Now we all knew that when these penile transplant stories broke there would be plenty of room for pun-lovers to flex their (love) muscles. I can’t say I blame them, it’s hard to resist when the meat is dangled in front of your face.

Lovers of wordplay licked their lips and went to town and now we have  been treated to this gem courtesy of TimesLive:

The doctor in question is of course Professor André van der Merwe of the University of Stellenbosch’s medical department, who headed the team responsible for the world’s first successful penile transplant. He has now become something of a global sensation, with TimesLive reporting:

Van der Merwe, 46, a self-confessed Barbra Streisand fan who grew up in Sutherland, in the Northern Cape, has been inundated with requests for interviews and for surgical interventions from as far afield as Colombia and Russia.

He has been invited to Philadelphia in April to give a presentation on his world-first procedure.

Despite the attention van der Merwe has remained pretty grounded about it all. He also said that he had turned down the opportunity to tackle the transplant on four separate occasions due to “resistance from inside the transplant fraternity in South Africa”.

The revered doctor grew up wanting to be an astronomer but was eventually won over by the medical profession. For that there is at least one happy man (and woman) out there.

[source:timeslive]