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US Doctors Back Circumcision
ananyo writes "On 27 August, a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics concludes for the first time that, overall, boys will be healthier if circumcised. The report says that although the choice is ultimately up to parents, medical insurance should pay for the procedure. The recommendation, coming from such an influential body, could boost U.S. circumcision rates, which, at 55%, are already higher than much of the developed world. The researchers estimate that each circumcision that is not performed costs the U.S. health-care system $313."
The US has a health care system? This is news to me.
We were made this way for very good reasons, even if we don't understand them.
Imagine if somebody proposed the same thing for female infants. What would be the reaction?
Leave all minors alone. Let them decide when they turn 18.
We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone. -management
Is that over the price of doing the surgery?
Because from what I could find, it's in the 2-3k range; so if you have to pay $2000 to save $313, that might not be the best idea.
$313 is a small price to pay to not have one's privates butchered.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
Just practice good hygiene. How about we don't mutilate anyone's private parts against their will?
...is that they harp on the issues of UTIs and STDs/STIs. Those are things that are easily avoidable, and not at all the fault of having a foreskin. If baby gets a UTI, mommy and daddy need to do a better job cleaning baby up and cleaning baby sooner. If, as a man, the person has issues with STDs/STIs, well gee stop being a moron having unprotected/risky sex Einstein.
Trying to lump the added medical costs is the same. The costs brought on are not due to the foreskin, they are due to the creators of the baby, and/or the owner of the penis.
I'm not American, and I can't quite understand where does the custom in the US comes from. Is it religious in origin? I know muslims, jews and americans practice it, but that's about it. Does anyone know? As far as I know, it's not common at all on other countries.
Yes, because we all know that the American Academy of Pediatrics is in the pocket of Big Circumcision.
caritj.org
Removing the penis completely will provide significant savings in:
- UTI/STD related treatments
- Contraceptive costs
- Pregnancy related expenses
The problem is sex education in this country. How about leaving the foreskin and teaching boys how to take care of themselves and what to avoid?
As a man that suffers from sever penile insensitivity, presumably from my circumcision (which became infected due to poor practices at the hospital), I believe it is a useless, barbaric practice, almost akin to clitordectomies. Clitordectomies, by the way, are also known as female circumcisions. Coincidence?
If you want some of the truth about what a circumcision actually does I suggest reading the following:
http://www.norm.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreskin_restoration
Silence is a state of mime.
I'm forfeiting a mod point for this, sorry to whoever I modded up... The actual abstract of the actual paper backing up this claim (BOLD IS MINE):
IOW, no, we're not recommending anything, we're simply saying there are POTENTIAL medical benefits. Well there are potential medical benefits to getting my appendix removed, or my tonsils cut out, it doesn't mean I should be forced to make that decision.
Stupid journalists, we need to seriously trim the fat in that industry and start with these jackasses who misrepresent science for political gain.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
I for one would like to think they make pockets out of the leftover skin.
"Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead."
Pediatrics - Only concerned with the health of kids, not adults.
You may be physically healthier, on average, without your foreskin. Only if you're not taught about how to properly take care of it. (So the data, framed in this way, will say that circumcised boys are healthier because improperly cared for un-circumcised boys)
The real problem is a social phobia about teaching little boys how they are supposed to wash and care for their penis. Instead, we just cut off the foreskin so we don't have to deal with it. Touching your "penis" is bad, after all.
Later in life it leads to abnormal masturbation, reduced sexual pleasure, and reduced pleasure of your female partner. - This study conveniently ignores these issues because they're not about children.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_effects_of_circumcision Read down to the female preference and response section. 79% to 89% prefer circumcised based on the research quoted. So yes, they actually do.
We really need a "-1 Trying Desperately to Get That Image Out of My Head"
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
Penile cancer rates are not zero among circumcised and it's such a none issue as it's also incredibly rare among the un-circumcised too. The recent HIV studies are very poor, and quite frankly, bad science (the circed men were given condoms and extra counciling the others did not, and the study was cut short, thus skewing the data as there was a good period where the circed men had to heal up before engaging in sexual activity).
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
It depends on whom's facts you read:
The British Medical Association said it had no policy on the issue because of the “absence of unambiguously clear and consistent medical data on the implications of the intervention."
As far as I'm concerned if the evidence is so ambiguous after all this time then there's no necessity for the operation. Look at it this way if it prevents the spread of HIV then why is the infection level in the UK a third of that in the US in percentage terms yet circumcision in the UK is very tiny.
> Paid for by the "Protect the Appendix" campaign.
Educate yourself: the appendix serves as a haven for useful bacteria when illness flushes those bacteria from the rest of the intestines, and thereby helps maintain normal intestinal flora.
The article is also very light on numbers. It mentions a reduction in STIs and whatnot, but provides absolutely no quantitative data. How much are these infections and disorders decreased by? Are we talking a couple percentage points? Or dozens of percentage points? Furthermore, I don't see any definitive causes described. What I see is a correlation with some hypothesizing as to the cause but nothing which has actually been verified by scientific inquiry.
(Speaking as a man with a foreskin, who can't quite imagine what it would be like not to have one... uncomfortable?)
I occasionally see reports about circumcision affecting cancer outcomes, AIDS transmission, things like that.
What completely mystifies me, is the mechanics of these effects. Perhaps a foreskin can lead to increased transmission of AIDS. How? By what mechanism?
Which studies? Proponents of circumcision continuously invent a new reason circumcision is useful whenever the previous one is debunked. First it was to fight masturbation, then it was because it prevented penile cancer, then it was to prevent genital cancer among women, then it was because men would be too stupid to clean themselves if they were uncut, then it was to protect against AIDS. What will be the next reason, who knows but I'm sure they will invent one then say "prove me wrong".
Doctors pay dues to the AAP, not babies. Doctors make money off of cutting babies. You joke, but it is a HUGE industry - not just the operation, but afterwards the tissue is sold to make cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.
They're only in it for the tips.
Pull my finger for my public key.
I decided STDs weren't likely to be a significant threat to my infant son. If he wants to have part of himself chopped off when he turns sixteen, I'll give him all the info and support his choice. I think I can predict how it'll turn out, but I'm not kidding--I'll drive him to the hospital myself.
(And before anyone starts, the entire rest of the pro-circumcision argument revolves around an additional 9-per-thousand UTI infection rate. Yawn.)
Ask my penis. Specifically, ask my penis about the part that went missing 36 years ago.
Or, consider this:
Or, consider this: http://www.noharmm.org/images/snyder2.gif (graphic)
For more: http://www.noharmm.org/problem.htm
Beware of the Leopard.
The real problem is a social phobia about teaching little boys how they are supposed to wash and care for their penis. Instead, we just cut off the foreskin so we don't have to deal with it. Touching your "penis" is bad, after all.
Later in life it leads to abnormal masturbation, reduced sexual pleasure, and reduced pleasure of your female partner. - This study conveniently ignores these issues because they're not about children.
From TFA:
Perhaps the most powerful evidence in favour of circumcision comes from randomized controlled trials in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. These found that, for men who have sex with women, circumcision reduced the risk of infection with HIV. (No protection was observed for men who have sex with men.) The South African and Ugandan trials also found that circumcision reduced infection rates for human papillomavirus (HPV) and herpes. The World Health Organization has already made circumcision part of its HIV-prevention strategy in sub-Saharan Africa, with a goal to circumcise 20 million men by 2015.
The AAP found that, in addition to preventing sexually transmitted infections, circumcision could reduce the rates of urinary tract infections and penile cancer, probably because the foreskin harbours infectious microbes as well as the immune cells targeted by HIV.... The task force also found no strong evidence that circumcised babies grew up with more urinary difficulties or sexual problems.
So... yeah. Reduced infection rates in children and adults, and no strong evidence of sexual problems at all. It doesn't matter if you could stop infection through education on how to properly clean the penis. Hell, HIV could be stopped dead in a few generations if people stopped having sex with multiple partners and/or used condoms. But guess what? The world doesn't work like that, and a measure that can help prevent disease with very few side effects can and should be used to help stop disease. Hence, the recommendation.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Gah, another one. "Take away your studies and facts, I'm not listening, la la la la, I can't hear you..."
Go read it
From the 'Task Force' article:
There is fair evidence that men circumcised as adults demonstrate a higher threshold for light touch sensitivity with a static mono lament compared with uncircumcised men; these ndings failed to attain statistical signicance for most locations on the penis, however, and it is unclear that sensitivity to static monolament (as opposed to dynamic stimulus) has any relevance to sexual satisfaction.
And what does the actual article marked as source for this say:
The glans of the circumcised penis is less sensitive to fine touch than the glans of the uncircumcised penis. The transitional region from the external to the internal prepuce is the most sensitive region of the uncircumcised penis and more sensitive than the most sensitive region of the circumcised penis. Circumcision ablates the most sensitive parts of the penis..
I've never read 'an article' that as blatantly cherrypicks things supporting their view...
It is what it is.
US healthcare will pay for religious mutilation, but not for planned parenthood.
I think we've identified the core of what is wrong here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_effects_of_circumcision
Read down to the female preference and response section. 79% to 89% prefer circumcised based on the research quoted.
So yes, they actually do.
in Georgia and Iowa (US)...not exactly a widespread study
1) The AAP omitted the fact that the foreskin is an important part of male anatomy with specific sexual, sensory, and protective functions. How can the AAP possibly recommend removing part of the body when they won't even discuss its functions? (Google functions of the foreskin)
2) The AAP failed to address the ethical problems with amputating healthy tissue from a child without that child's consent. Doing so without absolute medical necessity is a violation of the child's basic human right to an intact body and the right to choose for himself when he is an adult.
3) HIV prevention is not a valid reason for circumcising an infant who is not sexually active. HIV is easily prevented in other, less invasive ways. Other modern nations are not endorsing circumcision as an HIV prevention method. To learn more see this handout from Intact America. Also, a recent study from Puerto Rico shows that circumcised men in that area have higher rates of HIV and other STDs than intact men.
4) The AAP cannot credibly say the benefits outweigh the risks since they don't have good data on what the risks are. Few good studies have been done on the risks of circumcision, and no state or national system exists for collecting adverse event reports. Further, very little data is available on long-term complications. Without solid data on the risks and long-term complications of circumcision, any conclusion which weighs benefits vs. risks, or benefits vs. cost, is fundamentally flawed.
5) The AAP is out of step with the statements from other countries. Other nations are moving away from newborn circumcision, even to the point of considering bans on newborn circumcision in some areas, but the AAP is moving in the opposite direction. This shows just now biased the AAP has become and that they are really just trying to justify an outdated practice rather than view the situation objectively. I hope that the AAP comes under international pressure to retract this new statement, as occurred with their ill-conceived female genital cutting statement a few years ago.
Mutilation of children's bodies is generally considered to be harmful, yes.
When you're talking about physically cutting into a baby's body, the burden of proof lies with those who would cut, not those who would not. Quoting from an above post:
The British Medical Association said it had no policy on the issue because of the “absence of unambiguously clear and consistent medical data on the implications of the intervention."
As far as I'm concerned if the evidence is so ambiguous after all this time then there's no necessity for the operation. Look at it this way if it prevents the spread of HIV then why is the infection level in the UK a third of that in the US in percentage terms yet circumcision in the UK is very tiny
In the UK, there is no financial incentive for doctors to mutilate children. I tend to trust their version of affairs, rather than those with a financial incentive (the doctor is paid for his time, and the hospital sells the tissue).
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
So is there something wrong with the study that you (or anyone else) can identify, or is this just presumptive cynicism?
caritj.org
Just because there isn't a proven causal relationship, doesn't mean that there isn't one.
More to the point... has circumcision ever been shown to be linked to something harmful?
Yes.
Circumcision is an unnecessary and mainly cosmetic surgery picked by parents because of tradition and/or religion. Recent attempts to find medical justification for its existence are both new and almost laughable. It's a penile "nose job" for a baby so the baby isn't potentially made fun of for being "different" later on.
Unfortunately, circumcision is a surgical procedure. And no matter how "routine" and "minor" a surgical procedure is, it's only "routine" and "minor" until something inevitably goes wrong. Rare, but horrible when it happens.
Promoting circumcisions to prevent STD transmission is the worst sort of self-serving justification. Why not promote mastectomies at puberty for girls to avoid the 1 in 7 chance of getting breast cancer during their lifetime? Or appendectomies for everyone? If your STD prevention strategy consists of promoting circumcision, instead of promoting safe sex education and prophylactic barrier distribution, your priorities are wildly skewed.
You really want your baby circumcised? Wait until he's 18, and give him the choice.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
This? "Male circumcision does not appear to adversely affect penile sexual function/sensitivity or sexual satisfaction."
This study seems to contradict that claim.
Clever signature text goes here.
Yep, one problem with the major African studies was the variation in follow-up support given. Another problem is the difficultly of doing randomized trials (anyone who can be convinced to have his penis surgically modified can probably also be convinced to follow your safe-sex directions.) Thirdly, double-blind trials concerning STDs are a little difficult to do when circumcision is visible to all.
The US studies have similar problems: when a circumcision has an average cost of around $350, the parents opting for the child's surgery tend to be richer and more able/willing to spend on health care for the child. You would expect circumcision to be correlated with benefits to every treatable medical condition.
"Doctors pay dues to the AAP"
A) It's not even most doctors. You don't need to be a member to be a pediatrician. So your premise is based on ignorance.
B) Dr.s don't make a lot of money from it.
C) So what? that in know way means the procedure is unnecessary.
What are you going to trot out next? the more babies die from it lie? It caused issues in adult life lie?
You're post is yet another system of critical thinking and science dying in America.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-case-for-neonatal-circumcision/#more-3310
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-kindest-cut/#more-431
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The world doesn't work like that, and a measure that can help prevent disease with very few side effects can and should be used to help stop disease.
Wow, nice. So because people act foolishly, everyone (that doesn't approve of it) must suffer? Please. The people dealing with HIV are usually dealing with the consequences of their own actions, but if we remove all foreskins, we punish everyone for their actions. Furthermore, plenty of people without foreskins do have HIV. A small increase in the chance of getting HIV/penile cancer is not worth punishing everyone over.
>>>my circumcised penis has been greeted with relief by a partner who found the natural look repulsive.
Interesting. If my "partner" said that my natural penis was repulsive, I would tell her that I'll circumcize my dick if she trims those ugly lips off her pussy (female circumcision). Fucking bitch. If the penis didn't need a foreskin, evolution would not have put it there.
For that matter why does God make his followers cut it off? Did God make a mistake when he put the foreskin on the male? Hmmm. But he's supposed to be flawless.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
THE STUPID. IT HURTS!
You mean the same “studies” that called the spleen or even the tonsils “useless” for decades, just because they didn't know the use? Until they realized that the spleen is the standing army (!) of the immune system. (And the tonsils are your front entry guards.)
The place where white blood cells reside, that learned to defend your body against past threats.
Yeeeah, totally useless. Let's remove it. We're totally not arrogant dicks with a god complex for acting like that...
Hell, how stupid do you have to be, to not see that obviously, there’s a reason we have the foreskin, since otherwise those without it would have long won natural selection.
All the arguments here are complete bullshit.
The "disease hazard" one: How the hell is it expecting to much, to pull back your foreskin and wash your dick once, every 1-2 days?? How is that a disease hazard and a justification in the first place?? And how, going by that logic, don't they also recommend removing your asshole, bowels, mouth and nose? Those are even more prone to be full of bad germs.
The uselessness one: I guess you never had one, and weren’t even given a choice to experience it. Because otherwise you'd know, that at least 1. it keep the glans lightly humid... which is its natural healthy state, and 2. protects it.
It's the same thing as a vagina, which also has a special humid fauna/climate as the normal state. Hell, it even is the same damn fucking tissue! What's so hard about this??
What kind of fucked up mind do you have to have, to go: "Well, considering it's a integral part of your body, evolved over millions of years, it clearly must be completely useless."?
So shut the fuck up with your blatant thought-terminating chlichees, if you can't even bring up actual arguments! Only idiots life FOX news pound on "facts" and "fair and balanced". Because he has no fucking idea of the difference between a observation, a hypothesis, a theory, and communication of bullshit.
I wish your whole damn backwards wasteland would just go ahead, and cut the Internet, so you can live your dream of The Dark Ages 2.0!
Did they account for the fact that devout Muslim and Christian men are more likely to be circumcised, and therefore, less likely to be promiscuous? Correlation does not equal causation.
The purpose of the foreskin is to protect the glans. Without this protection the glans toughens and loses sensitivity to compensate. I don't know why you complain about perceived inconvenience, cleaning your junk isn't supposed to be a huge ordeal. It's part of basic personal hygiene most people do every day like brushing their teeth.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Fuck off. Read the studies; the disfiguring argument is bullshit when you consider that your "natural figure" might well be harboring virii that give your wife/mate cancer.
YOU should read the studies - they're laughable bullshit.
Is there some evidence that Muslim and Christian men are less promiscuous? I would be very surprised to learn if that were true.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
US doctors "back circumcision" because you can't bill for not circumcising.
Heck, how do you expect them to pay for their school loans and make the monthly note on that new Audi A8?
Until they can afford to become partners in that lab so they can get a piece of all the tests they refer, they've got to find some way to scrape by, you know?
The US health care system started going into a tailspin about the time doctors decided that it wasn't enough to be upper middle class any more. It wasn't enough to have the nicest house in the nicest part of town, they had to have a boat and a jet and a house in Santa Lucia or it just wasn't worth it.
When you see the levels of Medicare fraud perpetrated by doctors (higher than the level of pedophilia among priests) it's easy to lose respect for this once highly-respected profession. Nowadays, I'm actually relieved when I learn my doctor is South Asian or African or South American, because American doctors all seem like they'd rather be derivatives traders. Of course, the cockamamie system of third-party health insurance contributes to the sleazification of doctors, but a big part of the blame lays with the type of person who believes a medical degree is a license to print money and nothing more.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Report of the task force on circumcision
Male circumcision for HIV prevention in men in Rakai, Uganda: a randomised trial
Just the first 2 links from scholar.google.com
A very large recent study in Europe found 1/10 having short term complications with circumcision and 1/1000 having suffering serious permanent problems. 1/1000 is not large enough to forbid adults from getting it if they want to, but it is large enough that it has been forbidden on children in Germany and under evaluation for being forbidden in several other countries.
Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201109/more-circumcision-myths-you-may-believe-hygiene-and-stds
See also: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201109/myths-about-circumcision-you-likely-believe http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201109/more-circumcision-myths-you-may-believe-hygiene-and-stds http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201109/circumcision-social-sexual-psychological-realities http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201109/the-ethics-and-economics-circumcision http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201110/what-is-the-greatest-danger-uncircumcised-boy http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201110/why-continue-harm-boys-ignorance-male-anatomy
Perl Programmer for hire
You do realize that the rate of penile cancer among men is almost zero, period?
Penile cancer is incredibly rare and linked to an infection that results from bad hygiene.
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Hey, we can also reduce breast cancer by cutting them off after childbearing age. Who's up for that?
Three studies in Africa several years ago that claimed that circumcision prevented AIDS and that circumcision was as effective as a 60% effective vaccine (Auvert 2005, 2006). These studies had many flaws, including that they were stopped before all the results came in.
See http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201109/more-circumcision-myths-you-may-believe-hygiene-and-stds
Perl Programmer for hire
The task force also found no strong evidence that circumcised babies grew up with more urinary difficulties or sexual problems.
Did they actually bother to ask them about this properly? Because an awful lot of the studies which proponents of systematic circumcision have come up with to prove that circumcised men have managed to screw this up. (For instance, the African studies asked men about their level of satisfaction with their sex life - something like 99% of all men rated their sex lives as "very good", which doesn't exactly make for a terribly sensitive measure of how it affected them.) Meanwhile, a very clever Danish study found that not only did circumcised men have more difficulty orgasming, their female partners had a whole bunch more problems than the partners of uncircumcised men.
Now, female circumcision, which we call genital mutilation but it's also called by that term (yes, I know it's much worst than male circumcision, I'm not stupid) it's barbaric because it's the others (some Islamic fundamentalists) that do it.
I hope you do realise that in some centuries, everyone will look back at us and state that this is a barbaric act of religious zealotry, just like we do about so many things in mankind's history.
The "less AIDS argument" actually holds up in third world countries where there is no access to health care, less hygienic practices, and less education.
It doesn't hold up here in America. There may be like 1-5 cases of the extra foreskin actually causing HIV to be contracted when without it the virus didn't contract - there may be none at all. In all seriousness, the studies cited were not done in the developed world.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
At the risk of conclusive proof of the real life identity behind this UID. It's a bit lengthly. tl;dr: The AAP did this before in 1986. Nobody cares about all the years the AAP has recommended against it. The AAP will likely reverse its position in a few years. There is no new evidence, not any more than there was in 1983 when they recommended against, not any more than in 1986 when they recommended for, not any more in 1992 (iirc, didn't look that one up) through 2005 when.they recommended against, not any more in 2012 when they recommended for.
More tl;dr (it really probably is tl if this is stil tl;dr): Once removed, the foreskin can never be restored. I've been permanently harmed and since slashdot knows I'm already trans, my doctor and I screwed up in thinking that the pain I was feeling was because I was trans. No other trans person I've spoken to has reported the same pain, but I didn't know I was circumcised when I started HRT, so I figured it was related to my gender issue, not a genital mutilation that had been forced on me.
And also even bring up the subject of female genital mutilation when everybody's ready to lop off foreskins for a 0.005 change (1.7% to 1.2% or something like that) in the rate of UTI and watch everybody lose their minds. A comment I made on NPR.org about a position the AAP took in 2010 regarding proposing a protocol for female circumcision was removed for violating their community rules.
So here goes!
And yes, I was in actual physical pain, and I throught that was completely natural and just part of getting wood, and yes, I really did not know I was circumcised until my early twenties. Oh, and before you go diagnosing my aches and pains, note that my doctor didn't even consider it. Either that means that the first person to diagnose me with something is an idiot, or the fact that my doctor didn't even know about it speaks volumes about our ignorance of male genital mutilation and the side-effects.
To whom it may concern,
I'm writing in response to your reporting of the American Academy of Pediatrics' (AAP) recent flip-flop of their opinion of what body parts men do or don't have the right to keep. I'm calling it a flip-flop, because that's what it is. Typically, the AAP releases reports recommending that male infants should not be circumcised. However, every now and then, they dig up evidence to justify reversing their opinion. I would not be surprised if within a few years, they go back to their usual position of opposing the practice of routine infant genital mutilation for both males and females.
There are two things that discussions of circumcision evoke: jerking knees and giggles. When it's female genitals we're talking about, it's always jerking knees. In 2010, the American Academy of Pediatrics came under fire for attempting to put a protocol in place for satisfying certain parents' desires to have their infant daughter's clitoris poked with a pin. I referenced this in a post to the comments on the article on your webpage along with their reasoning for attempting to create a framework for this otherwise barbaric act, and my comment was promptly removed. Perhaps the moderator thought in some hysterical misreading of my comment that I was in support of female genital mutilation.
Then there are the giggles and the kink when we're talking about penises. The word \emph{penis} is a favorite of immature internet humor. Let's get this out of the way right here, because I am very serious.
Too much of the debate centers on sexual pleasure. Fortunately, because of a fluke that happened when I was circumcised, I won't need to worry about knowing even the pleasures of a healthy circumcised man, because all I know is pain.
Additionally, this is about more than sexual pleasure or giggles at the word \emph{penis}. This is about my human right to have an intact body. We seem to be overly sensitive to concerns of female welfare, even purely psychological concerns, but we are ever so dismi
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
"...but when you rub it, it becomes a suitcase."
Big! Strong! Wow! Tada-O!
trims those ugly lips off her pussy (female circumcision).
You're thinking of labiaplasty. Female "circumcision" involves the removal of the clitoris.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
I am a parent. Holding my newborn daughter in the hospital room, singing to her some of the songs we had played for her when she was in my wife's belly, trying unsuccessfully to choke back the tears of joy and amazement as I gazed into her eyes -- it was without a doubt the most amazing experience of my life. The idea of subjecting that beautiful, fragile, and innocent baby to the kind of trauma and pain that circumcision entails is something I could never dream of doing. Honestly, I'd rather walk into traffic or jump off a building.
And that's not even touching the logical arguments against circumcision, which are pretty much airtight.
In fact good sex ed works: Europe has lower HIV infection rates than the US.
This whole thing is basically "genital mutilation of children is fine because we can cut on education". Amusing fact: female circumcision will similarly risk rates. Will you support it?
The benefits are tiny (and only for adults), and the risks significant (for the kids). Also, what about the right of children to bodily integrity? If an adult wants to be circumcised, this is fine, of course, but this decision, so soon on the back of the German court decision? That reeks of religious lobbying.
The three WHO Africa studies did not survive review:
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/05/when-bad-science-kills-or-how-to-spread-aids/
http://www.publichealthinafrica.org/index.php/jphia/article/view/jphia.2011.e4/html_9
Not application:
http://www.theafricareport.com/index.php/20120711501815186/southern-africa/zimbabwe-concern-over-high-hiv-rates-among-circumcised-males-501815186.html
http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs/pdf/CR22/CR22.pdf (botton of p135)
Also, infection of men by heterosexual sex is the least important transmission vector in the West, nor does circumcision apparently influence the infection of women by men:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60998-3/abstract
Besides, how rational is it to tell men that they must be circumcised to prevent HIV, but afterwards they still need condoms to be protected from STDs?
Females have the exact-same problems with their pussy as males. In fact I'd say it's worse. If she doesn't properly clean it, she might get urinary tract infection. Which can be a precursor to cervical cancer.
Oh and let's not forget breasts. 5% of women will develop breast cancer..... that's a much higher rate than the 0.01% of men that develop penal cancer.
So let's cure that problem that same way we lop off penis tips. That's right. Lop off the breast buds for female infants, so they never need fear getting breast cancer. Oh. I see a look of horror on your face. You should have that same look at the thought of mutilating little boys (as they scream in pain & blood spills on the hospital sheets).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
There already have been two longer replies to the AAP's statement:
http://www.circumcision.org/aap.htm
http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/pdf/2012-08-26A_Commentary.pdf
Their most important points:
1. The AAP chose to overblow purported benefits by cherry-picking studies and advertising their results past their proportionality, misleading the public with doublespeak of "pro" while admitting circumcision still does not qualify as routine amputation.
2. The AAP omitted both contradicting studies and objections to those it used, such as to the three WHO HIV studies.
3. The AAP omitted any discussion of the foreskin's functionality and notice of possible complications after circumcision (incl. death, an estimated 117 boys in the US per year).
One could think they felt the heat as one national agency resp. adviser after another rejected or even condemned infant circumcision.
What forced? They, based on aggregate data, say that circumcision is slightly healthier than no circumcision. By their data, that appears to be true. Now you can say that other things work better or reduce the difference, and that' very well may be true. But as people behave right now, they find it to have a health benefit. Do with that data what you want.
"[W]ith regard to circumcision, one of the reasons for it is, in my opinion, the wish to bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a weakening of the organ in question, so that this activity be diminished and the organ be in as quiet a state as possible. [] How can natural things be defective so that they need to be perfected from outside, all the more because we know how useful the foreskin is for that member? [] The Sages, may their memory be blessed, have explicitly stated: "It is hard for a woman with whom an uncircumcised man has had sexual intercourse to separate from him." In my opinion this is the strongest of the reasons for circumcision."
http://books.google.com/books?id=SF6fbjNe0yYC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=%22decrease+in+sexual+intercourse+and+a+weakening+of+the+organ+in+question%22
Yes, and saving lives is a gigantic industry too. Simply ascribing a profit potential to an activity should not be enough to make it suspicious by itself.
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/statistics/penile.htm
The rate of HPV assisted Penile Cancer in the US among the various demographics of men ranges from .4 per 100,000 for Asian / Pacific Islander to .8 per 100,000 white males, up to 1.3 per 100,000 for Hispanic males. If that's your justification for circumcision (and it's totally fine if it is) you're taking some strong proactive steps against a fairly slight risk.
http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/PenileCancer/DetailedGuide/penile-cancer-key-statistics
Per year, 1570 *cases* are diagnosed, and roughly 310 men die of penile cancer. You quite literally have a 99.9999% chance of never being diagnosed with penile cancer.
So, aside from the cancer part, the overall message re: Penis isn't much different from owning a gun "Take care of it, keep it clean, and use it safely." (also, don't point it at your eye, it might go off.) It hurts me a bit to see people running around like Thomas Dolby with Echolalia yelling "SCIENCE!" in every instance of X > Y. You're right, the numbers certainly side with science. But the data provided also says that, in the Western world where things like soap and running water aren't privileges, you're pretty much (as in 99%+) OK either way, at least until the boy hits an age where a responsible parent can instill care and handling procedures to prevent later issues like STD's.
(as an aside, there is at least the smallest shred of financial incentive for Doctors to perform circumcisions in the US, but that isn't part of a grand "strip 'em and clip 'em" conspiracy, it's a fundamental flaw in the system. Somewhere along the line it was determined that insurance will pay for it, ergo it gets done. My 84 year old grandmother with cmphysema and congestive heart failure was put on Lipitor the last time she was admitted. Her cholesterol wasn't the problem, Smoking for 70+ years was. As the Doctor bluntly put it, the main reason was "Medicare will pay for it." There was was slight medical benefit. But, for the most part, it was a money move. If you try and break that cycle, though, people start screaming about "Death Panels." Sigh....)
This isn't in the same ballpark as say, not getting your kids a whooping cough vaccine. So help me if I find those fuckers at daycare who sent their little outbreak monkeys in....
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Women also prefer vibrators, which are typically associated with more powerful orgasms. In fact penises are responsible for far less occurrences of sexual stimulation in women than the other leading stimulation techniques. However, You can call me a selfish prick, but I'm keeping my damn dick.
Where's the punishment? The research shows that there is no punishment. There's no loss of sensation -- in fact, men with adult circumcisions report that sex is BETTER afterwards. (RTFS). Its all upside and no real downside other than complications in the procedure itself, which are rare in infants.
Unless I'm entirely mistaken, the specific studies in question are the African studies which your links rely on as proof that circumcision reduces HIV infection. (All three studies were conducted by the same group over the same time period and use the same methodology; I suspect that if they didn't get good enough results they were planning to pool them in one study.) The circumcised men were instructed not to have sex for the first two months of the 12-month study period whereas the control group were allowed to; in addition, because all men were given free condoms and advice on safer sex at every visit but the circumcised men had more follow-up visits the circumcised group had better access to both condoms and advice.
The APA article your links bases their claims on is also misleading in other ways. For example, the 3 randomised trials were not exactly " consistent with previous ecological and observational studies in Africa, Europe, and the United States" - as I recall the observational studies showed much larger benefits (and in fact the more robust the studies are, the smaller the effect seems to be). The Ugandan trial also couldn't actually show that "the protective effect of circumcision increased with longer time from surgery" as they claim because there was no control group after 12 months and therefore not a sliver of evidence that the decrease in HIV infection rates over time had anything to do with circumcision whatsoever; while didn't stop the researchers from claiming it as a benefit from circumcision and even extrapolating the decrease out into the distant future and prominently quoting the extrapolated figures in their abstract, they had no basis for those claims whatsoever.
Also, the bit about "Male circumcision and HIV protection among MSM have not been studied as well as heterosexual transmission" is weasel-worded bullshit - we've studied this to death even after study after study showed no benefit, and subsequent studies have still shown no benefit. The lack of evidence for it working has nothing to do with lack of research - we've researched it plenty and it just doesn't work. Furthermore, notice how they dismiss all the studies showing that circumcision doesn't affect the risk of men transmitting HIV to their female partners and cherry-pick some that do; in practice things may be even worse because studies that were showing early signs of concluding that it actually increased the risk to female partners have been terminated early for getting undesirable results!
Not to mention correlation does not equal causation so we have no idea if the men they chose had other factors that weren't considered.
Hell the wiki on correlation has a medical study that said women that take birth control were at less risk for heart disease but a further study showed those women actually had a HIGHER risk but since they were from a higher socioeconomic group than the women without birth control it was the much better diet and exercise habits that skewed the results.So I'd say before we can give an answer either way further more controlled studies should be done.
And finally I have to wonder how much of the problem isn't western taboos about talking to kids about their genitals. Lets face it like any other part of the body children need to be taught to clean the area correctly and thoroughly but we here in the west are so hung on the idea that little John or Jane may actually play with themselves I seriously doubt any of the kids were being givern a proper education in such matters.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Same way as you'd explain the health benefits of male circumcision. Observational studies using the same methodology as the ones on male circumcision found that female circumcision was similarly effective at preventing HIV infection amongst women as male circumcision was amongst men. The research community has just chosen not to believe or act on this for reasons that are entirely political and have nothing to do with the evidence. (On the other hand, studies have found that male circumcision is totally ineffective at preventing HIV infection amongst men's female partners, but the scientific community has ignored this and chosen to proceed with it as a method of preventing HIV infection amongst women anyway.)
You get dick blisters.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It does have the same "benefits". There were observational studies in African countries of female circumcision just like the ones of male circumcision, and they found that female circumcision caused roughly the same reduction in HIV infection amongst women as male circumcision did amongst men. It's just that the researchers chose to assume that reduction was due to confounding factors and should be ignored rather than charging in and launching a badly-conducted RCT. There was no reason to conclude that confounding factors were any more likely for female than male circumcision, except distaste for one that didn't apply to the other.
I don't get why people are trying SO DAMN HARD to make it okay.
Guilt and possibly shame. If it wasn't necessary or useful then they mutilated their son(s) for no reason, or they were mutilated for no reason. It's really simple if you think about it. They are simply protecting their self image.
how many infants agreed to be circumsised?
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
I had it done later in life and that is bullshit. The majority of sensation is on either side of the scar and the tip is greatly reduced after the skin roughens.
Uh, washing anyone? Those of you without foreskins seem to be desperately defending circumcision to justify the decision your parents or their pediatrician made, but the foreskin is just a bit of skin. It is not some impenetrable barrier! It's like saying, I can't get at my teeth to clean them so i must have my lips surgically removed. Jeez, some of you smart people are devilish stupid at times. Glad my kids still have their foreskins. They are whole and unscarred and know how to clean themselves. How about you? When did you last have a shower?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I am circumcised, and I say with no hesitation that circumcised penises look grotesque, abnormal, and defective. To be circumcised is to live in an antinatural state.
Circumcision is child abuse.
My wife works at a rehabilitation/ nursing home and the women there all agree uncircumcised is gross
If I'm ever desperate enough to bang your wife, maybe I'll start caring what she thinks.
>>>How dare you call their health choice "mutilation"?
If I remove my breasts myself, it's an elective choice and perfectly legal. If it's done by somebody who holds me down and carves up my breasts with a knife, the law calls it "mutilation" because it was an involuntary act.
We should not be cutting off little boy's penis tips or little girl's breast buds, and I don't care if doing so would prevent penile cancer or breast cancer. The decision should wait until they are old enough to make the decision as legal adults.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
They're sexually mutilating children. Children are incapable of giving consent.
I find it so ironic that when Arabs do it to little girls, they're evil monsters, but when Jews do it to little boys, it's considered perfectly acceptable.
Sick, sick people.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Where's the punishment? The research shows that there is no punishment. There's no loss of sensation -- in fact, men with adult circumcisions report that sex is BETTER afterwards. (RTFS). Its all upside and no real downside other than complications in the procedure itself, which are rare in infants.
You truly believe that taking skin that used to be protected at all times against friction except during the sexual act and having it rub continuously against the fabric of your clothes isn't going to reduce sensation?
Are you retarded?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Not to be cynical or anything, but the studies were done by a group with a vested interested in promoting this lucrative surgical procedure.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
If the penis didn't need a foreskin, evolution would not have put it there.
I object to the reasoning here. Evolution doesn't really work like that. There are plenty of features that are there not because they're important currently. Male nipples, for example, are not an evolved feature. They're there because of constraints on evolution according to Gould. Foreskins being present doesn't mean they MUST have a purpose.
Not to say they do NOT have a purpose, just evolution doesn't mean everything has a real reason to be there.
I also would guess that a creationist would have problems with your last statement, but I'm okay with people mangling creationist ideas, so carry on. I might buy a bumper sticker with that on it if you're selling.
Wildman & Wildman (1976) surveyed 55 young women in Georgia, US, where most men are circumcised, and reported that 47 (89%) of respondents preferred the circumcised penis (the remainder preferred the noncircumcised penis).[41] Williamson et al. (1988) studied randomly selected young mothers in Iowa, where most men are circumcised, and found that 76% would prefer a circumcised penis for achieving sexual arousal through viewing it.[42]
A sample size of 55 all from Georgia is hardly representative of the normal population. What would be really interesting is a survey done on women on whether they can even distinguish an erect, circumcised penis from one that is erect and not circumcised. When the penis is erect, the foreskin is naturally pulled back and an uncircumcised penis will not look that much different from a circumcised one.
I don't think it's surprising that belief systems affect behaviour. As many Muslim men live in conservative theocracies the society itself provides pressure to be less promiscuous so I think the AC's point stands, it is a tricky thing to remove in a study.
Relatedly, reference 93 of the study (" Risk of HIV infection [...] is lower among homeless Muslim men in Kolkata") suggests they equated circumcision with being Muslim, so accounting for behavioural differences between Muslims and non-Muslims would be necessary.
A lot of us depend on tips to get by.
This 2012, we have a vaccine for HPV. There no way this should reasonably be a part of the debate at this point.
Infants become adults later in life. Adults who may have opted not to have an irreversible procedure to remove part of their genetals if it were up to them. What kind of parents would opt for something like that? Bad ones. That a board of pediatricians would recommend circumcision over a supposed savings of $300 or so in health costs is outrageous! Especially as the procedure has horrible side-effects. It just goes to show how little we value individual sovereignty these days. Apparently it's worth less than $300.
Here's some numbers for you:
If we circumcise 100 infants, at a cost of $33,000, we prevent 1 case of urinary tract infection, at a cost of $100 for a doctor's visit and penicillin regimen.
Obviously we can see which of the doctors and patients benefit from this arrangement...
The real path to male liberation
That is a often repeated meme, but no, its the same thing with basically the same result. Female circumcision does reduce incidents of urinary tract infections similarly, and since the pleasure is taken out of it, they're less promiscuous and have a far lower rate of STDs.
Does that make it right? No!
And for the record, your ignorance shows...no FGM practices mutilate the vagina, rather they amputate the labia and the clitoris or the clitoral hood.
The real path to male liberation
Post-hoc rationalization.
A few points:
- I would rather have the penis I was born with, which would now include not a 'small ribbon' but an area of skin with the approximate surface area of an index card
- There are far less invasive treatments for penile cancer than the removal of the entire penis
But... becoming a girl because you have cancer and lose your penis? Are you for real? It's funny you mention that though, because there's a notable case where circumcision itself did destroy the penis of an infant, and in attempt to fix things they performed gender reassignment surgery (though doomed sexually for life), put the kid on hormones and raised him as a girl. Problem was, he never identified as a girl, and some decades after learning the truth about what happened to him, killed himself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
But yep, the science behind the procedure is bulletproof. Except when it isn't.
And to your assertion of cognitive dissonance, I have not experienced this. To the contrary I have found that people will go to any length to convince themselves that they have not been harmed when it's very obvious they have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Christian men are more likely to be circumcised
Which is quite insane, when you take in account that Christianity is strongly OPPOSED to circumcision:
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. -- Galatians 5
Circumcision is child abuse.
Some naysayers mention that the kids on the other side of the fence did get some disease one day, even though they are nail nail-circumcised. That's because their parents let them play everywhere. They should practice playground-abstinence like my kids, and put on their preservahand gloves when they go to school.
Sneak teach kids Algebra using a game
...USrael!!! Seriously, circumcision? In EU the circumcision rates are amazingly low, and yet I do not see such huge problems. Circumcision is a religious practice, and as such has no room in scientific discussion. Much like Creationism in schools! Oh wait...
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
From Nicework there above who did some nice work in bringing some other info to this discussion:
------------------
There already have been two longer replies to the AAP's statement:
http://www.circumcision.org/aap.htm [circumcision.org]
http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/pdf/2012-08-26A_Commentary.pdf [doctorsopp...cision.org]
Their most important points:
1. The AAP chose to overblow purported benefits by cherry-picking studies and advertising their results past their proportionality, misleading the public with doublespeak of "pro" while admitting circumcision still does not qualify as routine amputation.
2. The AAP omitted both contradicting studies and objections to those it used, such as to the three WHO HIV studies.
3. The AAP omitted any discussion of the foreskin's functionality and notice of possible complications after circumcision (incl. death, an estimated 117 boys in the US per year).
I'm circumcised and I FUCKING HATE IT. It was done when I was aged two and I remember the pain after the operation. I have so little sensitivity that sex with a condom is a total waste of time for me. If anyone suggested that females have their clitoral hood removed and their clitoris exposed there would be an outrage. LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE and let them choose when they are 18.
a) The chances of your circumcision being botched leaving serious, permanent dysfunction are higher than the reduction in AIDS risk.
b) Your risk of AIDS is highly lifestyle dependent. The western world isn't Uganda, most people simply aren't at risk. Why can't people who chose risky lifestyles also choose to be circumcised, as adults? Why do we presume all babies are guilty...?
c) All the medical studies in favor of circumcision are written by people who make money from it. The only study you need is the observation that Europe isn't some aids infested den of rotting, cancerous dicks.
d) Masturbation with/without foreskin? Foreskin is best, no contest. Modern circumcision was actually started by the anti-masturbation movements in the 1900s to remove the pleasure from wanking (headed by Doctor Kellogg no less - the guy who invented cornflakes). Think about that before chopping.
No sig today...
The article is also very light on numbers. It mentions a reduction in STIs and whatnot, but provides absolutely no quantitative data. How much are these infections and disorders decreased by? Are we talking a couple percentage points? Or dozens of percentage points? Furthermore, I don't see any definitive causes described. What I see is a correlation with some hypothesizing as to the cause but nothing which has actually been verified by scientific inquiry.
From my POW this issue is rather simple. Evolution put foreskins on the human male for a reason. If foreskins were really an evolutionary handicap and men with foreskins suffer from health problems one would expect this feature to have evolved out of the human gene-pool a long time ago if only because proto-human females would presumably have selected for males with smaller foreskins hundreds of thousands of years ago in Africa way before the invention of loincloths. I don't give a damn about statistics, religious commandments or studies illustrating the 'hygienic benefits' of circumcision. Mutilating the genitals of children, both male and female, is wrong and let's face it that is all that circumcision really is, genital mutilation. If a child then then grows up to be an adult and decides it wants to go to a surgeon and have its genitals circumcised for cultural, religions, psychological or legitimate medical reasons such a decision is that persons own business.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
"each circumcision that is not performed costs the U.S. health-care system $313"
NO. It costs the US health care system's customers $313. I think that $313 is a small price to pay for my child getting to grow up with unmutilated genitals.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Just so you know, we look at your obsession with slicing up little boys' penises, shake our heads sadly, and lump you in with equally "developed" nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
You do it because Abraham did it. Don't dress it up in science, you're just embarrassing us all with the pretence.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
You mean, by urologists?
Every specialist in the field benefits from publications that advances that field. Circumcision is very light surgery, it's not a brain surgery. I doubt it contributes much to the income of urologists.
Nowadays there is an alarming trend of doing everything under general anesthesia, which of course makes it more expensive.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
a) The chances of your circumcision being botched leaving serious, permanent dysfunction are higher than the reduction in AIDS risk.
b) Your risk of AIDS is highly lifestyle dependent. The western world isn't Uganda, most people simply aren't at risk. Why can't people who chose risky lifestyles also choose to be circumcised, as adults? Why do we presume all babies are guilty...?
c) All the medical studies in favor of circumcision are written by people who make money from it. The only study you need is the observation that Europe isn't some aids infested den of rotting, cancerous dicks.
d) Masturbation with/without foreskin? Foreskin is best, no contest. Modern circumcision was actually started by the anti-masturbation movements in the 1900s to remove the pleasure from wanking (headed by Doctor Kellogg no less - the guy who invented cornflakes). Think about that before chopping.
Thank you! The existence of Europe (and possibly South America and Asia--not sure what their policies are) alone trivializes TFA. But a country full of fat people arguing for mandatory circumcision to save a few bucks on health care (while ensuring an extra $500 or so in medical costs for 1/2 of all births) is like pushing your car to work to save on gas. If you want to save money on healthcare, put a $5 flat tax on all fast food items like many states have done with cigarettes. This circumcision nonsense is the male mirror of the HPV vaccine/cervical cancer debate from a few years ago. Shockingly, the manufacturer of the vaccine thought it was absolutely crucial to vaccinate all girls... because it (might) lower their chances of getting cervical cancer... and save money or whatever... think of the children!
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
The less AIDS argument does not hold up. Full fucking stop.
Circumcision have always been in look for a reason. It have always been heralded as the 'cure' for whatever was the big malady of the times. Since it's beginnings in the western world back in Victorian ages it was a means to prevent male masturbation. Then during the first and second wars it was the cure for venereal diseases. Now is the cure for AIDS, etc. And penile cancer is one of the most rare forms of cancer, and we don't perform mastectomies on baby girls which have a much higher cancer incidence, right? The fact is that it have never been the cure for anything and it have more complications and dangers than any of the claimed benefits. Whether circumcision is good or bad is not really the issue. The bottom line is that it's really NOT the parent's choice, they only have an OBLIGATION to keep and maintain the boys body integrity until the time he is old enough to make an informed decision whether circumcision is for him or not! When my two sons were born I made the decision not to inflict the pain an torture of circumcision. So I fought hard against relatives and the hospital staff to make sure those boys would leave the hospital with all their parts intact. There was never an issue, never an infection, no nothing. Just the way nature intended with a fully functional anatomy. And as they become adults, they can make THEIR OWN decision of what is best for them. What is a baby is born from parents who are into tattoos, piercings and other forms of body modifications. Does that also gives them the right to 'choose' to perform these modifications on their children? Circumcision is a form of body modification, it's cruel, barbaric, butchery, mutilation and a form of child abuse. What we need is a better medical system where money and big profits are not the deciding factor in medical decisions. For more information about the truth about circumcision and it's complications please visit http://www.intactamerica.org/
The recommendations are retarded. 1 in 1,000,000 vs. 3 in 1,000,000 chance of cancer.
Sorry but without statistical and systematic errors those numbers are meaningless and, for all the information presented, could be the same within errors. Even if those were included the incredible rarity and complexity of accounting for all non-circumcision related effects probably mean that there is no meaningful way to determine whether there is a significant difference. For example the US has a far higher circumcision rate than Europe but a lower rate of penile cancer there might be due to any one of a number of as-yet-uninvestigated causes given the differences in lifestyle and diet.
This is part of the problem: the science so far is contradictory and inconclusive. The fact that different medical associations come up with opinions in line with their cultural beliefs is clear evidence of this. However, in general if there is no clear, obvious evidence of a medical benefit to a procedure you would not have it done. If this procedure was not being pushed by two major world religions and the culture of a large first world country there would be no controversy and nobody would be arguing that it should be carried out.
Even when the decisions are medically unnecessary?
What if I thought it would be wise to have my child's earlobes amputated? By your logic, that woule be fine. Just useless skin, right? So you think the parents should be able to have them amputated from their child?
How many bitch about it later in life?
I'm sure if they had full memory of the traumatic experience of having their genitals mutilated they'd probably bitch about it a lot more.
People don't complain about what happened in their infancy because memory only goes back so far. That doesn't mean you can just do what you like to babies.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
I don't think anesthetic is typically used in infant circumcision. Infants can't talk, but their screaming indicates it probably hurts a lot. And the terror is probably worse than the pain.
Good point, but remember that this is for a largely cosmetic procedure performed normally on infants who are not capable of consenting to the risks. And how does this decision compare to the outlawing of drop side cribs which killed a dozen or so kids over the course of a decade?
If urinary tract infections were the only danger I would agree with you.
And how many of those other scary dangers you cite are of significance for small children under the age of consent?
"Because it's part of our ancient supertition" was never a good excuse for genital mutilation, either.
It has nothing to do with "hatred of Jews". It has to do with hatred for ignorance, superstition, and mutilation. I disagree with anyone guilty of those things, no matter what religion. Nice try at the automatic "anti-semite" smear, though. Of course anyone who disagrees with what Jews do must automatically be a Jew-hater. How's that eternal persecution complex doing?
For thousands of years your ancestors were ignorant, superstitious savages. Nice job keeping up their ignorant, superstitious, savage traditions. And, yes, there are plenty of other, NON-Jewish people I feel the same way about. Lots of non-jews also maintain ignorant, superstitious, and savage traditions. So don't get your panties in a bunch: you just aren't that special.