Medical tourism is on the rise. Housewives are drinking Tahitian Noni juice, America’s elderly are jumping the border into Canada for hip replacements, and Michael Moore has firemen and women flooding his inbox with questions about when the next boat is leaving for Cuba.

Last week, UK-based The Evening Standard reported of an untold form of medical travel occurring in England — and on the British tax payers. They’re calling it the hymen replacement.

It involves sowing up the sutures of torn hymens — in theory, for violated young Muslim women. Of course, some who get the surgery elected to have sex, and then elect to “restore” their virginity before marriage. Their surgeries are not covered by the NHS.

And, while most of the cases involve British residents, the occasional Middle Easterner catches wind of the procedure and comes to England looking for the “virginity fix.”

According to hymen pioneer Dr. Magdy Hend, “In some cultures they like to see that the women will bleed on the wedding night. If the wife or bride is not a virgin, it is a big shame on the family.”

Sounds like an expert, eh? At least as far as matters concerning the intersection of culture and medicine go.

Surely then, he’s already turned an eye to his own culture’s view on the vagina. He probably already knows of U.S. FDA advisor Dr. David Hager and his Department of Vagina-land Security. Maybe he’s even sympathetic to our problem of evangelical vagina-dominance. And the Bush administration’s fear that women really don’t know what to do with them, so if the boys don’t step in, who will?

Or perhaps he doesn’t call condom-free vaginas cultural. Babies are universal. Bloody wedding nights… now that’s what I call culture.

Evening Standard - Women Get “Virginity Fix” in Muslim-driven Trend