Parents face so many difficult decisions when it comes to having a child: decisions about nursing, sleep patterns, discipline, teaching methods and, in the case of boys, whether or not to circumcise. In addition to being the most common surgery for males in the U.S., circumcision has been practiced in various cultures for centuries. Yet when it comes to the health and best interest of your newborn, is circumcision the way to go?
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HPV vaccine. Yes, true science and technology overcomes ignorance and superstition one way or another.
Yet wait - we're in the Forest of Imagination. Do you hear the sound by Inspiration's Spring that feeds the Saving Pond where 3 frogs on lily pads call, "We're doomed!" "Take heed," they say, "For we are here to cure another woe. You will be healed." Of this new woe I do not know, but I remember them from, 'long, long ago,' and they have returned as always to lead us to safety. And all will proclaim, "They serve their Master well." Hallelujah we're saved today as yesterday for in the past frogs have saved me from:
Commercial break. To be continued:
- DevilDocRetired
August 18, 2008 1:09AM
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Yes we, both sexes, have been SAVED by their deeds and chant of "May the foreskin NOT be with you." from conditions, to name a few, as:
Hip trouble, weakened muscles, nerve tension, irritability, chorea, convulsions, paralysis, nerve waste, eschemia, edema, scars, hernia, Prune Belly syndrome, gangrene, tuberculosis, convulsions, hystero-epilepsy, dyspepsia, diahhrea, rectal prolapse, marasmus, muscular incoordination, paralysis, dropsy, gout, hydrocephalus, nervous pneumonia, divorce, heart disease, alcoholism, bed-wetting, gastritis, kleptomania, tabes dorsales, vertigo, meningitis, laziness, backwardness in studies, truancy, poor eyesight, baldness, redudnancy, syphilis, nymphomania, falling breasts, barrenness, uterine prolapse and miscarriage.
Isn't that special?
- DevilDocRetired August 18, 2008 1:44AM
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Your anecdote of the Groucho Marx Syndrome, in complaining about NOCIRC's anecdotes, illustrates you do have a fervent imagination. So do people who commit Munchausen behaviors. As a physician who treats children I am sure you have heard of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP). There is a lot of criminology literature about health care professionals (HCP) who commit MSBP. HCP's who do this set a false situation where they can then re-enter the scene as the Savior for attention and self-glorification. The patient is just a means to an end for their own ego gratification. These HCP's are Malignant Heroes. Circumcision is one example for medicine and elsewhere. Serial sexual predators are narcissistic - John Douglas FBI. Anyone who declares themselves the "#1 Expert" infers a touch of narcissism.
To continue your thread, you are as Harpo Marx who has really nothing important to say.
- DevilDocRetired August 18, 2008 4:19PM
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I actually like your attempt at humor, but your side smacks of Ad Hominems. Thus it allows sarcasm in response including serious perspectives. Milos, DOC, you and Dr. Morris are equally serious in your viewpoints. And as long as the headings remain, sarcasm is fair game.
This may be new to Opposing Views but not to the "Experts" on both sides. Blog after blog after blog. It's the SOS Different Day with each side pulling out medical articles from their respective file cabinets. After a while it gets kinda boring.
The real problem is that medicine cannot control the behavior of people and medicine seems to always turn to circumcision when it is presently confronted with a problem that overwhelms it.
- DevilDocRetired August 18, 2008 9:51PM
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The main thrust of the rebuttal lies in the vaccine that exists for that cancer. No need to mutilate human beings for such an easily preventable disease.
- sonofwill September 4, 2008 11:06PM
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Prevention of Genital Cancer
- From Edgar J Schoen MD
By Edgar J. Schoen, MD - Clinical Professor of Pediatrics
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Schoen's claims are debunked
Dr. Schoen is repeating decades-old claims which have never been proven and are disputed by the American Cancer Society: http://www.cirp.org/library/statements/letters/1996-02_ACS/commentary.html
The ACS says:
"The consensus among studies that have taken these other [socio-ethnic] factors into account is circumcision is not of value in preventing cancer of the penis."
The cervical cancer myths are debunked here: http://www.circinfo.org/cervical.html
- GenitalIntegrityPolicy August 7, 2008 8:42PM
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Red Herring Argument
Penile cancer is a very rare condition affecting only 1 man in 110,000. Of this number, very few will die of the cancer as it is easily cured much as a cancer on the face or arms are cured by simple removal.
Statistics show that for every case of penile cancer averted, 7 infants will die from their circumcisions. This is for cancers prevented, not deaths prevented.
Circumcision to prevent cervical cancer has been an abysmal failure in The US. With 80% - 85% of sexually active males circumcised and an estimated 70% - 80% of Americans infected with the HPV virus, it is apparent circumicision has not been the panacea you claim.
The HPV vaccines available now promise the eradication of HPV and the vast majority of genital cancers within a single generation. Viewing the failure of circumcision as an effective intervention, we should embrace the vaccine, not circumcision as an effective intervention.
- Frank OHara
August 8, 2008 4:57AM
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If circumcision protects...
If circumcision protects "virtually completely" against penile cancer, how is it that Seyam et al. could write in the J Urol. (2006 Feb;175(2):557-61) "Of 22 patients 18 underwent ritual circumcision with extensive scar development."
How is it that the lifetime rate in Denmark, which doesn't circumcise, is 1 in 1964, compared to 1 in 1437 in the US? (Cold, et al. J Fam Pract 1977 44:407-410) In any case, note how very rare penile cancer is - rarer than breast cancer in men. That's a lot of wasted circumcisions.
Seyam et al. also found "Median age at diagnosis was 62.4 years." So the deficits of infant circumcision are lifelong, while many men will not survive to enjoy this benefit - if it is one.
Of course, it may conceivably be that circumcision does measurably reduce cancer just by cutting off tissue, but we don't prune any other part of the body for that reason.
- Hugh7
August 10, 2008 12:55AM
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The circumcision scar is a magnet for cancer.
Contrary to Schoen's claims that circumcison prevent penile cancer, Bissada has shown that the circular scar that encircles the shaft of the penis is a magnet for cancer.[1-2]
1. http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/cancer/bissada1 /
2. http://www.cirp.org/library/complications/bissada2 /
- George
August 10, 2008 1:19AM
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Circumcision Issues and benefits
>The human papilloma virus (HPV) has been shown to be the causative agent of penile cancer, cervical cancer, and other anogenital cancers (including anal and vulval cancers). Circumcised men are virtually completely protected against penile cancer. Cervical cancer is twice as likely to occur in sexually active women with uncircumcised partners. The risk is greater with early onset of sexual activity and multiple uncircumcised partners (very high incidence in prostitutes, almost no risk in nuns)
It has never been disputed that there is much less passing of disease back and forth from female
to male and back and forth multiple times when the male is circumcised. It is only logical since so many bacterial and fungal infections do not survive very easily in the cleaner, drier environment that exists with the circumcised penis- or permanently exposed (by skinning back).
There were a considerable number of foreskins removed for the benefit of our fighting men in
WW II. Even camping trips or other situations where daily access to shower or bath are unavailable are capable of increasing the odor and sanitation under a foreskin.
The fact that circumcision was spontaneously adopted in so many diverse locations of the world is proof that men have wanted to be free of problems caused by the foreskin and that there is in many men an underlying desire to have the glans permanently exposed for the visual benefits. It is a bonus that this is also healthier.
Much of the anti-circumcision jabbering is by circumcised men who have deluded themselves into feeling "wronged" by the procedure and never experienced both states. I have, and prefer circed.
Also, in most cases the women that are against circumcising their sons are married to circumcised men so they experience the cleanliness and health bemefit themselves but would deny it to their future daughter in laws!
Hal 84
- Hal 84
January 15, 2009 10:22AM
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Side: Yes
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HPV in Cervical Cancer
The Human Papilloma Virus studies you refer to were flawed.
The HPV is certainly implicated in cervical cancer , but the difference in infection levels between the two groups in the study you refer to was related to different social behaviours of the groups and not to foreskins. In the one group of women,who had circumcised partners, they had fewer sexual partners, they started sexual intercourse later in life and were often in a monogamous relationship. The other group(uncircumcised partners) with higher HPV and higher cervical cancer rates, started sex at a much earlier age (when the cervix is immature) and they had multiple sexual partners.
A penis with HPV will spread HPV just as effectively with or without a foreskin . Women may be placed under a false sense of security by thinking that because their partner is circumcised they will "be safe".
What is is more effective at reducing the spread of HPV is: abstinence ; masturbation; monogamy; or the use of condoms during sexual intercourse. This is the health message which should be promulgated - not circumcision.
- Ethics
June 30, 2009 5:21AM
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