Doctors at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine on Monday said that they had performed the world’s first total penis and scrotum transplant on a US military serviceman who was wounded in Afghanistan.
The 14-hour operation was performed on March 26 by a team of nine plastic surgeons and two urologic surgeons led by Taiwanese-American W.P. Andrew Lee (李為平), a professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery and chairman of the school’s plastic and reconstructive surgery department.
“We are optimistic that he will regain near-normal urinary and sexual functions following a full recovery,” Lee told reporters.
Photo: Johns Hopkins School of Medicine / AFP
The patient was severely injured by a blast from an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan several years ago, Lee said.
The entire penis, scrotum without testicles and partial abdominal wall came from a deceased donor.
“It’s a real mind-boggling injury to suffer; it is not an easy one to accept,” the recipient said in a statement. “When I first woke up, I felt finally more normal.”
The man lost his testicles in the explosion and did not get them restored as part of his transplant.
“The testicles were not transplanted, because we had made a decision early in the program to not transplant germline tissue, that is to say not transplant tissue that generates sperm, because this would raise a number of ethical questions,” plastic surgeon Damon Cooney said.
Doctors said they are hopeful the man will be able to urinate with his penis in the coming weeks, and that he will eventually regain enough sensation to achieve an erection.
The extent of his sexual function will not be known for about six months, doctors said.
Lee was born in what was then-Kaohsiung County’s Gangshan Township (岡山) to a father serving in the Republic of China Air Force. He immigrated to the US when he was 15 to join an older brother and sister who had immigrated earlier.
He earned an honors degree in physics from Harvard and his medical degree from Johns Hopkins, where he also completed his general surgery residency and a microvascular research fellowship before completing his plastic surgery fellowship at Massachusetts General.
Initially specializing in hand surgery, he has been working on human-to-human limb transplantation since 1986. When he was chief of plastic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, he led a team that performed the first bilateral arm transplant in the US on an injured soldier.
Additional reporting by staff writer and CNA
NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT: An official said that Guan Guan’s comments had gone beyond the threshold of free speech, as she advocated for the destruction of the ROC China-born media influencer Guan Guan’s (關關) residency permit has been revoked for repeatedly posting pro-China content that threatens national security, the National Immigration Agency said yesterday. Guan Guan has said many controversial things in her videos posted to Douyin (抖音), including “the red flag will soon be painted all over Taiwan” and “Taiwan is an inseparable part of China,” while expressing hope for expedited “reunification.” The agency received multiple reports alleging that Guan Guan had advocated for armed reunification last year. After investigating, the agency last month issued a notice requiring her to appear and account for her actions. Guan Guan appeared as required,
A strong cold air mass is expected to arrive tonight, bringing a change in weather and a drop in temperature, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The coldest time would be early on Thursday morning, with temperatures in some areas dipping as low as 8°C, it said. Daytime highs yesterday were 22°C to 24°C in northern and eastern Taiwan, and about 25°C to 28°C in the central and southern regions, it said. However, nighttime lows would dip to about 15°C to 16°C in central and northern Taiwan as well as the northeast, and 17°C to 19°C elsewhere, it said. Tropical Storm Nokaen, currently
‘NATO-PLUS’: ‘Our strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific are facing increasing aggression by the Chinese Communist Party,’ US Representative Rob Wittman said The US House of Representatives on Monday released its version of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes US$1.15 billion to support security cooperation with Taiwan. The omnibus act, covering US$1.2 trillion of spending, allocates US$1 billion for the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative, as well as US$150 million for the replacement of defense articles and reimbursement of defense services provided to Taiwan. The fund allocations were based on the US National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2026 that was passed by the US Congress last month and authorized up to US$1 billion to the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency in support of the
PAPERS, PLEASE: The gang exploited the high value of the passports, selling them at inflated prices to Chinese buyers, who would treat them as ‘invisibility cloaks’ The Yilan District Court has handed four members of a syndicate prison terms ranging from one year and two months to two years and two months for their involvement in a scheme to purchase Taiwanese passports and resell them abroad at a massive markup. A Chinese human smuggling syndicate purchased Taiwanese passports through local criminal networks, exploiting the passports’ visa-free travel privileges to turn a profit of more than 20 times the original price, the court said. Such criminal organizations enable people to impersonate Taiwanese when entering and exiting Taiwan and other countries, undermining social order and the credibility of the nation’s
RSS