Their verdict? "It's fair to say that there are much more clear medical benefits than there were at the time of the last report," Diekema says. "I expect that the academy will come out with a somewhat stronger statement" leaning in favor of circumcision. This could lead to renewed pressure for Medicaid and insurance companies to cover the procedure.
Diekema says that "hundreds of papers were reviewed and judged for their quality" — including the Africa studies and studies pointed out to him by the anticircumcision camp. "I get huge mailings from them — FedEx boxes, summaries. I do look at it. I have a file of all of that. But I am not about to let them do the evaluation for me. They will cite all kinds of studies, which were frequently terrible and didn't prove anything because they were so methodologically flawed."
Deirdra Funcheon
Dr. Helen Salsbury says many doctors do not numb babies' skin before a circumcision. She, however, injects a local anesthetic called lidocaine.
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Diekema empathizes with people who are reluctant to circumcise, but he says people must compare the benefits and risks. He adds, "The reality is that this decision is largely made by parents for cultural reasons and not medical reasons. Most parents have already made a decision, most often based on how they want the little boy's penis to look."
Michael Dulin first heard about the emerging practice of foreskin restoration — through which men wear skin-stretching devices in an attempt to grow new foreskins — about four years ago. He joined an online group called the National Organization of Restoring Men (NORM) and began buying and testing various contraptions. "It's incredible what we have to go through to get back what was stolen from us," Dulin says during an interview in his Jupiter home.
So far, he has tried six devices, all of which are analog and use weight and/or tension to stretch the skin. These include: T-tape, a tape that is attached to the skin and pulled with an elastic band that wraps around the leg; Foreballs, surgical steel balls that use gravity and do not set off a metal detector; and the TLC Tugger, which attaches to the tip of the penis and pulls skin between two plastic cones (inventor Ron Low claims to have sold 10,000 of these).
Experiments have also led Dulin to a couple of homemade contraptions — one made by a friend in Canada and another he came up with himself using a tuba mouthpiece. So far, he says, the $89 DTR — dual tension restorer, made of a nylon plate, a silicone gripper, and rubber bands — "is just the best. It's comfortable, and I'm seeing progress."
Dulin's aware some people find his project extreme, but "I don't care what the neighbors think. I'm at the point where I'm restoring, and I'm proud." He finds it absurd that the same people who would mock him for wanting his natural anatomy feel that "it's OK to chop it off; that's perfectly normal."
Dulin was circumcised as a baby and grew to resent it as he aged. Once an exhibit designer at the Bronx Zoo and later a farmer, Dulin had three children and moved to Florida after a divorce. He is now a full-time sculptor. Although he used to focus on traditional subjects like Greek gods, he recently started making sculptures of uncircumcised penises. "We've got to get people acclimated to the intact penis," he says. "People don't even understand what it is."
Though he has a slight frame and a gentle voice, Dulin says that speaking out is the key to advancing the movement. He's attended anticircumcision conferences and travels to the annual protests in Washington. He even has business cards that say "Michael Dulin, intactivist" and advertise an anticircumcision website. He passes them out to anyone who will listen.
"I was in Walmart, and I saw a woman who was obviously pregnant," he recalls. "I said, 'Excuse me, I don't know if you've considered circumcision or not, but may I give you this card?' " He says another woman at the DMV told him, "Thank you. I had no idea."
So far, Dulin says of his restoring process, "I'm seeing a little bit of wrinkling." Restorers have come up with an objective way to measure their progress, which they call the Circumcision Index. "I was a CI 1. Now I'm a CI 2. Ten is the best; it's what we're all striving for — full coverage with overhang. New foreskin coming to the tip of the penis."
He also has his sights set on some "space-age stuff." A Rome-based organization called Foregen is raising money — $20,700 so far toward its $200,000 goal — to use regenerative skin tissue to grow new foreskin. "If they can grow an ear on the back of a mouse, why not a foreskin?" Dulin asks. "This is what all of the restorers have been waiting for our whole lives — the ability to have this done."
The general populace, he hopes, will eventually come around and leave baby boys' penises alone, but "it's going to take a generation. It's a civil rights movement."
