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Intact America Tells Sandra Bullock and Ellen DeGeneres That Using Korean Baby Foreskin in a Facial Product Is No Laughing Matter!

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Blog, Press Releases
May 23, 2018

TARRYTOWN, NY—MAY 23, 2018

Georganne Chapin, executive director of Intact America, released the following statement today in response to the highly insensitive comments made last week by Sandra Bullock and Ellen DeGeneres about using Korean baby foreskin in a facial procedure. The comments were made when DeGeneres interviewed Bullock on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” that aired Thursday, May 17, 2018. The interview can be viewed here; the insensitive comments begin at 2:45.

“That Bullock and DeGeneres could joke about using foreskins, taken without consent from Korean baby boys, for a beauty treatment indicates a total lack of understanding of the ethics involved.

“The foreskin is a normal, healthy, integral part of the male genitalia. It belongs to the baby—and to the man he will become. Its removal is painful, not medically necessary, and will deprive its owner of a lifetime of sexual pleasure. How ironic it is that these celebrities think of the male foreskin as something that’s okay to be chopped off and thrown away, but at the same time are willing to spend a fortune on luxury beauty products containing extracts from this pirated tissue.

“Imagine the outrage and shock if parts of the female genitalia were removed and used in hair-loss treatments for men.

“Celebrities and others with megaphone power need to think first before they joke about what amounts to tissue piracy.”

ABOUT INTACT AMERICA
Intact America is the largest national advocacy group working to end involuntary circumcision in America, and to ensure a healthy sexual future for all people. Intact America is based in Tarrytown, New York. For more information, visit Intact America at http://www.intactamerica.org, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/intactamerica, and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/intactamerica.

Author

  • Jeannie Ashford is a writer, editor, public relations professional, and communications specialist who has supported Intact America for more than a decade. She received a BA in English Honors at Queens College, City University of New York, and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

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Intact America operates as a not-for-profit organization based in Tarrytown, NY that is tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. EIN: 81-2887457.

(914) 400 1915

PO Box 8516 Tarrytown, NY, 10591

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Marilyn

Marilyn Fayre Milos, multiple award winner for her humanitarian work to end routine infant circumcision in the United States and advocating for the rights of infants and children to genital autonomy, has written a warm and compelling memoir of her path to becoming “the founding mother of the intactivist movement.” Needing to support her family as a single mother in the early sixties, Milos taught banjo—having learned to play from Jerry Garcia (later of The Grateful Dead)—and worked as an assistant to comedian and social critic Lenny Bruce, typing out the content of his shows and transcribing court proceedings of his trials for obscenity. After Lenny’s death, she found her voice as an activist as part of the counterculture revolution, living in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco during the 1967 Summer of Love, and honed her organizational skills by creating an alternative education open classroom (still operating) in Marin County. 

After witnessing the pain and trauma of the circumcision of a newborn baby boy when she was a nursing student at Marin College, Milos learned everything she could about why infants were subjected to such brutal surgery. The more she read and discovered, the more convinced she became that circumcision had no medical benefits. As a nurse on the obstetrical unit at Marin General Hospital, she committed to making sure parents understood what circumcision entailed before signing a consent form. Considered an agitator and forced to resign in 1985, she co-founded NOCIRC (National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers) and began organizing international symposia on circumcision, genital autonomy, and human rights. Milos edited and published the proceedings from the above-mentioned symposia and has written numerous articles in her quest to end circumcision and protect children’s bodily integrity. She currently serves on the board of directors of Intact America.

Georganne

Georganne Chapin is a healthcare expert, attorney, social justice advocate, and founding executive director of Intact America, the nation’s most influential organization opposing the U.S. medical industry’s penchant for surgically altering the genitals of male children (“circumcision”). Under her leadership, Intact America has definitively documented tactics used by U.S. doctors and healthcare facilities to pathologize the male foreskin, pressure parents into circumcising their sons, and forcibly retract the foreskins of intact boys, creating potentially lifelong, iatrogenic harm. 

Chapin holds a BA in Anthropology from Barnard College, and a Master’s degree in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University. For 25 years, she served as president and chief executive officer of Hudson Health Plan, a nonprofit Medicaid insurer in New York’s Hudson Valley. Mid-career, she enrolled in an evening law program, where she explored the legal and ethical issues underlying routine male circumcision, a subject that had interested her since witnessing the aftermath of the surgery conducted on her younger brother. She received her Juris Doctor degree from Pace University School of Law in 2003, and was subsequently admitted to the New York Bar. As an adjunct professor, she taught Bioethics and Medicaid and Disability Law at Pace, and Bioethics in Dominican College’s doctoral program for advanced practice nurses.

In 2004, Chapin founded the nonprofit Hudson Center for Health Equity and Quality, a company that designs software and provides consulting services designed to reduce administrative complexities, streamline and integrate data collection and reporting, and enhance access to care for those in need. In 2008, she co-founded Intact America.

Chapin has published many articles and op-ed essays, and has been interviewed on local, national and international television, radio and podcasts about ways the U.S. healthcare system prioritizes profits over people’s basic needs. She cites routine (nontherapeutic) infant circumcision as a prime example of a practice that wastes money and harms boys and the men they will become. This Penis Business: A Memoir is her first book.