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Recently in Salon Health & Body

Urge: Naked World
Plague of penis-slashing cuts across planet
As the millennium approaches, male members are being abbreviated in record numbers.
By Hank Hyena
[11/12/99]

Backwoods E.R.
In these parts, you meet your neighbors one crisis at a time.
By Mike Perry
[11/11/99]

Urge: Naked World
Malawi president condemns traditional sex rituals
As AIDS spreads across the country, infecting 14 percent of the population, unsafe sex practices are being scrutinized.
By Hank Hyena
[11/11/99]

Urge
The pleasure principle
Why is it that my body comes with some men and not others?
By Tracy Quan
[11/11/99]

I'm obese, you're obese
The Fat Guy munches on doughnuts while figuring out whether he is fat or obese.
By Steven A. Shaw
[11/10/99]

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That had never been done before. The results of the experiment, reported in the journal Nature, could mean that someday any head could sprout hair. Scientists are even proclaiming that this may lead to a cure for baldness in the next seven to 10 years. Before this, human hairs had only been transplanted from one spot to another on the same person. The human immune system would reject hairs from other people. How the doctor got around that was that he transplanted not the hair itself, but cells taken from the dermal sheath of the follicle. Those cells enjoy "immune privilege" and were not attacked by his wife's immune system. So now Dr. Amanda Reynolds, wife and colleague of Dr. Colin Jahoda, has four of his little black hairs growing on her forearm there at the University of Durham in the U.K., in addition to the hairs of another man added later for good scientific measure. Oddly enough, DNA tests showed that the hairs that grew are a genetic mixture of hers and his. God knows what that means.

I called them up but they were busy in the lab and couldn't come to the phone. I wanted to ask them if you could transplant a whole bunch of hair all over your body and become like an ape and not have to wear clothes to work anymore, even in the winter. I bet you could but I wanted to know what they thought.

I am awaiting return calls from dermatological experts around the country with whom I wish to consult about my hairy ape idea. In addition, I wish to consult with them about my multi-ethnic hair garden idea. I don't see why you couldn't transplant red hair, blond hair and black hair on your head, put some curly hair up there, some straight hair, blend all kinds together and make a head of hair that has never been seen before. And if the genes of the hairs get together when you transplant cells from the dermal sheath, perhaps the genes would also get into the gene pool and so your children would have the hair of many different races, and bit by bit the world would become populated with people who look like they go only by the name Naomi.

But dermatological experts around the country are not expeditiously returning my calls. Perhaps they consider the likelihood of a stampede for surgically implanted gorilla suits unlikely.

Perhaps they should reconsider. Twenty years ago if I had been calling dermatological experts around the country to tell them that their children would be showing each other their genital piercings in dorm rooms, that girls would be getting Shiva tattooed across their backs and snakes spiraling down their calves and putting silver posts through their tongues and boys would be putting quarter-size discs in their earlobes, they might not have returned my calls either. I find nothing far-fetched.

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