I always thought that (male) circumsision had some benefits:
-cleanliness (no buildup of “smaegma”
-increased sensitivity (the head of the penis is exposed
-less chance of tearing/bleeding of the foreskin during sex
-lower risk of cervical cancer in the woman
Seeems like its worth it to me.
Lev,
We keep repeating things that have been said. It is getting beyond silly.
You do understand that citing single cases is what an anecdote is? The cites have been made multiple times to various offical medical reviews. Those reviews recognize that there is both a risk of rare significant medical complications and small but real medical benefits. Both are small enough as to make them unable to say if there is overall a greater benfit or cost to routine circumcision, therefore they neither recommend for it or against it but instead individual decision making in consultation with a medical professional. Personally I conclude that the data is too weak to advise the procedure on medical grounds but I respect those who come to a different conclusiion as making a reasonable choice, even if I disagree with it.
I have also said, several times, that the only reason my boys are circumcised is that we are Jewish.
My initial reason for my now much regretted foray into this morass was to try to answer what I thought were honest questions of the op: how did circumcision become a default state in America when there is so little data to support its use, and why would the op’s secular freind, who is otherwise so unconventional or even contrarian to tradition, still participate in this very ancient rite in today’s age?
But so what if I wasn’t Jewish? Should I not have an opinion about people who wish to ignorantly condemn the practices of another’s religion or culture because I am not of the culture? I’ve expressed my disgust of France’s laws against the Muslim headscarf; agree or disagree, is that lame because I am not a Muslim?
Look, I hear what you are saying. You believe that a circumcision is a major procedure with major consequences, that anyone who believes that the balance of benefit vs risk is positive is very wrong, and that primitive religious practices should be regulated to prevent parents from harming children in this sort of way.
I hope that you have heard my position as well: the decision to circ for medical benefits is not one I have but is not an unreasonable one; any decision to regulate or even condemn the religious practices of others should be made only when there is incontrovertible evidence of significant and serious harm by the practice (which I do not think is the case for circumcision)and even then it is advisible to understand why the practice is done before shooting off at the mouth. I find willful ignorance offensive and pathetic and I find it tiresome to keep contradicting the “Big Lies” that keep getting repeated. No study has found that neonatal circumcision is associated with adult sexual problems. Large American and Australian studies both have found that uncircumcised males have less frequency of erectile problems, less pain during intercourse, and greater sexual variety (although that may not be a result of circ staus but an association based on cultural factors, who knows?).
Done.
Regular hygeine accomplishes the same thing, and is far less drastic than irreversible surgery.
And constantly abraded by the fabric of underwear or pants, and not kept in its natural moist environment.
Because it’s already been burned off with an electro-cautery tool. And how common is that, anyway?
Totally irrelvant now that there is an HPV vaccine.
Yeah irreversible surgery seems so much better than a vaccine and daily bathing.
Your own cite included men who had circumcisions as adults to correct problems and found that they were worse off after the surgery than before it.
And several others have said, several times, that freedom of religion is not absolute and should not give you the right to permanently alter another person’s body without their consent.
It was for a long time thought that cutting off the foreskin would stop them from doing the vile, sinful self-abuse of masturbation.
Do you condemn the cultural practice of female circumcision in many African countries or not?
If that’s what those studies found, then you’ve basically cut your own throat in this debate. You’re complaining about the debating style of others when your entire argument has been ‘I’m going to do what I want because it’s a cultural thing no matter what the scientifc facts are.’
You post cites that don’t support your argument, and you’ve comopletely abandoned the poll you started because though the people there didn’t give the answer you tried to be damn sure they would, they’ve overwhelmingly said ‘I wouldn’t want it done to me.’ Several of them have called it mutilation. You don’t like those answers, so you’re ignoring the poll you started. If there’s a dishonest argument here, it’s yours.
What’s wrong with the premise that the person whose penis it is should be the one to decide if it gets cut or not?
Contstantly abraded by fabric, WTH? Do men in Europe wear burlap? Maybe there was a purpose for it when humans roamed the earth naked but it has all the usefulness of an appendix. Foreskin is a germ factory and bacterial buildup in the form of smegma isn’t going away with simple bathing. It takes concerted effort to clean a circumcised penis. A pile of spongy loose skin adds to the chore. And the second you step out of a shower it becomes a moist breeding ground. Given that men can’t take the time to aim at a urinal or wash their hands you might understand why women prefer circumcised men.
The vaccine doesn’t cure all forms of the virus and it’s not the only disease spread through sex.
Yes, it is very much preferred by both men and women for hygiene reasons.
It’s not illogical, it’s just easier to do it at birth. My nephew had it done when he was 8 because his Euro-birth mother didn’t. The foreskin serves no purpose.
You’ve misrepresented his actual statement which was that before one interferes with a cultural tradition of others, one should make sure that there is conclusive evidence that it is harmful.
Such evidence regarding the pros and cons of circumcision is too evenly balanced according to actual medical studies at this time to conclude that it is sufficiently harmful to warrant interfering with the cultural practice.
Clearly, you disagree with the judgment regarding relative merits, but you should not set up a strawman to dismiss his position.
My typo catsix, that should had read that circumcised males had the lower incidence … which was linked to previously in this thread.
The poll was a fact checking of whether or not any uncirc’ed male would characterize circ as a “serious injury” … not if they would personally prefer it. I am sure that most of us are most happy with how we are, as one poster in that thread pointed out.
As my thoughts on female cutting rituals … honestly I would be reluctant to express an opinion with the amount of ignorance about it that I have. I would not automatically condemn all cutting rituals just because it is foreign to me and because various powers declare it evil or oppressive. Neither would I say it is okay just because it is foreign to me. I’d find out more about it first. The little I do know is that it is not a religious practice and that some forms (Type 4 I believe according to that Wikipedia article) can include a very symbolic nick or faux cut with extremely little risk of harm. For some forms then I’d say that it meets the critera of serious harm and does not meet any critera of religious significance so would be an easy call to be against. For other forms, even as an exclusively cultural tradition, I’d questiion if it was any of my business. But again I am admittedly not knowledgable enough about it to have a real strong opinion about it. When Wikipedia is my best source on a controversial social mater then I am not adequately informed to judge.
No, us savages over here in Europe have many of the same clothing fabrics that you guys do.
And that forms a reasonable argument for its neonatal removal how? If a foreskin should be removed because it is, as you claim, as useless as an appendix, why not remove the appendix at the same time?
I haven’t seen smegma on my penis since I was about 8 years old, but then again I have learned to shower regularly and clean my entire body while I’m in there, penis included. Even if we take your claim that there are invisible amounts of smegma/bacteria on a properly washed uncut penis (which aren’t present on an equivalent circumcised one), what difference does it make and, how does that justify neonatal circumcision? If you’re afraid of the dreaded bacteria and want to lop off part of your dick, you’re fully welcome to as a consenting adult. You can even get a Prince Albert or even stick a spike through your cock if you want to, good luck to you.
Bacteria is a fact of life. Our bodies are engineered to deal with it.
Yep, a few seconds of washing around the foreskin with warm water is a real chore, I must admit. It makes me dread getting into the shower every day.
The mouth is a moist breeding ground. It’s full of bacteria and half-digested food and god knows what else. I bet you wouldn’t have a problem with a woman putting her moist mouth near your dick, would you? What about kissing with tongues, do you find that icky? The vagina is also the same - warm, moist and brimming with bacteria. Funnily enough that doesn’t put me off going down there when fate is kind enough to give me the chance. What would it say about a woman if she wanted you to perform oral sex on her but was unwilling to go near an icky ‘moist foreskin’?
Oh I see - “Junior, I’m cutting off your foreskin because I believe that when you grow up you’ll have bad hygiene, and you’ll need all the help you can get”
Says who? While it might seem intuitive to take the first half of your sentence as a given due to circumcision being the ‘norm’, why is it all of a sudden down to hygiene and not cultural/religious expectation? Regardless, why should sexual preference come in to it? It might be true that most women prefer hairless chests on a man, it doesn’t give you the right to alter your kids body (by, say, removing all the hair follicles from his chest) so that he can’t even make HIS OWN choice to grow chest hair or remove it.
Again, you could argue that many body parts serve no purpose. It doesn’t make the non-consentual removal of said body part automatically justified however.
Obviously that doesn’t follow well. The hygiene and sexual preference issues were meant to be separate. D’oh.
I know we do but as the post just above yours demonstrates, no matter how many times we say the same things over and over someone will pop in and say something like “I heard it’s beneficial and women like it.”
I have two understandings of anecdote. The first comes from my Russian language background. It’s a story, either real or made up which has a humorous ending. It’s usually translated as “joke.” In English, an anecdote is also a story but it’s usually a true story. “Two nuns walk into a bar…” is made up and probably a joke. “My aunt Gertrude is a nun and one time she walked into this bar… is an anecdote.”
My second understanding of anecdote comes from my brother who is a Ph.d’d scientist. Many years ago we were talking about something and he said, “well, anecdotally there’s some evidence that…” and I asked him what anecdotal meant. Paraphrasing, he said it’s basically something that someone has observed or experienced but hasn’t yet been scientifically documented, verified or proven.
You claim I use “anecdotes of rare complications.” No, they’re not anecdotes. They’re real cases but you try to discredit them by calling them “anecdotal.” Very sneaky but not sneaky enough. You’re busted.
Well and good. If only doctors would clearly state to each and every parent of a newborn: “circumcision is medically unnecessary.” They don’t. I’m circumcised because the doctor said to do it. Mom said “well okay, be careful.” Doc said “don’t tell me my job.” ::THWAK:: 13 or so years later mom is asking me “everything okay down there?” Me: “WHY??” Technically, mom gave consent but she did it because the doctor said so. That still goes on today and people continually popping into the thread and saying “I always heard it was good” just doesn’t help.
Fair enough. I assume you mean for religious reasons as opposed to cultural reasons since I believe you’ve already said if it’s merely for cultural reasons we’re free to try and convince you it isn’t necessary and you yourself seem to agree it isn’t necessary.
It appears the mother in the OP wants to do it for cultural reasons.
Honestly I don’t know much about the headscarf issue and I’d rather not comment on it until I know more.
It’s not so much a major issue for me in that I was c’d as an infant and I grew up in a society where most guys were. It’s more of a major issue with me when these threads come up and I think about kids having it done to them now. I don’t blame my mom for doing what the doctors told her was best. I blame the doctors a little because they’re supposed to be scientists and they should have known better but who knows? They’re human and maybe they really thought it was medically advised. But today I’m convinced it’s unnecessary and new parents need to clearly understand it’s unnecessary.
I think I understand your POV but I don’t agree a procedure has to cause serious harm in order to argue against an unnecessary procedure about which infants have no choice. Understanding why a practice is done is also not sufficient for me to condone it.
You and I are so in agreement here.
No study has found neonatal circumcision of girl babies with adult sexual problems or any other problems. Not one. Not a single one. Yet we still call it female genital mutilation and made it illegal.
Have you already provided cites for this or is this anecdotal?
Okay, what I’m about to say here is anecdote. True story, happened to me.
Yes, it happens. I’ll be honest. It doesn’t happen a lot and I’m not willing to say it’s grounds for circumcising or not but yeah it happens and it’s literally a pain. It’s usually after a day of activity wearing loose fitting shorts or swim trunks. You’re in the water. You’re out of the water. You’re running around. All day the head of your dick rubs against the fabric in your shorts and towards the end of the day you start to realize you’ve rubbed the head of your dick raw. It hurts.
Those of you who watch the TV show Survivor may remember when Colby had the same thing happen and it was so bad he had a hard time walking. Anyone remember? I virtually guarantee you Colby is circumcised.
Uncircumcised guys have foreskin to protect them against this.
You know, every single woman I’ve ever met is disgusted by a guy whose pits smell, his crotch smells and had smelly brown skid-marks in his underwear. So what? Take a bath before the hot date. It’s no excuse for forcing your infant son to undergo a form of body modification he has no choice over.
Your second statement is patently false. Please provide a cite or retract it. Most people in this thread agree it has a purpose, they just disagree how important that purpose is.
Your first statement reminds me of something. I had a Jewish friend who was southeast Asian. Can’t remember exactly from where. He was adopted by Jewish parents. The topic of circumcision never came up but I’d like to ask, if a ten-year-old boy was adopted and uncircumcised, should the Jewish parents be able to force the circumcision on him?
I have never encountered this restricted definition of anecdote and I certainly did not read it that way. I think you have your offense meter turned up too high.
While anecdote does often mean a humorous story, it also means any short, individual narrative. Citing individual cases of circumcisions that have gone wrong when the scientific literature indicate that such events are extremely rare are anecdotal references and can be set aside, not because they are unproven, but because they are so rare as to be irrelevant to a discussion of general benefits or general lack of harm. Any number of vaccines and innoculations have resulted in unexpected reactions that have harmed the recipients. For many of these, the connection was clear and proven. However, when individual accounts are presented of scientifically verified incidents, but the incidents amount to fewer than 1 in 10,000 or 3 in 100,000 applications, those true and verified incidents are still anecdotal.
So the foreskin is made out of…. what…. Titanium? Is the claim now that the foreskin has no sensitivity? Wasn’t someone making the claim circumcision takes away sexual sensation?
If you’re underwear chafes you it chafes you. No amount of foreskin is going to soften the fabric.
Why do you choose the word offense? Do I come across as offended? Kind of a loaded word.
I’ve never heard the incident rate of something being referred to as anecdotal. Really? I mean seriously the fact that something happens only x% of the time it’s anecdotal? Are you sure about this? If one out of every 100,000 people is murdered does that make murder anecdotal? Or the statistic anecdotal? That just doesn’t sound right to me. I can see how something might be statistically anomalous.
No, there’s no claim foreskin has no sensitivity. It’s a very unique type of skin and it’s different on the outside than the inside. Pinch the skin on your elbow. Harder. Oh, c’mon, you can better than that. Pinch it really hard. Doesn’t hurt that much does it? Now pinch the head of your dick as hard as you did your elbow. Difference? Different skin, different qualities, different sensitivities. Blind people can read braille with their fingertips. Can they read braille with their elbows?
Yeah, the foreskin is unique and is different than the head of your dick. God/nature put that particular kind of skin there for a reason. Your eyelids, your anus, your palms, your nostrils; different skin different functions.
Okay, thinking about this a bit more I think I see your point. I’m not sure I agree with the term anecdotal, but I understand that a certain side effect or complication can be so rare as to be not worthy of serious consideration in deciding whether or not to do something.
Risk of cancer? Anecdotal, using your term.
Risk of worsened erectile function and decreased penile sensitivity? Not anecdotal, according to DSeid’s cite.
Actually, yes, you did come across as offended. Perhaps you were not, but that was the impression I received.
No. Incident rate is not anecdotal. However, Dseid was explicitly referring to the fact that you provided (in post #258)citations to two specific incidents regarding persons suffering as the result of botched circumcisions (thus anecdotal) while the overall numbers (whether for good or for bad results) are miniscule.
Gawsh Lev why do you keep stating things as facts that are untrue?
The Wikipedia article linked to early in the thread cites a WHO study of
In fact that study was directly linked to as well! Surely if there was no significant evidence of significant harm then the practice should be let be. As it is it may be that some variants of the procedure indeed do no or at least no measurable harm. Certainly if that is so then our condemning those forms too would represent nothing other than cultural imperialism.
Tom has explained the meaning of anecdote and indeed it is close to what you understood your PhD pal to say. Individual case reports with no control and no idea of out of how many, pale in value to large controlled studies in which you actually know the n. Anecdotal evidence may suggest study that shows that the rate of a particular event is large or that scientific study may show the rate to be very very rare or even just coincidental. In fact acute complications from circumcisions are exceedingly rare (rarer still when performed by moyels at home than by OB’s in the hospital). That rare incidence is not anecdotal. As Tom points out the rate of penile cancer is not anecdotal either, even if rare. It is a scientifically validated number, albeit a small one.
Risk of worsened erectile function from neonatal circumcision? Again lower in the circumsiced according to the large Australian study previously linked and an earlier large study in an American population (cite available if you want it). Again association is not causation and I do not believe that neonatal circumcision is the cause of lesser erectile dysfunction rates. But clearly it does not cause more. (You are looking I presume at the study that looked at adults who were circumcised, a smaller study of a different population group, who were for the most part satisfied with the result. One could take those studies together to suggest that neonatal circumcision had the least rate of erectile dysfunction, followed by the never circ’ed, and finally by those who need to be circ’ed for problems as adults, and that therefore neonatal circ was the best way to go. I don’t believe that these associations really represent causations though.)
We were talking about injury at that point. One poster claimed circumcision was a serious injury and DSeid started a poll thread trying to prove that it didn’t constitute serious injury. I provided a cite showing a $1.26 million dollar judgement for a circumcision that wasn’t authorized and was botched. That’s not anecdotal in the sense of being so rare as to be meaningless. What, doctors can botch circumcisions all the time because the odds of them getting sued are anecdotal?
DSeid was pretty careful about how that poll was crafted too, and tried really, hard to make sure that only the answers he wanted would be given.
The overwhelming response was that it’s not serious injury as in life threatening, but they do see it as a mutilation and wouldn’t want it done to them.
Keep in mind that DSeid’s own cite about men circumcised as adults, mostly to correct problems, had a significant number of the respondents who found the results of the circumcision worse than the problem they were trying to correct.
I decided to look into this anecdotal business. My 2,200 page Webster’s Unabridged at home defines it as a. pertaining to or containing anecdotes. That’s it.
Merrian-Webster Online also adds:
2 : based on or consisting of reports or observations of usually unscientific observers <anecdotal evidence>
3 : of, relating to, or being the depiction of a scene suggesting a story <an anecdotal painting> <anecdotal details>
To find it’s usage in medicine I had to consult some medical specific dictionaries.
In post #258 I cited legal cases which speak to the question of injury. There is no need to prove a little boy had part of his penis cut off and the jury awarded $1.26 million. This wasn’t a medical case report, it was a legal case. So in dismissing it were you dismissing it in the medical sense of anecdotal or the traditional sense of anecdotal?
Actually, I believe you were incorrect in any case. First you said “Not by condenscension or by anecdotes of rare complications or by declaring something barbaric because it is something that you would not choose to do.” I responded and then you said “You do understand that citing single cases is what an anecdote is?”
I can’t find anecdote(s) in any medical dictionaries I’ve checked. It doesn’t appear to be a medical term. So I think I was correct to feel irked (not offended tomndebb) at your use of the term to dismiss my argument.
In medicine, published anecdotal evidence is called a case report, which is a more formalized type of evidence subjected to peer review. It doesn’t seem to me that anecdotal is properly used to dismiss a study based on case reports. In any case I don’t think it’s used at all to dismiss something based on a singe medical case. That is, it’s used to describe what something is based on, but not dismiss what it’s based on. I mean, if there was one case of a penis exploding after a routine circumcision and I based my whole argument on that one case you could dismiss it. When I argue against circumcision on medical grounds, I’m basing it on many cases, not a single case. The case of Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer is a single case but wouldn’t be anecdotal just by itself. One boy died and another incurred brain damage. Anecdotal doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, and it was enough for NYC to issue a public health warning, but without more studies I wouldn’t use that case alone to base my opposition to non-medically necessary circumcision.
To be honest, hospital infections scare me more than the average mohel.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with case reports. That’s how you find out how many circumcisions got botched. You can’t run a clinical trial. What would you do? Round up 100 doctors and say “okay guys, start circumcising these kids. We want to see how often you botch 'em.”
Phrasing it politely, circumcision is a medical procedure which hopefully by now everyone agrees is medically unnecessary on any sort of routine basis.
I’ll try to be brief. You were claiming there were no studies indicating adult sexual problems as a side-effect of neonatal circumcision. You must have been speaking of the West. Here in the west there are no studies indicating adult sexual problems as a result of neonatal circ’s of girls.
The portion of the article you cite is from the medical consequences section, not the sexual consequences section. Also it’s about female circumcision in Africa where it’s normally not performed neonatally and I’m not going to bother describing some of the conditions under which it’s performed.
What I found surprising from you article is from the sexual consequences section.
Okay, it looks as if everyone’s through, so I’ll inflict this on the board now, with apologies in advance to the memory of Robert Service:
The Circumcision of Sam McGee
There are strange things done, to Chosen sons,
By the men who mohel for gold;
But when gentiles join in, that small flap of skin
Is the focus of zealots who scold
“Unnatural art! You’ve lost the best part!” Well
This ditty’s the story of me
And how I was cursed
To achieve the reversed
Circumcision of Sam McGee.
McGee was a lad whose outlook was sad, 'cause his foreskin had gone M.I.A.
The bit he so missed, in a secular bris had been taken cleanly away.
He spent his days pining, pathetically whining – for him sex was ruined, he groaned
And out of sheer con-trariety on he went, mourning what he’d never known.
The pro-foreskin nation bewails the sensation lost when some neurons must die,
As if each nerve cell were a touch, taste or smell that we’d never experience by
Losing a few (of a trillion or two); still, my neighbor swears that he can
Feel the things I do – but how can he try to, with but four fingers on his right hand?
The logic of those who think that their hose, like Samson, was felled by one cut
Leaks like a sieve and I hope you’ll forgive me a basketball metaphor but
If you’re sure that your penis’d seduce e’en Venus, working miracles if left unsnipped,
Join ye the five-foot punk who just knows he could dunk if his toenails had never been clipped.
Poor Sam spent his nights stewing over his plight, and proselytizing his cause
(His obsession with our as well as his scar was another one of his flaws).
And when we got lucky and brought home some ducky to join our two bodies as one,
He’d bang on the walls and annoy us with calls of “You only think you’re having fun!”
Well, this act got old – when the weather got cold the boys gutted him like a trout.
As he flopped like a fish, for his dying wish, McGee picked on me, the lout.
“My time’s nearly done, but you are the one I can trust,” said Sam, his voice hoarse,
“I won’t go underground until you have found and replaced what was taken by force!”
“Glad to,” said I, intending to lie, but McGee in gratitude wept.
Those tears that he paid, I guess they remade that vow into one that I kept.
So when he was clay, in my Chevrolet I set off to find him a cure
With Sam in the trunk, because, well, he stunk, I started his phallic Grand Tour.
Though many a quack claimed to have what Sam lacked, I knew it was futile to spend
Money and time on that kind of slime in pursuit of another “dead end.”
Tried putty and glue, but when I was through I hadn’t achieved the effect
Of unaltered dong: it came out all wrong, in fact, it was pretty well wrecked.
Half-crazed, near despair, and doubting that there would be relief waiting for me
I surfed on the 'net, and Googled to get some answers and what did I see?
A man had invented, to be sold, leased or rented, a machine that could grow it anew
“Use gravity’s pull; you’ll be hung like a bull – and your foreskin will come back to you!”
Tug Ahoy sounded keen but I had not the means to purchase this marvelous thing.
Instead I resorted to clamps and assorted safety pins, duct tape and string.
By driving with Sam I had gone “on the lam” with the risk of arrest very large,
So, watching my back I chose some fishing shack on the ice of a lake called LaBarge.
I opened the trunk, overcoming the funk (the smell was so bad that I retched),
Between rigor mortis and skin like a tortoise, Sam’s dick just refused to be stretched.
But I loosened his pants for more weight was the answer, and I had my barbells and bricks;
Some lead was at hand; some iron junk and a bag of cement not yet mixed.
I’d come this far but to give an uncut penis back to Sam had not been done
Two hundred pounds on, just an hour 'til dawn, and we hadn’t reholstered his gun.
With what would they charge me on Lake LaBarge? asked my brain, at last thinking twice,
But I hadn’t gone far in regaining my car when Sam suddenly Crashed! through the ice.
I dashed away quick like a thief or Saint Nick, assured that I’d finally made good;
For as McGee sank, his much-abused crank disappeared beneath a new hood.
Sam got his old pole but I pray for his soul; for I fear Sam is weighted so well
If his dick isn’t severed, an angel’s wings never could lift it –
Sam’s whole. But in Hell.