I'm forfeiting a mod point for this, sorry to whoever I modded up... The actual abstract of the actual paper backing up this claim (BOLD IS MINE):

ABSTRACT. Existing scientific evidence demonstrates potential medical benefits of newborn male circumcision; however, these data are not sufficient to recommend routine neonatal circumcision. In circumstances in which there are potential benefits and risks, yet the procedure is not essential to the child’s current well-being, parents should determine what is in the best interest of the child. To make an informed choice, parents of all male infants should be given accurate and unbiased information and be provided the opportunity to discuss this decision. If a decision for circumcision is made, procedural analgesia should be provided.

IOW, no, we're not recommending anything, we're simply saying there are POTENTIAL medical benefits. Well there are potential medical benefits to getting my appendix removed, or my tonsils cut out, it doesn't mean I should be forced to make that decision.

Stupid journalists, we need to seriously trim the fat in that industry and start with these jackasses who misrepresent science for political gain.

What are the lies?

Circumcision become the norm in the US after it was found out that the rates of penile cancer among Jewish men were zero. And now we know that men
that are circumcised are less likely to infect and become infected with STDs. So again what are the lies?

Penile cancer rates are not zero among circumcised and it's such a none issue as it's also incredibly rare among the un-circumcised too. The recent HIV studies are very poor, and quite frankly, bad science (the circed men were given condoms and extra counciling the others did not, and the study was cut short, thus skewing the data as there was a good period where the circed men had to heal up before engaging in sexual activity).

More or less. Several prominent advocates of circumcision, such as John Harvey Kellog, liked the idea that it would reduce masturbation (especially if the pain was remembered!).

The medical benefits are dubious, particularly as there are indications that any reduction in male infection rates are outweighed by increased rates of female infection rates. Either way condoms and HPV vaccinations are far, far, far, far more effective and appropriate.

The US has lots of health-care systems, including some that are funded by The federal government. In fact, we are going broke in part because of those programs. We also have quite a few great docs and medical centers. If you are sick and your insurance is good enough (or you are wealthy enough, or the doc is also nice), and you know how to find the right doc, it is some of the best care in the world.

We also have bad medical care, on a par with or below what most Canadians get, for example, in a lot of our Podunk hospitals. (Their fedgov has just dropped the ball on a huge portion of the bill for health, so the delay times are going to get even longer).

What we lack is complete coverage of the population, coverage that makes it possible to be a rational economic actor, or good preventative care. We also have a really phenomenally stupid way of coupling health care to employment.

It depends on whom's facts you read:

The British Medical Association said it had no policy on the issue because of the “absence of unambiguously clear and consistent medical data on the implications of the intervention."

As far as I'm concerned if the evidence is so ambiguous after all this time then there's no necessity for the operation. Look at it this way if it prevents the spread of HIV then why is the infection level in the UK a third of that in the US in percentage terms yet circumcision in the UK is very tiny.

> Paid for by the "Protect the Appendix" campaign.

Educate yourself: the appendix serves as a haven for useful bacteria [wikipedia.org] when illness flushes those bacteria from the rest of the intestines, and thereby helps maintain normal intestinal flora.

Go read it

From the 'Task Force' article:

And what does the actual article marked as source for this say:

I've never read 'an article' that as blatantly cherrypicks things supporting their view...

I just knew someone was going to say this.

The male equivalent of clitoridectomy or female "circumcision" (more accurately referred to as female genital mutilation, or FGM) would be not removal of the foreskin, but the removal of the head of the penis. There is simply no rational comparison between FGM and circumcision, and anti-circumcision activists make themselves look like fools by claiming that there is. I'm sorry for what you went through, but you have to recognize that your experience is not in any way typical, and was--as another poster has pointed out--the result of malpractice on the part of your pediatrician, not a standard medical procedure which is regularly performed thousands of times per day.

1) The AAP omitted the fact that the foreskin is an important part of male anatomy with specific sexual, sensory, and protective functions. How can the AAP possibly recommend removing part of the body when they won't even discuss its functions? (Google functions of the foreskin)

2) The AAP failed to address the ethical problems with amputating healthy tissue from a child without that child's consent. Doing so without absolute medical necessity is a violation of the child's basic human right to an intact body and the right to choose for himself when he is an adult.

3) HIV prevention is not a valid reason for circumcising an infant who is not sexually active. HIV is easily prevented in other, less invasive ways. Other modern nations are not endorsing circumcision as an HIV prevention method. To learn more see this handout from Intact America. Also, a recent study from Puerto Rico shows that circumcised men in that area have higher rates of HIV and other STDs than intact men.

4) The AAP cannot credibly say the benefits outweigh the risks since they don't have good data on what the risks are. Few good studies have been done on the risks of circumcision, and no state or national system exists for collecting adverse event reports. Further, very little data is available on long-term complications. Without solid data on the risks and long-term complications of circumcision, any conclusion which weighs benefits vs. risks, or benefits vs. cost, is fundamentally flawed.

5) The AAP is out of step with the statements from other countries. Other nations are moving away from newborn circumcision, even to the point of considering bans on newborn circumcision in some areas, but the AAP is moving in the opposite direction. This shows just now biased the AAP has become and that they are really just trying to justify an outdated practice rather than view the situation objectively. I hope that the AAP comes under international pressure to retract this new statement, as occurred with their ill-conceived female genital cutting statement a few years ago.

What are the lies?

This? "Male circumcision does not appear to adversely affect penile sexual function/sensitivity or sexual satisfaction."

This study [oxfordjournals.org] seems to contradict that claim.

Ditto -- one of our kids had a UTI. The prescription? Drink more water and pee more often. Cleared it up in less than a week. Compare that to trying to stick a foreskin back on.

", we are going broke in part because of those programs."
FALSE. we are going broke because of run away military expenditures, useless wars, and not taxing appropriately.
Also,l congress sticks there fingers into the pie to divert funds.

Not only that, from what I can tell the African trials were an exercise in how not to conduct a reliable scientific study [ox.ac.uk] and it's a mystery that everyone takes them so seriously. Some of the screw-ups were pretty spectacular - the circumcised group had additional counselling on condom use and safe sex compared to the control and weren't allowed or able to have sex for a relatively large proportion of the study period. Others were more subtle. For instance, they terminated the trial early and circumcised the control group, supposedly because the benefits were so great that they couldn't ethically leave, and this kind of early termination has been shown to cause researchers to find effects that did not in reality actually exist in trials like this one.

They also noticed that the rate of HIV infection amongst the members of the study decreased after the end of the trial and somehow concluded that this was the result of circumcision somehow becoming more effective over time, despite the fact that this could just as easily be caused by (for instance) their exposure decreasing as they got older for unrelated reasons and the lack of a plausible mechanism through which this would happen. They then extrapolated out this decrease into the future and quoted this extrapolated figure prominently as evidence of the effectiveness of circumcision. That prominent journals and institutions were willing to buy into this is truely bizarre.

Look for the religious connection. Just find out what the religious affiliation is of all the interested parties and I suspect the pattern will be pretty obvious.

I have inside knowledge on this one.

http://www.tgen.org/news/index.cfm?pageid=57&newsid=1735

TGen is a cancer research institute in Phoenix Arizona. They also have a small branch office in Flagstaff that focuses on pathogens. One of the researchers there, Lance Price, a guitar playing guy, worked on the above study.

The work and research came his way very purposefully.

You see, the top leaders at TGen are all Christians. The top thee or four guys in the organization take bible study breaks for an hour or two, at work. This is well-known among the long-time staff within the organization.

The fundamental problem is that the entire basis for similar scientific study is to support a per-conceived idea of male genital mutilation. Basically, people with an agenda are trying to support something they already do, by using science, instead of just saying what circumcision is really about; "We do this as a way to put our religious stamp of ownership on people, like a tattoo."

In this case, they are abusing science to look for a justification after-the-fact.

By having unprotected sex and never washing, infectious detritus can be trapped between the foreskin and the penis.

The whole idea is asinine. Butchering babies because they might grow up to be promiscuous while neglecting basic hygiene.

Report of the task force on circumcision [aappublications.org]

Male circumcision for HIV prevention in men in Rakai, Uganda: a randomised trial [thelancet.com]

Just the first 2 links from scholar.google.com

Female circumcision is unfortunately a real thing [wikipedia.org].

Three studies in Africa several years ago that claimed that circumcision prevented AIDS and that circumcision was as effective as a 60% effective vaccine (Auvert 2005, 2006). These studies had many flaws, including that they were stopped before all the results came in. There have also been several studies that show that circumcision does not prevent HIV (Connolly 2008). There are many issues at play in the spread of STDs which make it very hard to generalize results from one population to another.

In Africa, where the recent studies have been done, most HIV transmission is through male-female sex, but in the USA, it is mainly transmitted through blood exposure (like needle sharing) and male-male sex. Male circumcision does not protect women from acquiring HIV, nor does it protect men who have sex with men (Wawer 2009, Jameson 2009).

What's worse, because of the publicity surrounding the African studies, men in Africa are now starting to believe that if they are circumcised, they do not need to wear condoms, which will increase the spread of HIV (Westercamp 2010). Even in the study with the most favorable effects of circumcision, the protective effect was only 60% - men would still have to wear condoms to protect themselves and their partners from HIV.

In the USA, during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s, about 85% of adult men were circumcised (much higher rates of circumcision than in Africa), and yet HIV still spread.

It is important to understand, too, that the men in the African studies were adults and they volunteered for circumcision. Babies undergoing circumcision were not given the choice to decide for themselves.

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201109/more-circumcision-myths-you-may-believe-hygiene-and-stds [psychologytoday.com]

See also: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201109/myths-about-circumcision-you-likely-believe [psychologytoday.com] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201109/more-circumcision-myths-you-may-believe-hygiene-and-stds [psychologytoday.com] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201109/circumcision-social-sexual-psychological-realities [psychologytoday.com] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201109/the-ethics-and-economics-circumcision [psychologytoday.com] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201110/what-is-the-greatest-danger-uncircumcised-boy [psychologytoday.com] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201110/why-continue-harm-boys-ignorance-male-anatomy [psychologytoday.com]

Three studies in Africa several years ago that claimed that circumcision prevented AIDS and that circumcision was as effective as a 60% effective vaccine (Auvert 2005, 2006). These studies had many flaws, including that they were stopped before all the results came in.

See http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201109/more-circumcision-myths-you-may-believe-hygiene-and-stds [psychologytoday.com]

Did they actually bother to ask them about this properly? Because an awful lot of the studies which proponents of systematic circumcision have come up with to prove that circumcised men have managed to screw this up. (For instance, the African studies asked men about their level of satisfaction with their sex life - something like 99% of all men rated their sex lives as "very good", which doesn't exactly make for a terribly sensitive measure of how it affected them.) Meanwhile, a very clever Danish study found that not only did circumcised men have more difficulty orgasming, their female partners had a whole bunch more problems than the partners of uncircumcised men. [tinynibbles.com]

Probably not, but you might enjoy it more.

From the article

Or as they say in the referenced article

You're thinking of labiaplasty. Female "circumcision" involves the removal of the clitoris.

The three WHO Africa studies did not survive review:

http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/05/when-bad-science-kills-or-how-to-spread-aids/ [ox.ac.uk]

http://www.publichealthinafrica.org/index.php/jphia/article/view/jphia.2011.e4/html_9 [publichealthinafrica.org]

Not application:

http://www.theafricareport.com/index.php/20120711501815186/southern-africa/zimbabwe-concern-over-high-hiv-rates-among-circumcised-males-501815186.html [theafricareport.com]

http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs/pdf/CR22/CR22.pdf [measuredhs.com] (botton of p135)

Also, infection of men by heterosexual sex is the least important transmission vector in the West, nor does circumcision apparently influence the infection of women by men:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60998-3/abstract [thelancet.com]

Besides, how rational is it to tell men that they must be circumcised to prevent HIV, but afterwards they still need condoms to be protected from STDs?

There already have been two longer replies to the AAP's statement:

http://www.circumcision.org/aap.htm [circumcision.org]
http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/pdf/2012-08-26A_Commentary.pdf [doctorsopp...cision.org]

Their most important points:

1. The AAP chose to overblow purported benefits by cherry-picking studies and advertising their results past their proportionality, misleading the public with doublespeak of "pro" while admitting circumcision still does not qualify as routine amputation.

2. The AAP omitted both contradicting studies and objections to those it used, such as to the three WHO HIV studies.

3. The AAP omitted any discussion of the foreskin's functionality and notice of possible complications after circumcision (incl. death, an estimated 117 boys in the US per year).

One could think they felt the heat as one national agency resp. adviser after another rejected or even condemned infant circumcision.

Apparently, we can thank our puritan roots [cirp.org]

Oh, and you've got to love this quote, which can be found on the same page:

http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/statistics/penile.htm [cdc.gov]

The rate of HPV assisted Penile Cancer in the US among the various demographics of men ranges from .4 per 100,000 for Asian / Pacific Islander to .8 per 100,000 white males, up to 1.3 per 100,000 for Hispanic males. If that's your justification for circumcision (and it's totally fine if it is) you're taking some strong proactive steps against a fairly slight risk.

http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/PenileCancer/DetailedGuide/penile-cancer-key-statistics [cancer.org]

Per year, 1570 *cases* are diagnosed, and roughly 310 men die of penile cancer. You quite literally have a 99.9999% chance of never being diagnosed with penile cancer.

So, aside from the cancer part, the overall message re: Penis isn't much different from owning a gun "Take care of it, keep it clean, and use it safely." (also, don't point it at your eye, it might go off.) It hurts me a bit to see people running around like Thomas Dolby with Echolalia yelling "SCIENCE!" in every instance of X > Y. You're right, the numbers certainly side with science. But the data provided also says that, in the Western world where things like soap and running water aren't privileges, you're pretty much (as in 99%+) OK either way, at least until the boy hits an age where a responsible parent can instill care and handling procedures to prevent later issues like STD's.

(as an aside, there is at least the smallest shred of financial incentive for Doctors to perform circumcisions in the US, but that isn't part of a grand "strip 'em and clip 'em" conspiracy, it's a fundamental flaw in the system. Somewhere along the line it was determined that insurance will pay for it, ergo it gets done. My 84 year old grandmother with cmphysema and congestive heart failure was put on Lipitor the last time she was admitted. Her cholesterol wasn't the problem, Smoking for 70+ years was. As the Doctor bluntly put it, the main reason was "Medicare will pay for it." There was was slight medical benefit. But, for the most part, it was a money move. If you try and break that cycle, though, people start screaming about "Death Panels." Sigh....)

This isn't in the same ballpark as say, not getting your kids a whooping cough vaccine. So help me if I find those fuckers at daycare who sent their little outbreak monkeys in....

If you're paying 2 to 3 K, you're probably doing it wrong.

What's the going price of carbolic acid (phenol) these days? ~ $10. And mind you, this added cost is only for females. For males, if you forego anesthesia and all the hassles that come with it, you could probably get a normal Barber to do it for only twice his going rate.

Imagine if somebody proposed the same thing for female infants. What would be the reaction?

In certain countries they do that, and the West refers to it as "female genital mutilation" [nytimes.com]

FGM involves removal of the clitoris, and the inner and outer labia to varying extents.

FGM is absolutely intended to deny females sexual pleasure; it's a prophylaxis of sorts against adultery. In actuality, it causes them pain for the rest of their lives.

In these cultures, the men often demand that their bride be cut in this way, otherwise they're undesirable.

I'm not sure that FGM and male circumcision are comparable. Circumcision came about during a time when hygiene was lax, awareness of causes of infection nonexistent.

I fall into this category, but I wouldn't call myself an adult when I was circumcised. I was somewhere between 11 and 13 years old. I am neither American, nor Muslim or Jew.
My dad is not circumcised, but for some reason, which I no longer remember I was circumcised in a hospital. I didn't feel any pain as a result. I was sore for a week afterwards. That's all I can remember from that time.

I am now a happily married man, and we haven't had any problems with stimulation, sensation or anything.
I don't know what I'd do if I have a son, but as it's not a tradition in our family, we'll talk it through. I think I'm in favour of it, but we'll know closer to the time.

Go read the actual study. It's quite amazing.

Basically, they took a control group of intact men, and turned them loose on some whorehouses, all expenses paid. And they went wild. Started reporting AIDS and what-have-you from day one.

So, ok, they had their experiment group. Now, since they had just had a surgery performed, they were ordered to a week of bedrest.

Now it gets real interesting what happens when they turn the experiment group loose on the whorehouse. They start reporting AIDS from day one. That's not all. After two weeks, their rate of infection begins approaching the control group's rate of infection.

WHOOOPS! END STUDY! ABORT! ABORT!

So, now we have a published study that PROVES that fewer men in the experiment (fewer, by head count) had AIDS than in the control group. MALE GENITAL MUTILATION CURES AIDS.

I hope I adequately answered your suspicitions. Clearly, circumcision is a cure for AIDS. *sigh* and Gah!

It does have the same "benefits". There were observational studies in African countries of female circumcision just like the ones of male circumcision, and they found that female circumcision caused roughly the same reduction in HIV infection amongst women as male circumcision did amongst men. It's just that the researchers chose to assume that reduction was due to confounding factors and should be ignored rather than charging in and launching a badly-conducted RCT. There was no reason to conclude that confounding factors were any more likely for female than male circumcision, except distaste for one that didn't apply to the other.

Is anyone going to have the guts to tell me why they think my viewpoint is wrong, rather than simply mod my views into oblivion?

You're trivializing someone's feelings, making wild assumptions about their personal life, making duplicate posts, and taunting people.

Don't like the 'Troll' mod? Then don't act like one.

men with adult circumcisions report that sex is BETTER afterwards

I had it done later in life and that is bullshit. The majority of sensation is on either side of the scar and the tip is greatly reduced after the skin roughens.

Do you even understand the topic you're talking about? I don't know how you can even begin to compare male circumcision vs female "circumcision." For females, it has absolutely no function outside of mutilating the vagina. There is no medical rationale for the procedure.

Whatever your views of male circumcision, attempting to put what they do to girls in the same category shows a large degree of ignorance on the subject and is completely out of touch with reality.

From Nicework there above who did some nice work in bringing some other info to this discussion:
------------------

There already have been two longer replies to the AAP's statement:

http://www.circumcision.org/aap.htm [circumcision.org] [circumcision.org]
http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/pdf/2012-08-26A_Commentary.pdf [doctorsopp...cision.org] [doctorsopp...cision.org]

Their most important points:

1. The AAP chose to overblow purported benefits by cherry-picking studies and advertising their results past their proportionality, misleading the public with doublespeak of "pro" while admitting circumcision still does not qualify as routine amputation.

2. The AAP omitted both contradicting studies and objections to those it used, such as to the three WHO HIV studies.

3. The AAP omitted any discussion of the foreskin's functionality and notice of possible complications after circumcision (incl. death, an estimated 117 boys in the US per year).

From my POW this issue is rather simple. Evolution put foreskins on the human male for a reason. If foreskins were really an evolutionary handicap and men with foreskins suffer from health problems one would expect this feature to have evolved out of the human gene-pool a long time ago if only because proto-human females would presumably have selected for males with smaller foreskins hundreds of thousands of years ago in Africa way before the invention of loincloths. I don't give a damn about statistics, religious commandments or studies illustrating the 'hygienic benefits' of circumcision. Mutilating the genitals of children, both male and female, is wrong and let's face it that is all that circumcision really is, genital mutilation. If a child then then grows up to be an adult and decides it wants to go to a surgeon and have its genitals circumcised for cultural, religions, psychological or legitimate medical reasons such a decision is that persons own business.

There are very different levels of female circumcision. The worst cut out the entire clitoris and sow everything shut, the mildest are a small cut in the clitoris without removing anything. But it's still unnecessary mutilation, just like male circumcision.

So, I assume your parents did not pull your foreskin back every day to stretch it when you were a little kid, and did not educate you on doing that yourself later on? That's the only reason I can see for tightness of foreskin. It's stretchy, it's not supposed to bother you if you take care of it when young.