On March 26, a team of eleven surgeons at Johns
Hopkins Medical Center transplanted a new penis,
scrotum, and part of the surrounding abdominal
tissue onto a veteran who had lost his genitals in a
combat injury.
The donated organ came from someone who had
recently died and signed off on the new procedure.
Similar penis transplants have been done before, but
this marks the first time that the scrotum and
abdominal wall were also transplanted.
It’s also the latest in a growing number of operations
that, though they are not life-saving, are important
for helping people feel normal in the bodies they
inhabit. Face transplants , uterine transplants, gender
confirmation surgeries — none of them are going to
save patients’ lives per se, but all of them are life-
changing for the people who elect to undergo them.
“When I first woke up [after the procedure], I felt
finally more normal… [with] a level of confidence as
well. …like finally I’m okay now,” the anonymous
veteran who received the transplant said in a press
release.
As procedures like these become more common and
routine, we can only hope that some of the stigma
facing people who take on non-essential surgeries
goes away. For example, much of the stigma
surrounding cosmetic surgeries like facelifts and
other augmentative procedures has faded — largely
because the surgeries themselves have become less
risky and invasive . The same could be true for facial
feminization procedures, still-experimental uterine
transplants — and, yes, even penis transplants.
It’s not clear whether people are more comfortable
with cosmetic surgery because they have become
more accepting or simply because the procedures
have improved to the point that people can no longer
tell who has had work done.
But either way, it’s easy to imagine a future in which
a similar shift has happened for people who undergo
the procedures and surgeries that today are still risky,
involved, and revolutionary.
