US Doctors Back Circumcision 1264
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."
Re:I call BS (Score:3, Interesting)
"We were made this way for very good reasons..."? Wow, I love to see the Slashdot community getting behind Intelligent Design!
Seriously, though, I love to see it when our limited scientific abilities back up what I believe. God instructed the use of circumcision, and it turns out not only to be a way to obey Him but also to be beneficial. Perhaps He designed humans in this way just so that we would have something like this, as a way we can show obedience to him without any negative side effects (and, in fact, beneficial ones!).
Mechanics (Score:4, Interesting)
(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?
Re:Lies (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Mechanics (Score:5, Interesting)
Take a group of men
Circumcize some of them. Those circumcized can't do anything much sexually for a few weeks, maybe longer
Observe that circumcision lowers STDs
Pat yourself on the back, and go maim a few hundred thousands kids. Don't forget to bill them for it.
Re:Lies (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:$313 is worth it (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd easily pay ten times that to get my foreskin back.
Mind you, I'm thankfully in the majority where there haven't been any catastrophic effects from the butchery visited upon me as a baby. My member works acceptably, as it were.
But for all those people whining about how it doesn't matter - go talk to any sex therapist. Or sex columnist, for that matter. Ask them the most common reason why men can't actually perform when sticking their tab A into their woman's slot B. And then realize removal of foreskin unquestionably damages sensitivity.
As for the "benefits", there are none. lern2soap, and stop being a manwhore and having unsafe sex, which you shouldn't be doing regardless of the condition of your penis.
Re:Lies (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Lies (Score:2, Interesting)
>>>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.
I agree with your argument and say:
- Let's bring back Female Circumcision too.
Same reasons (healthier).
*
*He's being sarcastic.
Re:Lies (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Why do they do this in the US? (Score:5, Interesting)
my mother did it to me
I think that's common... in my experience it's actually women who feel most strongly in favor of circumcision. When my boys were born I didn't really care either way that much (sorry, I don't think it's as horrific as some here do, and neither do I think it's hugely beneficial or important), but my wife was quite insistent that they be circumcised. She didn't really have any argument other than "uncircumcised penises look funny". Oh, she also cited hygiene, but the "look funny" argument seemed to be the more important one.
I've come across the same attitude from nearly every other American woman with whom I've discussed the topic -- which isn't a huge number, penis alteration not being a common lunch conversation topic and all -- but probably a couple dozen or so.
Circumcision or healthy lifestyle, which's better? (Score:1, Interesting)
One of the arguments for pro circumcision camp, male with circumcised penis are less likely to contact AIDS
Well ...
I am a male, and, thanks to my parents, I get to keep my foreskin
I do not f*ck around - and when I did, I made sure I took all the precautions, like using condom, like wash my private part clean after sex (when possible) and, most importantly, not having any same-sex intercourse
Till now, and knock on wood, I haven't been infected by HIV
Seriously, I think the "less AIDS" argument does not hold much water, scientifically
If one practices hygienic lifestyle - that is, takes the effort to keep private part, including the inside of the foreskin, clean after sexual intercourse
One the other hand, a male who no longer has any foreskin due to circumcision, if he engages in unsafe sex, the man would probably ending up contacting AIDS, even without his foreskin
I find it very ludicrous for a medical association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, to issue such claim
Re:Circumcision or healthy lifestyle, which's bett (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bad research reporting is worth forfeiting mod (Score:5, Interesting)
I was in physical pain for roughly 10 years from when my male puberty started (yay, facial hair, oddly I never got crackly voice) and when my female puberty started (yay, boobs, goodbye morning wood).
When I started HRT, I didn't even know I was circumcised. I thought pain along with wood was the normal thing for a guy. Apparently, my doctor didn't think twice about my reporting feelings that I should have been a different gender with different body parts and experiencing pain at the normal functioning of the male genitalia. It wasn't until I met my intact ex-boyfriend that I learned I had been mutilated. It turns out that the feelings I experience of the skin tearing were abnormal, even for a circumcised man.
Also, no trans woman I've ever asked has once reported the same pain I reported. Therefore, eliminate my doctor's theory that the pain was caused by some mysterious brain-genital mismatch.
The question that digs at me is this: was my doctor right in dismissing circumcision as a cause or am I right in blaming circumcision as the cause? Because of all the disinformation surrounding male genital mutilation, my doctor may not have been aware of a case presented in The Joy of Uncircumcising by Jim Bigelow (an intereting read regardless of standpoint) worse than mine. Instead of just pain because the skin felt like it might tear, there's a story of a man whose skin DID tear, every night.
At any rate, because I can never return to my natural, unmutilated state, I'll never know. And, if I may since this is slashdot, since estrogen HRT solved my problem, the worst part, being a geek, is not knowing lol.
Cheers
Re:The problem i see here... (Score:5, Interesting)
You're forgetting to point out the insignificance of the numbers in question. For UTI, if it's a 90% reduction, well, take the existing incidence rate, 1.5%, add 90%, and it's still less than 3%. And how many babies die from UTI? We're talking /infection/ here of a routine infant condition, not mortality.
It makes me want to throw up.
Then I watch how people react to allowing US hospitals to perform the "clitoral pin-prick" style female circumcision which fulfills certain religious beliefs. Nothing is removed. Read my other comments, and I would gladly trade 10 years of physical pain (possibly) due to a circumcision a bit too tight for a pin-prick. People lose their shit. Really, I had a comment removed from NPR.org just for mentioning that hospitals (and the AAP) had considered creating a protocol for this pin-prick.
If I can be 100% serious for a moment, think about it. Girls every year are trafficked to 3rd world countries to be mutilated. US hospitals are offering to do something that will be done anyway in a less severe, much more sterile manner. And people still lose their shit. So, the girls continue to get trafficked to 3rd world countries to have their clitorises pricked with a bacteria-infested knife, resulting in irritation that requires amputation of the entire clitoris. BUT OMG FGM BRAIN LEAKS OUT EAR. But male circumcision, ok, that's cool.
Re:Lies (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [jamanetwork.com] 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!
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why do they do this in the US? (Score:3, Interesting)
Roughly. You're forgetting that child abuse is something that is often an inter-generational issue.
In countries where females are circumcised, tune out the feminists and jerking knes for a second, tune in reality, and it's females that are passing on the abuse.
In countries where men are circumcised, well, it's men who were abused by routine infant male genital mutilation propogating routine infant male genital mutilation.
Consider a circumcised man presented with evidence that he was mutilate unnecessarily. Of course he'll argue against that. He's been mutilated, and it was necessary by god (else he admit to being a victim) and he'll do it to his son, too.
As for how this all got started, well.... I recently read Born to Run, which has evidence that 40 years of the modern, cushioned sports shoe was based on one very bad but very persuasive podiatrical paper that linked running firmly with sports injuries and some very clever marketing by Nike.
I believe circumcision is similar, but more sinister. Think of all the money hospitals rake in per year as yet another added on charge nobody cares about that men won't argue isn't necessary. Talk about conflict of interest.
Yet, there have been studies showing benefit to amputation of the clitoris in females. Why didn't that catch on? No mutilated Muslim women to crazily back it (lest they admit they were mutilated unnecessarily), and the women over here were wise enough to create the hypnotic knee-jerk reaction to the words "female circumcision" if only because I didn't say "female genital mutilation."
Re:Lies (Score:4, Interesting)
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.)
Re:Y]Are you green with envy, or is it fungus? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Lies (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:Lies (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:Circumcision or healthy lifestyle, which's bett (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org]
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 [wikipedia.org]
Re:Circumcision or healthy lifestyle, which's bett (Score:3, Interesting)
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.