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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Circumcision is Ethical Just as Vaccination Is
- From Dr Brian Morris
By Dr. Brian Morris - Professor of Molecular Medical Sciences
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Repeating History
Read the history of circumcision because you're repeating it.
http://www.icgi.org/medicalization / Everyone of your anti-intact arguments have been debunked.
Even your own country in Australia shuns infant circumcision on healthy newborns despite your efforts to promote this surgery on boys who would otherwise never need it.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/09/2113665.htm
After your publication to promote circumcision in Africa, South African Parliament provided legal protection to boys under the age of 16 from circumcision.
http://www.info.gov.za/gazette/acts/2005/a38-05.pdf
If I touted a birth control that prevented the chances of conception by up to 60% I'd be thrown out of the building. The men in Africa are lining up to be circumcised because they think they're getting a "Natural Condom". Congratulations, you've created an even bigger problem.
- keepyoursonWHOLE
August 11, 2008 11:57AM
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Side: No
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Victorian circumcision
Morris' defense is to call others liars, saying, for example, "Then they mention their myth that circumcision was used commonly in Victorian times as a cure for masturbation. ... WRONG!" Certainly, Victorians tried to prevent circumcision, as this photo from the BBC documents:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/03/sci_nat_wellcome_exhibition/html/7.stm
It's also not difficult to find documentation that Victorians used circumcision to prevent masturbation: http://www.dukehealth.org/HealthLibrary/AdviceFromDoctors/YourChildsHealth/circumcision says "In an era of sexual repression, circumcision was widely (and mistakenly) accepted as a means to prevent masturbation." I don't think Morris can accuse Duke Medicine of being a liar, too.
- geskoi
August 11, 2008 4:40PM
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Side: No
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Exaggerated claim
It is an exaggeration for Morris to say that circumcision is harmless. Even if circumcision benefits most, some still suffer from blood loss and infections. A few are maimed for life by infant circumcision.
Harm reduction consists of ensuring that circumcision risks are minimized. One way to do this is to make it unlawful for unqualified operators to perform circumcisions. Another way is to insist that no boy be circumcised unless he has been tested for hemophilia.
- Michael Glass
August 16, 2008 8:32AM
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Side: No
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ethical ?
ethical? or 'not yet illegal'? if it is profitable, someone will promote it, whether cutting babies' healthy genitals or injecting deadly vaccinations -- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26219689 /
is anything an MD does, including cutting healthy male genitals and injecting animal puss into healthy bodies, 'ethical'? are MDs our 'gods'? are they above the law? in a poll, some MDs said they would circumcise even if it was illegal.
does money make right? a retired ob/gyn told me, 'i didn't like doing them, but if i didn't, then someone else would get the money'.
when i was a child, clitoridectomies were still legal (see my book, 'the rape of innocence' at www.aesculapiuspress.com ). there will come a day when all cutting of healthy genitals is seen for what it is -- socially-sanctioned childhood sexual abuse.
- Patricia Robinett
August 17, 2008 10:37AM
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Circumcision is unnecessary and unethical
Urinary Tract Infection: "Using numbers from the literature, one can estimate that 7 to 14 of 1000 uncircumcised male infants will develop a UTI during the first year of life, compared with 1 to 2 of 1000 circumcised male infants. Although the relative risk of UTI in uncircumcised male infants compared with circumcised male infants is increased from 4- to as much as 10-fold during the first year of life, the absolute risk of developing a UTI in an uncircumcised male infant is low (at most, ~1%)" (Conclusion of the paragraph on UTIs and circumcision in the 1999 Circumcision Policy Statement by the AAP)
- aquarius1986 August 26, 2008 9:06PM
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Continued..
HIV Infection: Safe sex practices (using condoms) seem to be much more effective than circumcision in preventing HIV/AIDS. I don't understand how circumcision prevents HIV. Could you help me? The studies I've read about seem flawed, in that the circumcised men were instructed not to have sex after the operation, while uncircumcised men were left to do what they wanted (so of course they would have a lower chance of getting HIV). Also, I've read that the double blind RCT is the gold standard of epidemiology, not just a simple RCT. Explain how you would set up a double blind RCT testing the effects of circumcision.
Penile hygiene: It would be much easier to clean in one's ears if you cut off all the folds, but that seems a bit silly. Just wash it.
Syphilis: Again, safe sex practices seem much more effective in preventing STDs.
- aquarius1986 August 26, 2008 9:08PM
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Continued..
If you teach your child to have safe sex, and you teach your child to wash down there, then there's only a very low absolute risk of a UTI in a baby's first year to worry about.
Weigh that against the risk of surgical complications, trauma, and sexual side-effects (perhaps low, but definitely more serious than a UTI), and as a parent I'd choose not to have my son circumcised. The benefits are slim to negligible, and the potential detriments too great. Unless there are some other benefits of circumcision that you haven't told me about.
- aquarius1986 August 26, 2008 9:11PM
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