His fame does not yet that match of heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard. But fellow South African André van der Merwe’s phone has hardly stopped ringing in the week since it was announced that he performed the world’s first successful penis transplant.
The urologist and his team at Stellenbosch University provided the organ to a 21-year-old whose penis had been amputated after a botched circumcision three years ago, enabling him to become sexually active and potentially father children.
According to South Africa’s Times newspaper Van der Merwe, 46, is now dubbed “Dr Dick” and has been inundated with requests from Colombia, Russia and countries around the world.
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“I’ve had someone email from America who wants his penis removed,” he told the paper on Friday. “He wants to be genderless and donate his penis to somebody, so I will ask my colleagues in the US who want to copy the surgery to do the operation on one of their own patients and I will be a consultant.”
The unnamed recipient, who has a girlfriend, received the penis from a deceased donor on 11 December in an operation that lasted nine hours. Van der Merwe told the Times that skin from the inside of the patient’s leg and tattooing were used to match the colour of the transplanted penis to the recipient’s pigmentation. The patient is said to be doing well both physically and psychologically.
Yet the pioneering operation almost never happened, Van der Merwe admitted. He said “resistance from inside the transplant fraternity in South Africa” had prompted him to walk away from it four times, but the needs of patients eventually persuaded him to go ahead.
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The professor has been invited to Philadelphia in the US next month to give a presentation but remains modest about the achievement. “The hype of the operation is a reflection on us [as a society] rather than a reflection on the operation,” he was quoted as saying. “I think we are finding out about ourselves. We haven’t spoken about issues below the belt that often.”
The procedure was part of a pilot study to develop a penis transplant procedure that could be performed in a typical South African hospital theatre setting. Nine more patients await the same surgery after losing their penises in traditional initiation ceremonies that went wrong.
The Times also described Van der Merwe, who was not available for interview on Friday, as a fan of Barbra Streisand, the American singer, and reported that his first childhood ambition was to be an astronomer. “I chose urology because it’s what I call ‘a beloved speciality’. You are able to improve someone’s quality of life in a short time.”
GUARDIAN(UK)
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