Should Boys be Circumcised?

Recommend (9) Comments (0)

While its origins have been lost in antiquity, we know circumcision was introduced into Western medicine during the mid-1800s to prevent masturbation. Since then, a host of “medical reasons” have been used to justify a practice most of the world has never considered or has long abandoned. The history of the medicalization of circumcision is astonishing:

•    1832 Dr. C-F Lallemand circumcises a patient to cure him of nocturnal emissions.
•    1845 Dr. Edward Dixon declares that circumcision cures and prevents masturbation.
•    1855 Dr. Jonathan Hutchinson publishes his theory that circumcision prevents syphilis.
•    1865 Dr. Nathaniel Heckford claims that circumcision cures epilepsy.
•    1870 Dr. Lewis Sayre declares circumcision cures epilepsy and prevents spinal paralysis.
•    1871 Dr. M. J. Moses declares that circumcised Jews are immune to masturbation.
•    1873 Dr. Joseph Bell announces his discovery that circumcision cures bedwetting.
•    1875 Dr. Lewis Sayre declares that the foreskin causes curvature of the spine, paralysis of the bladder, and clubfoot.

With the introduction of the germ theory, the excuse for circumcision was the prevention of germs, thus was born the hygiene fallacy.

During the 1930s, penile cancer, a rare disease that affects 1:100,000 elderly males, became the reason to circumcise. Yet, Japan, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, non-circumcising countries, have less penile cancer than the USA.

Cervical cancer, mistakenly attributed to smegma, became the excuse for circumcision during the 1950s. Cervical cancer is a sexually transmitted disease (STD) caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), best prevented by safe-sex practices.

STDs, the excuse of the 1960s, are best prevented with condoms.

When the 1970s saw challenges of routine medical practices, including tonsillectomies, radical mastectomies, episiotomies, and circumcision, medical excuses for circumcision were replaced by emotional ones: “He’ll look different from his father.” “He’ll be teased in the locker-room.”

The 1980s excuse was protection from urinary tract infections, which in actuality are often caused by aggressive “care” of the foreskin, and are easily treated with antibiotics.

The latest excuse for circumcision is protection from AIDS (based on three flawed African research studies), a dubious theory, considering that the USA has the highest rate of AIDS-infected circumcised males in the developed world.

AIDS has been curbed successfully in Thailand, Senegal, and Eastern Uganda by governments taking a strong leadership role, targeting commercial sex workers and the populace with an aggressive educational campaign, and distributing free condoms. Condoms are 95 times more cost-effective than circumcision. Promoting expensive circumcisions in a continent lacking adequate food, safe water, good hygiene, and modern medical facilities, is a deadly approach, likely to exacerbate the pandemic.

Africans are lining up to be circumcised, believing they will not need condoms. Others are being blamed for the pandemic and forcibly circumcised. Coerced or forced circumcision is unethical.

Rather than mutilate the organ of pleasure and procreation, promoting hygiene and safe sex is a more life-affirming and ethical approach.