They Want It Back

A CBS 2 News Special Assignment

Special Assignment: They Want It Back aired Friday, November 6 at 11 p.m.

"When I first heard about it, I wanted nothing to do with it," one real estate manager said.

A retired photographer said, "There are as many ways to do it as there are guys doing it."

"As far as sensitivity is concerned, it's increased," a businessman confessed.

"At a cocktail party I wouldn't say, 'Hey, I'm restoring! Is anyone interested?'" a commercial airline pilot admitted.

What they're talking about restoring is something that can make some people very uncomfortable, reports CBS 2 News' Thelma Gutierrez. It's something even these men admit sounds radical.

They're talking about restoring their foreskins, a sensitive part of their bodies they say was taken away at infancy.

"Circumcision is so destructive. I had lost a huge amount. Restoration is part of bringing me back," one man told Gutierrez.

It's a delicate subject, but the men who spoke with Gutierrez say it's about time they talk about it.

Fifty-eight-year-old George Salman said, "An intact man, if you put his sexual gratification on a scale from 1-10, I'd say it's 12-13. A circumcised man is around 2-3.

"Those men would say, 'How do you know, how can you speak to that?' Because I've been in both places, that's why!"

When Salman was a grown man, he had himself circumcised. He was 45 years old. He told Gutierrez he did it for aesthetic reasons.

"All my life I wanted it. I wanted to look like everybody else in the gym," Salman said.

But in doing that, Salman says he sacrificed sensation.

"The inside of the foreskin is very sensitive. You loose all of that. I don't know how many nerves are there, but it's a hell of a lot," Salman said.

Some doctors say the amount of foreskin taken from a baby is the size of a thumbnail, Gutierrez reports. In a grown man, it's as much as a 3x5 card with 240 feet of nerve fibers and thousands of nerve endings.

"The foreskin had a function," said Dr. Paul Fleiss, who opposes circumcisions, told Gutierrez.

"The adult male penis is supposed to have loose skin that slides back and forth over it. That's where sexual pleasure comes from."

"That's one theory. His theory." Circumcision advocate Dr. Sam Kunin told Gutierez.

"The nerves in the skin are still there, and the nerves that are most important sexually are in the gland head of the penis."

Kunin is a Mohel, a Jewish leader who has circumcised hundreds of baby boys. He's also a urologist.

"I've never had a man come to me in 35 years experience and say, 'I have sex problems because I'm circumcised.' Only men who've said I'm having problems, can you remove it?"

But the circumcised men who spoke with Gutierrez said they wish it had never been done to them. They belong to a growing movement called N.O.R.M., The National Organization For Restoring Men.

An airline pilot named "Dave" told Gutierez, "You don't sit in a cockpit and talk to guys about restoration. They'd say, 'Who is this guy I'm flying with? I don't want to get in the cockpit with him.' That's the way people look at it."

N.O.R.M. president Garry Harryman said, "I had never heard about it before. The way it was explained to me was rather comical. I thought it was rather funny to be stretching skin down there. What about the results? The results are fantastic."

By this point, you're probably wondering how it's done.

For Salman and others, it's not a surgical procedure. They do it themselves and the instructions can be found on the 'Net.

"If you put pressure or tension or weight on the foreskin or what little you have, it will start to add cells," said Harryman.

Before restoration, the skin is taunt. With gentle tension, it begins to expand. After 36 months, some men will have full coverage, Gutierrez reports.

"I think that as men get older and as they become sexually dysfunctional, they might want to examine this as one of the criteria for why they're loosing sensation," one N.O.R.M member said.

One study shows the loss of sensation over time is a result of the layers of keratin cells that act as a protective callous on circumcised men, Gutierez reports. After 2-4 weeks of coverage, those keratin cells start to slough off.

"Does restoration work? Hell yeah. The orgasms are a lot stronger," another member said.

"That doesn't affect sexuality," Kunin contends. "The part of the anatomy that matters is (between the ears)."

According it Gutierrez, Salman and the others say it's worth all the effort to regain some of what they thought was gone forever.

More Information:

• N.O.R.M.'s Web site
• The National Organization Of Circumcision Information Resource Centers' Web site has information about the non�profit educational organization's committed helping men, women and babies keep their sexual organs intact.
• The Circumcision Resource Center is a nonprofit educational organization with the purpose of informing the public and professionals about the practice of circumcision.
• The Circumcision Issues Page.
• More foreskin restoration links from Yahoo!