I have done hundreds of emergency room shifts but I never cease to amaze at cases of assault especially those afflicted on cheating partners. ( I am focusing on men as victims for the purpose of this article only).
I have seen many stab wounds on men caught cheating and also hot water burn. It became more sophisticated when some aggrieved lovers started adding flour to the hot water. The idea is that while hot water runs off the skin, the ‘floured hot water’ sticks to the skin thereby allowing deeper burn injuries to the victims.
In some cases, men’s penises have been cut off usually when asleep or under duress with a gun.
For example in 2013 a 21 year old woman cut off her boyfriends penis for cheating on her. She was arrested and tried at the Meadowlands Magistrate’s Court in Gauteng, SA.
So, imagine the gladness in some quarters when South Africa carried out the first penis transplant in 2015 at Tygerberg hospital, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town using a donated penis on an eighteen years old boy. Interestingly SA has the highest number of ‘cut penises’ primarily because of botched circumcisions done by traditional ‘surgeons’ of adult men during a ceremony to induct then into ‘adult hood’.
Just this week, surgeons in the USA repeated the same feat. My guess is that in a few years this will become a routine procedure in most hospitals.
Some men are already making a case for penis transplant because of social reasons like you know what (lol). I am not sure how early that would take place.
The issue of donor supply is a potential problem.
For example in February 2016, an Indian woman was reported to have cut off her brother-in-law’s penis and then took it with her to the police. She said she was repeatedly raped by the man. A seized penis is not useful especially if it will be used as evidence in court. Who knows how long the court case will last!
In a similar case, Huaman 41, from Peru was reported to have cut off a penis allegedly as an act of revenge on her partner Ramon, 46, while he slept and then threw it into the toilet. I doubt if my colleagues would find that specimen useful even if fished out of the toiler tank. Clearly, it looks like in the near future the demand may be bigger than supply. People have been known to sell a kidney and organs that their lives don’t depend on for money. Will this be the case or an exception? Only time will tell.
