Baby Foreskin in Cosmetics & The Big Business of Circumcision

baby foreskin big business

Power and profit are the two powerful and predominant forces behind the encouragement of circumcision in our culture.

Cosmetic companies invest large amounts of their time and effort into the development of products that make skin appear more youthful, such as fillers to minimize the appearance of wrinkles, laser treatments to smooth imperfections, even injections of bacterial proteins (Botox)  that paralyze your face muscles to prevent the skin from stretching.

The industry has recently gone a step further, developing skin care creams made from the foreskin of babies.  Yes, the act of mutilating baby’s genitals has become a profitable business for cosmetic companies, who are able to grow almost $100,000 worth of fibroblasts from a single foreskin.

Oprah has came out and endorsed the foreskin lotion on her show and website, calling it a “miracle cream”.  As a result of Oprah’s endorsement and potentially false claims about the lotion, SkinMedica reaped enormous profit, and now millions of women around the world are smearing cream made from the foreskin of babies all over their faces.

In addition to the lotion from SkinMedica, fibroblast injections made from human foreskin are being sold by a company called Vavelta with hopes to defeat the billion-dollar botox industry.  To make Vavelta, the fibroblasts are isolated from the foreskins of baby boys, grown and multiplied in the lab for several months, and then transferred into vials to be shipped to physicians in the United Kingdom.  According to a spokesperson for the company, each vial costs 750 pounds, around $1000 USD.  Although injecting foreskin cells into the skin is likely a lot safer than the chemical botox, which comes with the life-threatening risk of botulism, the theory behind fibroblasts and anti-aging of the skin is likely mistaken.

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The Theory: Does it Even Work?

The fibroblasts contained within human foreskin produce a skin-firming protein known as collagen, and the theory is that as we age collagen becomes more scarce and this is the reason for skin aging and wrinkles.  Whether it’s even true is questionable, and I have seen evidence from Dr. Ray Peat that suggests the aging of skin is not a function of a lack of collagen.  (This evidence will be presented in a future article.)  If this is true then the dicing of a child’s most sensitive body part to make beauty products is, in addition to being completely immoral, a useless product for beautifying the skin.
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