Wesley Warren, Jr.

Wesley Warren Jr. shortly after undergoing surgery on his testicles. Wesley Warren Jr (June 23, 1963 – March 14, 2014) was an American man who attracted worldwide attention for his problems with scrotal elephantiasis, which caused his scrotum to grow to a weight of and hang down a little below his knees. After launching a campaign to raise the money for an operation to resolve the problem, for which he raised only $2,000, he underwent surgery in April 2013 after visiting Dr. Joel Gelman of the University of California, Irvine's Center for Reconstructive Urology, who was aware that Warren could not afford the surgery and so performed it for free. Warren's struggles with his condition and his subsequent operation were filmed by a British television crew for a documentary The Man with the 10-Stone Testicles, which aired on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom on June 24, 2013. He died of complications from diabetes on March 14, 2014.

Onset of Warren's condition Born in Orange, New Jersey, on June 23, 1963, Warren was a former resident of New York City, where he worked in security and as a messenger. He moved to Las Vegas in the 1990s and worked on commission to find locations for pay phones in the Las Vegas Valley. He fell ill in late 2008 and attributed the onset of his condition to accidentally striking his testicles while sleeping. He said: "I had never felt such pain. It was like a shooting pain through my entire body. When it stopped, it was like a huge tractor trailer went off the top of me. I think it ruined my lymph nodes down there". The following morning he found that his scrotum had swelled to "the size of a soccer ball".

Warren's appearance attracted widespread media interest. He was subsequently profiled by the Las Vegas Review-Journal medical correspondent, Paul Harasim, in two pieces in the fall of 2011 that were viewed over a million times. He appeared on Comedy Central's Tosh.0 show in a sketch showing a skateboarder running into Warren's scrotum and being knocked down. A British documentary film-making company, Firecracker Films, signed a contract with him to make a documentary about his condition.

A month after the first Las Vegas Review-Journal story and The Howard Stern Show appearance, Warren had received $8,000 in donations via PayPal and an offer of help from The Dr. Oz Show. The show's producers offered him free surgery from Dr. Mehmet Oz in exchange for exclusive rights to his story. Warren declined, expressing fear that he would not survive the operation: "I'm not sure they are the best doctors. I might be castrated or bleed out on the operating table." Dr. Mulugeta Kassahun, a Las Vegas urologist who grew up in Ethiopia, where scrotal elephantiasis is more common, urged him to seek surgery soon despite the risks as the worsening condition posed an increasing risk to Warren's life. "An infection, a real concern with his condition, may well kill him," Kassahun told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "If we have to do emergency surgery trying to save his life from infection, it won't be a surgery trying to save his testicles and penis."

The operation went ahead, even though Gelman had not yet received authorization from Nevada Medicaid, as he felt that it was unfair to Warren to "endure a cancellation." Gelman was critical of Nevada Medicaid's stance, saying that it's "terrible that Nevada isn't handling this the right way. When there's no expertise in a state to handle something, it doesn't seem right that Nevada can't pay the hospital when the doctors work for free." He commented that he and the other surgeons had donated their expertise not only to help Warren, but to show to others with scrotal elephantiasis that something could be done for them as well. He was optimistic about Warren's future: "There are a lot of shows about makeovers, but this is a real makeover. He's basically a new man."

The film received mixed reviews from the British media. The Daily Mirror Kevin O'Sullivan commented that Channel 4's "deep sleaze divers" were responsible for scheduling the documentary and that the channel was "the home of shameless voyeurism", while a psychologist interviewed by Metro said that it "appeals to our voyeuristic tendencies – there's something a bit titillating about peeking into the very private aspects of other people's lives and when those people happen to be afflicted by problems that we don't have ourselves, it gives us some emotional distance ... But because so few are affected by medical conditions like elephantiasis, it somehow becomes acceptable to be so personal and almost invasive." However, Metro's TV critic Keith Watson commented that "beneath the freak show facade ... there was a rather inspiring story of human fortitude in the face of outlandish bad luck", while Grace Dent of The Independent similarly felt that there were "subtler ideas present", calling it "an unflinching look at the reality of today's American healthcare system." Alex Harvey of The Times wrote that the film told Wesley's story "with compassion and detail". The Guardians Stuart Heritage felt that it "just fell on the right side of exploitation ... We got to see the man, and experience his pain and worries and embarrassment. It sounded like a car crash, but it turned out to be relatively sensitive to the subject."

It also proved to be a ratings hit, with nearly 4 million viewers and up to 13% of audience share over its two time slots – 3.05 million (13.3%) at 9 p.m. and 818,000 (4.6%) at 10 p.m. It was the sixth most-tweeted broadcast of the week June 24–30, recording 76,636 tweets and peaking at 1,923 per minute. Sue Oriel of Firecracker Films told the Metro that it had got "the entire [United Kingdom] talking" and said: "Every once in a while a programme comes along that just blows an audience away. This is one of those shows."

The documentary was picked up by TLC for a premiere in the United States, airing on August 19, 2013, under the title The Man with the 132 lb Scrotum. In Australia it was aired on Seven Network on September 25, 2013, under the title of The Man with the Biggest Testicles and was replayed on 7mate on October 1, 2013, and on Seven Network on March 20, 2014, following Wesley's death.

Death Wesley Warren Jr. died at the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada on March 14, 2014, at the age of 50; a friend of Warren stated that he had been at the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada for five and a half weeks, and had had multiple heart attacks. His death was not tied to his reconstructive surgeries.