You said “Breasts are needed”. They’re not. They’re not non-functional, but they’re not “needed” - and my logic is just an extension of yours, for you’re the one arguing for the surgical removal of unnecessary body parts. That this, carried to its logical conclusion, ends with the surgical castration of all males, isn’t my fault.
Idiot I may be, but you don’t see me going around swearing by someone I don’t believe in. I’d look a fool if I said “By Thor, you need a slapping,” wouldn’t I?
Oh no, I’m taking into account the medical downside of mastectomy and comparing the harm to the benefit; and I’m seeing thousands of lives saved annually, compared to the possible *one * case of penile cancer averted in a good year by circumcising everyone. As for your asserion that you’ll listen to a coherent, factual argument, so far… you’re not giving much evidence of that. As I expected.
This would be a cogent argument…except for the fact that nobody has provided any proof that removing the foreskin has any deleterious effect on the patient, baring complications from the surgery itself. If there was an analogous body part that did nothing and could posibly cause health issues in the future (and the appendix comes closest, but it’s an internal body part, not an external one, and thus removing it surgically is a big deal in all the ways circumcision is not), I’d be all for removing it at birth, why not?
Actually, Malacandra, you’re making quite the fool of yourself, claiming that circumcision is no different than forced mastectomy for the female population, but the sad part is that you can’t even seem to see how ridiculous your attempt at an argument is. You’re going to have to come up with something better, even catsix isn’t supporting your asinine argument.
As small as the effect is, it still dwarfs the apparent ZERO benefit one gains from having a foreskin.
How quaint… you’ll grant that it is"more invasive" as though removing breasts is in any way comparable to removing foreskin, it’s just a little worse. Removing organs that are perfectly healthy and actually have a definable function and are often used for that function is simply"more invasive" than removing a snippet of flesh that has no discernable use?
Of course, you entirely miss the point, which is that you have to reverse sterilization in order for the sex organs to function properly again, which isn’t necessary for circumcision, since it does not affect sexual function.
She may have thought I was doing OK by myself - and I’m not saying that circumcision is no different “than” forced mastectomy. One’s an unnecessary but widely-adopted procedure that does zip for the risk of cancer; the other’s a scarcely-adopted procedure that does a lot for the risk of cancer, and which we would use a lot more if we applied the same logic to all body parts that you do to foreskins.
Still, I wouldn’t say you were making a fool of yourself. I think genetics has to take a share of the credit.
Weirddave - I didn’t see you address the ‘maybe one case per year’ aspect of Malacandra’s argument - what are your thoughts on that part, specifically?
Circumcision does “zip” to decrease the risk of cancer? Do you have a cite for this extraordinary claim? Everything I’ve read shows the exact opposite. Back up your statement with facts.
<shrug> - much as I don’t really have a dog in this race, there seems to be other factors with way higher influence. According to the European Association of Urology, European (very low percentage of circumsized men) incidence rates for penile cancer are the same as those for the US - and this does have the advantage of comparing first-world to first-world.
Indeed. It’s also worth mentioning again that it is very uncommon for most Euro countries(well all the ones I’m familiar with) to cut. It doesn’t really ever come up. e.g. no parent I know even considered it as a option as it’s just not on the radar over here, by here I mean Ireland but AFAIK that’s pretty much the same for other countries as well.
I have to say, I find the mastectomy argument flawed because it is does involve a much more invasive, risky procedure, with much greater medical and social consequences than circumcision does in our culture. However, the thrust of the underlying argument is valid: I find it hard to believe that people who choose circumcision for their sons are truly basing the decision on an infinitesimal reduction in cancer risk.
Perhaps a better analogy would be diet and exercise. Surely anyone who cares about the level of risk adjustment **Weirddave **is citing is making absolutely sure to exclude desserts, red meat, and trans fats from their children’s lives, while ensuring they get at least an hour of exercise a day. These are interventions which pose no risk whatsoever, AFAIK, only benefits, and reduction of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease risk that must be substantially greater than the risk reduction offered by circumcision.
Or let’s keep the subject on cancer - do these people make sure to seek out effective UVA/UVB sunscreens (many claim to be broad spectrum but don’t provide adequate protection against cancer-causing rays), and apply them to their children’s exposed skin every time the child goes outdoors, year round, making sure to reapply as needed? Because my understanding is that this practice has no known risks (if the kid is taking vitamins or drinking fortified milk), and again, much greater cancer reduction potential than circumcision.
Maybe there are truly people like this. But honestly, it seems that most people who justify circumcision for health reasons, still don’t embrace the lower-risk, higher-benefit choices outlined above at a greater rate than anyone else.
So. You’re saying that the odds come down in your favor, “barring complications from the surgery itself.” I’m showing you a cite that shows that SERIOUS complications such as death or loss of the penis occur at a HIGHER rate than the one-in-4.5 to 9 million chance of penile cancer, even after the circumcision that you said you got in order to protect your child. It’s obvious to me that the risks associated with the surgery itself are much higher than any nebulous risk of future cancer or HIV that can be alleviated by teaching your kid to use a condom and wash his dick. But yet you won’t even allow that to be considered in your analysis. If you were using a proper risk-benefit analysis based solely on percentages, as you’ve been claiming in this thread, Jimmy would still have a foreskin. You can’t ignore the dangers of surgery when you’re electing to have a surgery performed on your child.
And you can’t ignore the effect that a circumcision might have on your child’s future sex life, as “nebulous” as that might be. There’s really no way of knowing what you’ve lost, as you’ve never experienced life without it. Needless to say, most people who are circumcised as adults report a loss of sensation (I’d look up the stats, but I’m at work and don’t really want to be surfing circ sites!), and while your circumcision may not have been a “tight” one, many people were not so lucky, and actually have difficulty reaching orgasm because of it. Botched circumcisions can ruin a man’s life before it even begins, and it’s much more likely that a circumcision will be botched than it is that said child will end up with penile cancer as a result of not being circumcised.
The penis is LOST in some cases!! Goddamn, I don’t recall ever hearing that one before.
I think that would do away with most circumcisions in the US. Just tell a new father, “Well sir, there’s a chance, however slight, that your son might lose his penis as a result” and see how many opt out immediately!
Possibly. I don’t think that really addresses the issue of how vanishingly small the risk actually is, regardless of whether it’s reduced by circumcision or not. take a number that’s nearly zero and double it, and you still have something that’s nearly zero. I don’t see how you can weigh that up and decide in favour of an operation.
Because it really doesn’t make him ‘safer’. The same way that carrying bear repellant in Pittsburgh doesn’t really make you safer from a bear attack, except that a can of bear repellant isn’t quite as irreversible as removing a body part.
Then you did remove your daughter’s breast buds? Breast cancer rates being what they are 200,000 women in the US will be diagnosed with it this year, and 40,910 women will die of breast cancer this year alone, according to the American Cancer Society.
The same American Cancer Society considers circumcision to be of no value in preventing cancer to the penis which will cause about 290 deaths in 2007, and about 1200 men will be diagnosed with the disease. Death will occur in about 1 of 500,000 circumcisions, according to the American Association of Family Physicians. 1 in 100,000 (roughly double the 1 in 200,000 men who will get penile cancer) will result in loss of the penis.
Over three times as many deaths from breast cancer as diagnoses of penile cancer. And you still think circumcision is reasonable, but breast bud removal is not.
Your decision might have made sense 20 years ago with bad information. Saying you’d still make the same one now for the same reasons? Well, you don’t have a whole hell of a lot of backup. But I guess you know better than the APA, the AAFP and the ACS.
I don’t believe I endorsed the removal of a nevus. I said, and I quote:
I wouldn’t call this endorsement on my part. As you know nothing about me, so let me tell you. I have a big ugly rippled scar on my back, courtesy of being left under a heat-lamp too long and too close at 3 days of age, as a preemie. It has not been removed. One of my daughters has a series of scars (some parts keloidal) from the hollow of her throat to below her belly button, relics of life-saving surgeries as an infant (in which no, her appendix was not removed, nor was the option offered us). Her twin sister has a hemangioma. My mother has one of those hemangiomas (inoperable, mind you) that has grown throughout her life and made her right arm twice the size of her left (though still functional). Despite these scratches, dings and dents, we have managed to live healthy lives without being teased, mocked, or tormented…even naked (where appropriate). I find that people - if they see these physical details at all - look for a little while, get used to it, and never notice again. I will admit, none of these unsightly flaws are nevuses (nevi?) but they are unsightly, and their presence has not mattered much. Though my mother has problems with her arm in the cold. And I imagine my daughter will have problems with her scar as she reaches puberty. But someday, somewhere, some man (or woman, I don’t know) will realize that her scars mean she’s alive, and they’ll see her for who she is…even with a big keloidal scar running between her someday-breasts. (Note: I am aware that some things cannot be fixed, and you just have to live with them. But I do want to indicate that living with them is not necessarily the hellish hole of societal torment and mockery that some people make it out to be. Heavens, a boy might be made fun of in the locker room for not having half his penile skin removed at birth. The horrors.)
I am not a fan of cutting people when not cutting is an equally acceptable alternative. It’s not my body. Some things well and truly can be left to the choice of the individual who owns the body. I believe that if “my body, my choice” is the rightful realm of pregnant woman, that everybody belongs there…yes, even infant boys.
As to the matter of wisdom teeth, in my prior post I was quoting my aunt, a dental hygienist. I believed it to be current dental information. Wisdom teeth, when they push other teeth into strange alignment, can and do cause teeth to bite and fit together wrong, resulting in everything from ‘more cavities than usual’ to ‘tooth nerve death, and necessary tooth removal’. This, all according to my aunt. But some people have jaws big enough that their wisdom teeth will not cause any problems. Why should they be automatically removed? If they WANT them removed, after consideration of the facts and their own jaw measurements…well, their bodies, their choices.
All right. I accept this. However, this is still not the same thing as ‘removing because it’s unsightly’. What is the risk of such a nevus becoming cancerous? Is it a factor of size, pigmentation, other characteristics? I don’t know these things. Can it be watched closely, along the lines of other routine cancer-screening things? Is the kind of cancer that springs up there fast-spreading and likely to go unnoticed until it’s too late? If I had a child born with a nevus, these are the sorts of questions I would hope somebody would answer for me. Not “how does it look” but “what happens if we leave it alone” vs “what happens if we don’t?”
And I still don’t endorse automatic removal. I do however acknowledge that most Americans wouldn’t hesitate to remove such a thing, for aesthetic reasons. Which by the way seems to be the usual reason given for circumcision also. Most people I have heard give their reasons, don’t give medical reasons. They say something vague like “it’s cleaner” or “his daddy wanted him to look like him” or “ew, I think the foreskin is groooooss.” To this extent, I respect Weirddave’s reasoning process. I don’t have to agree with it.
Chotii, please reread my post. My comment that you are taking personal affront at was directed at D White’s response, not yours. If I was not clear enough in my post then I am sorry to have caused you offense.
Bluntly put though my issue is not whether or not you would choose to do something, or I think a choice is best. The point is that there are a wide range of medical decisions made on behalf of children every day. I don’t agree with them all. You won’t agree with them all. We may not agree with each other. Some involve removal of healthy tissue because of a prediction of future risk. As a general rule our society allows parents, working with doctors, much discretion in making those choices and few have any issue with those decisions when they involve the appendix, or nevii, or teeth. For some reason they get all excited when it involves a penis. Like you I respect Weirddave’s process and his obligation to make the best decision he felt he could make, even if I come to a different conclusion about the medical value of circumcision than he does too.
To re-emphasize my position: the risks and benefits of routine neonatal circumcision are both tiny. Personally, from a medical POV, I think in a tie or unclear situation, the prudent action is to not do rather than to do. But it is not an outrageous choice for a parent to make and “we” should limit the good faith medical choices parents make on behalf of their children in consultation with their doctors with some reluctance.
Some are painting neonatal circumcision as an abusive act. That characterization and the eagerness to criminalize the act is what I object to even more than I initially objected to the op’s presenting circumcision as an indisputably indicated choice.
Damn. Why’d you have to get all reasonable and shit? (j/k)
I do not have any great stake in this debate. I started posting in this thread because I found it interesting, not because I have some great pro-circ agenda. I made the best decision I could when my son was born, based upon the facts available at the time (and I did go looking for the facts*). In my mind, circumcision is just simply not that big a deal. What I object to, what I think anyone who believes in this website’s humorously stated purpose (fighting ignorance since 1973), is the cries of the anti circ crowd that the procedure is “barbaric”, “maiming” or in any way anything more than the removal of a functionally useless piece of tissue. The penis is a flashpoint for people, particularly men, but everything I have read and researched indicates that removal of the foreskin is just simply not that big a deal.
*DrainBead: I took issue with your latest response, I don’t think it accurately represents my position. I’m still considering how to respond. Just a word of thought tho, Wikipedia is not a reputable cite, and even Cecil disagrees with the numbers you posted.
I don’t believe a word of it. I don’t believe for one second that you make every decision about your son’s life based on vanishingly minute risk amelioration. Or alternatively, I feel sorry for your son because he’s going to spend his life (till he can escape from you) wrapped in cotton wool because you can’t figure out a distinct benefit to him doing something, and it’s going to involve a .000045% risk of illness etc.