Wesley Warren Jr has an unfortunate condition – scrotal elephantiasis.  This has caused his scrotum to swell to 45 kg (100 lb).

In what must be the understatement of the year, Mr Warren said:

"It’s not easy to get around,"

He developed the condition about 3 years ago.  How is a bit of a mystery. If Warren lived in the tropics of Africa, Asia, Central and South America, this case of disabling elephantiasis, or gross enlargement of his genitals to elephantoid size, would probably end up being attributed to a mosquito-spread parasitic infection.  However, he lives in Las Vegas, and says he has never travelled to tropical areas outside of the US. And doctors who have examined him have found no trace of the infectious disease.  Warren attributes his condition to an accidental striking of his testicles by his own leg as he twisted and turned upon awakening from a sleep.  He says this was incredibly painful when it happened, but the pain went away quickly – but in the morning, his scrotum had swollen to the size of a soccer ball.   Initially he was treated for an infection, and went to see doctors on and off for some time.  Eventually the swelling became so large he couldn’t work, and so went on disability.

There is however, the hope of surgery to resolve Mr Warren’s condition.  A team of urologists and plastic surgeons would be needed to cut away the excess tissue and to perform the reconstructive surgery that would include skin grafts. Every attempt would be made to save and reconstruct Warren’s penis and testicles, but it was possible that they would have to be completely excised.

In Warren’s words:

"Basically, he was telling me there was a good chance that I would be castrated and have to go to the bathroom through a tube for the rest of my life,"

"I really would like to have a relationship with a woman. I should be in the prime of my life right now."

Fat chance of that I would have thought.

That supposedly is his scrotum, covered in a hoodie and balanced on a milk crate.

In hopes of getting the money for a possible corrective procedure that doctors have told him can cost about $1 million, Warren swallowed his pride by outing himself recently on shock jock Howard Stern’s national satellite radio and cable TV freak segment.  As you do of course, in the absence of a decent health care system.

As to the question I posed in the heading to this post, with balls that big, you wonder if he’s got a dick about a metre long to go with them.  Well that question is answered – his penis is so buried in his scrotal tissue that he can’t direct his urination and often sprays the area around him.

I must add that my doubts about the credibility of his story are not helped by the email address he is using for his fund raising efforts:

benefitballsack@yahoo.com

Really!

The university has received a large number of emails with threatening and abusive language directed at some of its scientists.   Vice –Chancellor, Professor Ian Young said:

"Obviously, climate research is an emotive issue at the present time, but these are issues where we should have a logical public debate,"

"In fact it’s completely intolerable that people be subjected to this sort of abuse and to threats like this."

Too right!  Actually its really disappointing to think that this sort of thing is happening in Australia, as its the sort of thing that has mostly been limited to right wing American whackos, like the ones who blow up abortion clinics.

I mean who gets whipped up into a frenzy of hate over policy debates like this? Morons obviously.  Probably fired up by the more rabid climate science deniers in politics and the media (Alan Jones, for example, anyone?).

Hey, morons, you do realise it is possible to disagree and have an argument with someone and not work yourself up into a state where you feel the solution is to threaten violence, or actually carry out violence?  It’s really easy.  Most of us can manage it regularly.  No doubt the reason for resorting to threats is because these people lack the intellect to argue their points in a reasonable and rational way.  They probably get frustrated once they run out of the handful of slogans that make up their debating points (actually this sounds like a description of some members of the Opposition).

Do not mess with Maria Topp, who lives in Newcastle in England.  Ask her boyfriend (I assume now former boyfriend) Martin Douglas.

Must have been some argument they had.

She bit his testicles off.

She is due to appear in court next month charged with assault causing grievous bodily harm.  He has had surgery to reattach his nuts.

As a service to readers, here is a photo of the lovely Maria.  Be warned.

He/she did attempt to take some precautions by using methylated spirits to try to sterilise the lancet between tests.

The experiment happened last month but only came to the notice of Tasmanian health authorities last week.  When the school principal became aware of the experiment he advised the students’ parents to seek medical advice.  There is a risk viruses such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C or HIV may have been transmitted between the students – although in this age group that risk is considered low.

School, Parents and Friends Association senior vice president Jenny Eddington says she is "absolutely stunned".  She said:

"We have put so much effort into education of things to do with needle pricks, with sharing of bodily fluids in all sorts of ways,"

and in the understatement of the year:

"It certainly wasn’t a very thought-through process,"

The teacher and other staff at the school will be given training regarding blood-borne viruses, but the state Education minister will not speculate if anyone should lose their job.

If these people need training to understand these risks, I have to ask where the hell have they been for the last 20 odd years.  You know, all the stuff about HIV/AIDS and that … must have missed Tasmania?

An Australian study reviewing 10 years of suicide data following the former Howard government’s gun buyback has found the rate of firearms suicides has fallen by 74 percent.  Mr Howard’s agreement with the states to ban and buy back more than 600,000 weapons after the massacre at Port Arthur in April 1996 cut the country’s stock of firearms by 20 per cent and roughly halved the number of households with access to guns.

A former Australian Treasury economist, Christine Neill said she found the research result so surprising she tried to redo her calculations on the off chance the total could have been smaller.  Dr Neill says that while it seems surprising that a 20 per cent cut in the number of firearms would have cut the number of suicides from firearms by 74 per cent, none of her academic colleagues have found fault with her finding.

The study also found no evidence of substitution of other methods of suicide.  That is, people weren’t going out in large numbers and hanging, overdosing etc themselves when they couldn’t get hold of a gun to do the job.

Another conclusion Dr Neill drew from the research:

“Before the buyback, Australia used to have a multiple shooting every year or two.

In the 13 years since, there have been none. I have calculated the probability of that happening by chance. It’s extraordinarily low.”

Explain that away, gun nuts.

An episode of the ABC TV show “Hungry Beast” generated a bit of controversy this week with a story about the (soft) porn industry’s airbrushing of female genitalia, which gave an unrealistic image of what was “normal”.   Soft porn magazine publishers claimed they were forced to airbrush pictures due to classification rules which deemed explicit depictions of female genitalia to be inappropriate.  So all they tend to show in their pictures is a neat crease – nothing with any poking out or dangly bits.

It is claimed that this in turn influences women who are concerned that their vagina is not “normal”, and the increase in the number of women having plastic surgery on their genitals is largely due to this – labiaplasty is a growth business for cosmetic surgeons, apparently.  Personally I think you’d have to be incredibly vain, insecure or have too much money and time on your hands to want to get this done – no doubt it goes with another useless procedure, anal bleaching.

The show attracted some complaints, although not large numbers.  This could be a product of Australian TV viewers being less prudish than our American counterparts, or maybe simply that hardly anyone actually watches the show.  It could also be that there was plenty of warning before they showed the story.

“Certainly, it contained strong scenes. However, viewers were given clear warnings about the content – one before the show began, and one before the actual segment – and so had ample opportunity to avoid the segment if they felt it might make them uncomfortable.”

said an ABC spokesperson.

Now, I know a lot of my readers come here in search of pussy – so click on the “Hungry Beast” link above for today’s treat.  Don’t say I don’t deliver to my readers.

Now, for something a bit different, but related in a roundabout way, and to highlight the prudishness of Americans in particular, check this out.

A woman in New Jersey made a snow figure based on the famous Venus de Milo statue which is kept at the Louvre in Paris.  However the nude rendition of a female torso, including (shock! horror! oh my god the children might see it!) boobs, was too much for someone.  Said the lady who made the snowman:

"We had a visit from the local police who told us that a neighbour had complained about the statue and we needed to cover it up or knock it down,"

"We didn’t want to have any problem with the police so we covered it up."

Hence, what you see above.

Doctors in Peru amputated the healthy leg of an 86-year-old man, then amputated the other leg when they realised their mistake.  He went in to have his right leg removed as it had an ulcer, but the doctors cut off his left leg, then upon realising it was the wrong one, cut off the right one too.

The Alberto Sabogal Hospital in the coastal district of Callao just north of Lima said it had suspended the doctors involved in the botched surgery for a life-threatening ulcer, pending an investigation.

I wonder what the doctors said when they realised their error – I’m betting “oh shit” would have been the first thing that went through their minds.  Definitely one of those “oh shit” moments!

Study leader Dr Clarissa Gerhausa, from the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg, said:

"We hope that one day we can demonstrate that xanthohumol prevents prostate cancer development, first in animal models and then in humans, but we are just at the beginning."

It was previously suggested that the compound could reduce the chances of females getting breast cancer. 

Cheers, I’m off to the fridge to get a nice healthy beer.  A James Squire Sundown Lager to be precise.

So he had the lung transplant.

And died later of lung cancer.  It turned out the organs donated to him came from someone who smoked 30 to 50 cigarettes a day.  Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, which performed the transplant, said early X-rays did not find any sign of cancer in Mr Millington’s lungs.  Drugs given to Mr Millington to help his body accept the new organs sped up the spread of a tumour, which had been missed in the screening of the transplanted lungs.  The hospital defended its use of smokers’ lungs in transplants and said all organs were screened rigorously.

Shit some people are unlucky.