Cosmetics, Circumcision and Oprah: A disgusting display of cruelty and indifference

 We know that circumcision is a barbaric practice. It is medically unnecessary and for aesthetic purposes only.No child should ever have to endure genital cutting. We intactivists do everything we can do save ever baby boy that we can, or so we thought. Are your dollars supporting the circumcision industry? The skin care industry has a dirty secret. And it's not that wrinkle creams  don't work. They are using human foreskins to test their skincare products on. 

"Organogenesis Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., uses a variation on the foreskin
theme for its Testskin by seeding human foreskin tissue into a bovine
collagen gel. Nutrients are added, the cells secrete collagen and growth
factors, and an epidermal layer is placed on top. Manufacturers now using
Testskin include Est'e Lauder Inc., Mary Kay Cosmetics Inc., Avon Products
Inc., and Amway Corp. Next from Organogenesis will be a skin model
containing pigment-producing melanocytes useful for testing sunscreens and
makeup for dark-complexioned people, says John Burger, director of investor
relations for the company.

  "On the advisory board of the John Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing-Y.H.    Laurie Pan, PhD, DABT (Mary Kay, Inc.) and here is quote about their research: 

"In order to characterize a fibroblast cell line representing normal human skin fibroblasts in three-dimensional cultures, we compared the fibroblast line MSU-1.1, derived from human foreskin....."

They also supply foreskins to transnational corporations such as Advanced Tissue Sciences of San Diego, California, [1] Organogenesis, [2] and BioSurface Technology, [3] who have recently emerged to reap new corporate profits from the sale of marketable products made from harvested human foreskins. In 1996 alone, Advanced Tissue Sciences could boast of a healthy $663.9 million market capitalization performance.[4]

This is immoral. Aesthetic genital cutting for mommys wrinkle creme.Foreskin fibroblasts are used to grow and cultivate new cells that are then used for testing of products and for skin cremes.One foreskin can be used for decades to grow $100,000 worth of fibroblasts. In order for the foreskin to be able to be tested on they cannot use anesthetic during the circumcision. This is a huge business, as is the circumcision procedure for doctors. The scary thing is, this appears to be an industry wide practice.  Since the 1980s, private hospitals have been involved in the business of supplying discarded foreskins to private bio-research laboratories and pharmaceutical companies who require human flesh as raw research material.


Even worse, Oprah openly endorses a SkinMedica, a product that openly uses fibroblasts in its products. Great! Cosmetic genital surgery on children for cosmetics for adults. And there is supposedly no monetary gain in circumcision? Corporations have taken over every industry possible, including the cutting of babies genitals. We need to rethink where we spend our dollars. Big companies never have your best interest at heart, and this is just another example. Your dollars spent are each votes for where you want humanity to go.We think of circumcision as the money maker in this dirty scheme, but the money in testing and using foreskins is a multimillion dollar a year industry. I believe Mary Kay's involvement in this is very revealing, I have read some speculation of many other large companies, and I will say I won't use any of them. Toxic ingredients in them that are bad for our planet and bodies anyways. Buying natural, small family based cosmetics are your best bet to not support such cruelty to children. 

 "Parents should be wary of anyone who tries to retract their child's foreskin, and especially wary of anyone who wants to cut it off. Human foreskins are in great demand for any number of commercial enterprises, and the marketing of purloined baby foreskins is a multimillion-dollar-a-year industry."

--Where Is My Foreskin? The Case Against Circumcision- Paul M. Fleiss, MD:Mothering (The Magazine Of Natural Family Living) Winter 1997, page 39

http://voices.yahoo.com/human-foreskins-big-business-cosmetics-201840.html?cat=69

http://www.foreskin.org/f4sale.htm


http://crunchydomesticgoddess.com/2009/05/28/babies-foreskins-used-to-make-cosmetics-is-this-ethical/