For men deprived of and missing their foreskin - either because it was taken without their consent when they were babies, or because they made a big mistake as an adult - there have been only two ways to cope with the loss: grin and bear it (and maybe not admit that there was a loss, like the fox who lost his tail), or attempt restoration by slowly stretching the remnant foreskin tissue. In the early years A.D. this method was used by young Jewish men who wanted to appear uncircumcised and thus take a greater part in Hellenic social life; but the method was slow, and would work well only if there was a fairly large quantity of foreskin tissue left to stretch. Men who had suffered a really tight circumcision had a far more difficult and often impossible task.

But recent advances in regenerative medical techniques are now offering hope that it may be possible to regrow the foreskin, nerves and all, and restore it to something like what it would have been naturally. It is only an idea as yet, but similar techniques using stem cells have been successfully used to regrow some internal organs, and there are reports of successful vaginal reconstructions using similar methods. For the present the organisation behind the initiative, Foregen, is seeking to raise funds for further research and a pilot program. Where is the Gates Foundation when you need it? After providing hundreds of millions of dollars to circumcise Africans, the least it could do is offer a few hundred thousand to repair the damage. After all, when the HIV crisis is over and AIDS can be prevented or cured, many of those men may want their foreskins back.

IntactNews recently interviewed Vincenzo Aiello, the founder of Foregen, a non-profit organization raising funds for foreskin regeneration using the latest regenerative medicine technologies. Foregen’s ambition is to provide foreskin regeneration surgeries for men who were circumcised without their consent. Read the full interview here.