Circumcision: Beneficial or genital mutilation?
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(CBS) Is circumcision a key to better health for men and women - or a form of genital mutilation?
An anti-circumcision activist in San Francisco, Lloyd Schofield, goes with the latter view, saying that removing the male foreskin - a coveted ritual in Judaism and Islam - causes "excruciating pain, nerve destruction, loss of normal, natural and functional tissue, infection, disfigurement and sometimes death," according to his website, sfmgmbill.org.
Schofield is so convinced circumcision is a bad idea that he's collecting signatures to put a measure on San Francisco's fall ballot that would ban the practice there.
What do health experts say?
Men who have been circumcised have a lower risk for infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition, circumcision seems to offer some protection against genital ulcer, Chlamydia, and penile cancer.
HPV: Are circumcised men safer?
Infants do experience pain during circumcision, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. But, the organization says, it's not significant and has no lasting effect.
As for circumcision's effects on sexual function, several studies conducted among men after adult circumcision suggest that few men report their sexual functioning is worse after circumcision. Most report either improvement or no change, according to the CDC.
"People care way too much about this little piece of skin," Dr. Mark Alanis, assistant professor obstetrics and gynecology at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, who has written a history of circumcision, told the Washington Post. "At the end of the day, it's unlikely to significantly change your child's life for better or worse."
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One study in the Midwest of the U.S. found that this had no effect on the newborn circumcision rate but it did affect the demand for circumcision at a later time. and also, the reason the rate of circumcision is going down has to do with less public funding by medicaid. But they will do it for therepeutic reasons so the later demand costs even more and is more painful cause it is usually infected.
STD's let's see, I dont' know of any uncircumcised kids contracting std simply because they weren't. However, a mohel in NYC gave at least 3 kids herpes, one dying. Because they had to put their mouth on the boy to suck the blood. Now they use glass rods...Or they get a urinary tract infection...that's nothing compared to what can happen with botched unecessary surgery.
Circumcision is doing nothing to protect except to protect men who have been cut from feeling the burn. They are not whole, they don't look like or function like a guy who is natural.
And far as dissese, it's throwing the baby out with the bath water.
If circumcision prevented HIV, then why are american cut men getting HIV? To reduce the skin area alone makes sense, there's less contact...etc so obviously it would have more risk. But it's not a "cure" just because you are circumcised does not mean you will not get STD's. Most of the world men are not cut, they dont' want cut, they are fully capable and intelligent and dont' want it. Like I said, the only reason this is being done is because it protects the ego of men who were cut. What was good for them will be good for their kids. It's sick, most of the world's men think it's sick and cruel. The only people still doing it are people who it was done to. It's a cycle of abuse..in the open for all to see, and they are simply blind.
They aren't circumcising cause it's good for the kid, they're doing it because it was done to them. They don't want to feel "less" which they indeed are. Who cares to what degree affects sexual function, it does...and that degree of sexuality is owned by the child for his adult life. And no one should be marked as a child to belong to a certain religion. While many hold that religious circumcision be left aside, I think that is THE most hideous form. Jews do not care if is harmful or not, it is commanded. It's not for health...it's to permanently mark someone a religion. And that is about as far away from religious freedom as you can get. At least Warren Jeff's pr amu victim of sexual abuse can get therapy to get over it...if guy wants to hold down a kid and cut on his genitals to mark him as his religion FOR LIFE. there isn't anything that can get back that choice.
And as US goes down in credit, so might want to think credibility...the rest of the world has turned against this...and not because they are dumb or poor. Funny that in countries where health care is national, they decided the money for doing it wasn't worth doing it among being vulgar. So this talk about protection against std's and infections, it's bull. No one is dying directly from being not cut, BUT kids have lost their lives and genitalia to this unecessary thing. To get real...saying that you're protecting a person against std's, is like peeing on a barn fire. It really does nothing.
Also, babies really dont feel it much. I had an internship in an OB unit and watched a circumcision. A bit of topical numbing cream and some sugar water had that baby happy. Not one cry came from the babies mouth.And my nephew was fine two days after, and for those two days all he needed was a baby dose of tylenol.
In addition to that think about the long term effects. Once the person is an adult it will actually hurt more and take longer to heal. Babies heal much faster and so adult men may not have time to take off work or the insurance to do it.
Several elderly male dementia patients I have taken care of have been uncircumcised and got infections. It wasn't that they weren't being cleaned properly, but that it isn't easy to get it perfectly clean when a dementia patient is upset and hitting you and also they lack certain cleanliness thoughts.
Which would you rather have, a single, barely painful experience that you can't remember and tylenol will cure the pain to or the possibility of constant infections if the diaper changes (from any person who will be changing that diaper ever) weren't done thoroughly enough, if the young boy didn't really think about the bacteria there while showering, and if the teenage boy had unprotected sex and harbored those bacteria (because uncircumcised guys tend to have more trouble or worries about using condoms) to get an STD they might not have, all the way to the elderly age where you might not be cared for properly or have a debilitating condition that keeps you from helping yourself or letting others help you thoroughly (did you know that about 50% of elderly get some type of dementia)? Personally and from the opinion of my brothers and friends I wouldn't want to ever have an infection in that area.
TechResourceSupervisor, Dreamworks Animation
Here's an excerpt:
"On Chanukah we light the menorah to symbolize the drop of oil that burned for eight days in the great temple. So why can't we take a baby, have him wear a little condom, and then the mohel yanks off the Trojan and says, "Ut! This is to commemorate what we used to do to baloney ponies for 5,000 years."
Rabbi Sol's Rabbinical Reflections air weekly on the Dave's Gone By radio show (davesgoneby.com).
I'm amazed that this ignorant statment can be used to justify circumcising babies or to demonstrate that circumcision is not associated with significant loss of sensory/erogenous nerves!
Well over 85% of men who get circumcised as adults do so for a foreskin PROBLEM, such as phimosis (NB. foreskin problems are usually correctable far less invasively than by circumcision). So, how can testimony from men circumcised for a medical reason possibly be considered representative of the great majority of uncircumcised/intact men who have a healthy or normal foreskin, which they wish to keep? Many of the remaining 15% of men who choose circumcision in adulthood do so out of cultural/religious pressure, which again makes them unrepresentative of most intact men in developed nations.
According to demographic health studies performed in other countries in Africa, HIV transmission was prevalent in circumcised men in at least 6 different countries:
Cameroon - DHS 2004 - 4.1 vs 1.1 (91% circumcised)
Ghana - DHS 2003 - 1.6 vs 1.4 (95.3% circumcised)
Lesotho - DHS 2004 - 22.8 vs 15.2 (23% circumcised)
Malawi - DHS 2004 - 13.2 vs 9.5 (20% circumcised)
Rwanda - DHS 2005 - 3.8 vs 2.1
Swaziland - DHS 2006-2007 - 22 vs 20
(These can be found at measuredhs com)
According to Malaysian AIDS Council vice-president Datuk Zaman Khan, more than 70% of the 87,710 HIV/AIDS sufferers in the country are Muslims. In Malaysia, most, if not all Muslim men are circumcised, whereas circumcision is uncommon in the non-Muslim community. 60% of the Malaysian population is Muslim, which means that HIV is spreading in the community where most men are circumcised at an even faster rate, than in the community where most men are intact.
In the 2010 Global AIDS report released by UNAIDS in late November, the Philippines was one of seven nations in the world which reported over 25 percent in new HIV infections between 2001 and 2009, whereas other countries have either stabilized or shown significant declines in the rate of new infections. Among all countries in Asia, only the Philippines and Bangladesh are reporting increases in HIV cases, with others either stable or decreasing.
In America, the majority of the male population is circumcised, approximately 80%, while in most countries in Europe, circumcision is uncommon. One would expect for there to be a lower transmission rates in the United States, and for HIV to be rampant in Europe; HIV transmission rates are in fact higher in the United States, where most men are circumcised, than in various countries in Europe, where most men are intact.
A common explanation given for this difference is the fact that sex education and instruction in the proper use of condoms is better executed in Europe than in the United States, where sex education is poor. However, it is precisely these reasons given, that sex education and condoms aren't catching on in Africa, why circumcision advocates say "mass circumcision campaigns" should be promoted in Africa. What failed in the United States is somehow supposed to work miracles in Africa.
If circumcision "works so well" according to these "studies," why are HIV rates higher in America where the majority of men are circumcised, as opposed to Europe, where the majority of men have anatomically correct genitalia?
In these hard economic times, I think rather than waste precious tax dollars on a dubious mode of "prevention" that hasn't worked anywhere else, we need to be spending money on what we know to be conclusively effective; condoms and sex education. Condoms are cheaper, safer, less invasive, and more effective; even if "studies" were correct, circumcision would only "reduce" the risk of HIV transmission by 60%, which means that men would still be vulnerable 40% of the time. If the WHO, UNAIDS or UNICEF were promoting a condom that broke 40% the time, they'd be laughed out of the room!
Stop mutilating children. They're at absolute zero risk for HIV transmission, and when they become adults (because kids grow up to be adults you know...), they can learn safe sex practices. Condoms are safe, more effective, and they don't cut anything off of your children's genitals.
Here's the bottom line:
Unless there is a medical or clinical indication, doctors have no business performing surgery on healthy, non-consenting individuals, much less pandering to a parent's sense of entitlement.
For any surgery, not just circumcision, there has to be a medical necessity. Without it, it's charlatanism and medical fraud, plain and simple. Doctors and media outlets have some nerve continuing to try and convince parents that they're entitled have the doctor perform a non-medical procedure on their children.
The four skin is not a birth defect. Neither is it a deformity or genetic anomaly akin to a 6th finger or a cleft. The four skin is normal, healthy tissue found in every baby boy at birth.
Circumcision is the deliberate destruction of normal, healthy, genital tissue. Unless there is an actual medical necessity for it, then it is nothing less than abuse, infant genital mutilation and a violation of basic human rights.
The day is coming when this atrocity will be viewed as the sick, disgusting crime that it is.
I leave those of you who quote "medical benefit" as an alibi with a couple of questions:
1. What number of "benefits?" What amount of "research" or "study" would ever convince you to give your daughters a labiaplasty? (Go on, google it. Women in the western countries are "enhancing their sexual pleasure" with this procedure. It's all the craze.) Is there a number? Or how far do you actually care about "medical benefit?" (Pst! I know the answer; as long as the sex of your child is a boy...)
2. The doctor comes in and tells you "Great news! We've discovered a wonderful vaccine that prevents disease, and now we don't have to circumcise your child! Isn't this awesome?" What would your reaction be? Would you say "Alright! That's great!" Or would you say "meh, cut him anyway, doc."? Your answer would be telling.
Bottom line: "Science" that "studies" ways to cut your children is backwards. "Research" and "innovation" is supposed to replace the old with the newer and better, not preserve age-old mutilations. There are better, safer, more effective, less invasive ways to prevent disease. Why don't you look into those, instead of looking for reasons to mutilate your children?
THINK, people.
THINK.
Look, a lot of stupid things are done in the name of religion, this being one of them. What's wrong with changing something when reason and science shows it's nothing but cruel and unnecessary?
There is NO controversy. NOT ONE national medical association of doctors on earth (not even Israel's) endorses routine circumcision. As such it is cosmetic surgery.
Holland's very up-to-date policy says of circumcision: "KNMG is calling upon doctors to actively and insistently inform parents who are considering the procedure of the absence of medical benefits and the danger of complications." They also say there is actually a good case to make it illegal.
Hundreds of thousands of men are enduring a tedious multi-year process of non-surgical foreskin restoration to undo just some of the damage of infant circumcision.
HIS body, HIS decision.