Your beloved skin creams: Like the one above, SkinMedica (a product that has been given Oprah’s seal of approval) contains little baby foreskin. One human foreskin can be “used for decades to grow thousands of fibroblasts.” How about them mushroom heads?
2. Bio-skin grafts for burn victims: The foreskin cells are able to be used as a real skin “band-aid” to cover and heal open wounds on burn victims. The great part is that they have a very little chance of being rejected due to the cells being extremely flexible! According to the article, the band-aids have “shown amazing results in not only reducing complications and recovery time, but in even saving the lives of burn victims who otherwise had a very good likelihood of dying.”
3. Cosmetic Testing: Now you’ll always wonder if that “Not tested on animals” label is really tested on human foreskin. Some of the benefits are that they are tested on real human skin which yields more accurate results. It can even be recreated as “sick” skin to make sensitive skin formulas! This saves the poor rats that would otherwise have to endure hours of testing for that one moisturizer.

While I know this could develop into a huge debate, I have no stance either way. I disagree with hospitals selling your babies foreskin, I do think the fact that they are saving lives is pretty amazing on sciences part. Whether you are on the side of it being “genital mutilation,” one has to agree that the advances that are being made may outweigh the bad.