That’s not an irrefutable fact. There are studies which, in fact, give measurable percentages of incidence of penile cancer, HPV infection, HIV, etc in circumcised vs. uncircumcised males.
That the medical establishment does not believe these benefits alone warrant a blanket reccommendation of the procedure in no way diminishes the fact that there are, by the very definition of the phrase, “measurable benefits”.
Well I thought that on page 4 of this thread I’d be able to use short-hand, but here it is again: there is no evidence of a net benefit or harm from circumcision. Period. The medical discussion ends here.
Leaving aside the specific debate concerning your “irrefutable facts” (which are I would have thought are nothing of the sort, as has been pointed out repeatedly by many others), you seem quite contradictory here. In your OP you seemed primarially concerned that co-worker was not really Jewish enough to engage in this ritual:
Yet now you are saying you don’t care at all about Judaism. In short, you now appear to hold that it would be exactly the same to you is this co-worker went to synagogue each and every day, spoke Yiddish as her first language, planned to send her kids to Hebrew classes, and otherwise displayed every outward sign of Jewish faith. Her Jewishness appears to have been a total red herring on your part, as you would have been just as against her acts no matter how Jewish she was.
Huh? I’ve seen nothing in this thread to challenge any of these assertions.
Fair enough, this is an example of me being inconsistent. Hopefully this will clarify: I can more easily accomodate a practice I would normally disapprove of if it’s done within the context of a deeply-rooted belief system that pervades a person’s life, although in this case it’s mostly out of pity and a sense that it’s a lost cause. But my co-worker is someone who prides herself on being iconoclastic and living the examined life, yet she decides that she’s just Jewish enough to chop off her boy’s foreskin. That’s bullshit.
“No evidence of net benefit or harm” does not equal “There are no benefits”. As I noted, there are measurable benefits to neonatal circumcision. The fact that the AAP refuses to get off the fence regarding the procedure does not negate the lowered incidence in the conditions previously mentioned.
Dr. Edgar Schoen recently published an article in Pediatrics calling the AAP to task for refusing to acknowledge the benefits of neonatal circumcision. The article is available by subscription, I’m afraid, but you can see the jist of his arguments here (PDF Warning).
If I say “It ends here. Period” now, does that mean you can’t refute and I win?
I am not Jewish, but my understanding of circumcision in the Jewish culture is that it is one of the most basic identifiers with that culture…that in fact being “just Jewish enough” is exactly enough to have it performed.
spazurek, you characterize circumcision as being “extremely painful.” While I have no doubt it would be without anaesthesia (which is how it used to be performed), the AAP now recommends that it should only be done with pain preventatives. I think it’s pretty standard to have a local anaesthetic preceded by Emla cream to numb the injection site. Not pain-free, certainly, but I think “extremely painful” is an exaggeration.
spazurek, let me try to address your issues.
As a decision for all parrents to make on behalf of their boys … the net benefits vs net risks/costs are an issue that there is no conclusive answer to. There is no convncing evidence that it has any effect on function either way (the only studies I’ve ever been able to find shows that circumcized males are more likely to have more liberal sexual practices and are less likely to have either pain during intercourse or trouble maintaining an erection than noncircumcized males, but that may be selection bias … see here for one such study.) Pain? As C3 notes local anesthesia is used and you’d be amazed how well the sweet wine to suck on (the tradtional bris method) works and how fast a good moel is. So without solid evidence of significant harm it is reasonable for parents to decide on their child’s behalf. In America at least we interfer with parental rights only when we have evidence of significant harm being inflicted, not because we think it must be harmful or because we do not personally see a benefit. Just because I am not convinced of significant enough medical benefits does not mean that I have a right to impose that conclusion on others.
And all the moreso when religion is involved. The state’s interest in protecting a child from his parents is real but is balanced against family rights and religious rights. The state has to be sure of a likely very significant harm before interfering with religious rights. In this case there is no such case to be made. Especially with a religious ritual that is fundamental to cultural identity.
And you were without doubt incrediebly rude to your co-worker.
Standard pain control according to the ob/gyn people at the University of Washington = sugar water.
Parents do not have a right to absolute control over their childrens’ bodies. Indeed, children have an absolute right to the integrity of their bodies unless there is an overriding interest to violate that right (i.e. if it would do more harm than good to the child or to the public to maintain bodily integrity). Circumcision is a violation of their bodily integrity with no overriding interest. Therefore it is morally wrong.
Wrong enough to outlaw? Not in my view. Wrong enough to merit voicing my disagreement? Absolutely.
(FWIW, not that it’s any of your business whether or not I was rude to my coworker – which is quite beside the point and a way to sidetrack the substantive debate by making it about my social graces, not something I’d defend anyway – she rather enjoyed the debate and we remain on friendly terms as always).
Cite (not one from an “intactivist” website)? Everything I can find right now says that pacifiers dipped in sugar water are recommended *in addition * to other pain relievers. Here is an article that says that 97% of residency directors taught the use of local or topical anaesthetic during circumcision. http://www.aegis.com/news/re/2006/RE060724.html
I’ll yield on this one – it’s really a trivial issue and quite beside the point anyway. While the suffering that the babies go through compounds the badness, it’s not the main issue (to me). It’s about rights.
As an intact male I am very grateful towards my parents, although I’ve never actually talked to them about it…but my foreskin and I get along great, in fact you could say we are very close friends. Growing up, I did think my penis was a little odd sometimes – especially after watching porn and before being educated about circumcision – but I never felt bad about it, or ashamed, or anything like that. I’ve never met a girl who expressed negative feelings after seeing my nude member, although admittingly my sample rate is pretty low on that one.
So, why anyone would wish to separate us is beyond my imagination and the idea of something remotely sharp getting down there with that intention makes me feel light headed and a little nauseated. Just skimming this thread is making me feel weak in the knees. I mean, wow! Just thinking about…it… :eek:
For those who wish to seek an analogy how about testicle removal? We could remove just one ball! I mean, you can be a dad with just one testicle…and hey, it wouldn’t affect your sex life that much, right? Well, I would argue taking my foreskin away would do a lot more hurt than that, but even removing a testicle would be very bad IMO. There’s a lot of sensation down there and I don’t think anyone should be able to take that away without my permission.
So…my view is, let the kid do it later if he wants to ‘not be embarassed’ or whatever BS you wish to trot out.
As for female mutilation…oh god. That seems even worse in terms of physically repulsing me and I don’t even know why. But why would just removing the labia or the sensitive clitoral hood be so bad and not comparable to male circumcision? I don’t see why a girl couldn’t still orgasm without vaginal lips or why it would have such negative health effects.
Costs of circumcision: removal of sensitive tissue that will have an effect on sexual pleasure, risk of severe scarring, risk of cutting off so much tissue that erections are painful, risk of losing the penis entirely (David Reimer ring a bell?), risk of death.
Benefits: Potentially lowering the already nearly nil risk of penile cancer.
Costs of removing breast buds: no breasts will grow, inability to breast feed, small risk of infection or death from surgery.
Benefits: Won’t be one of the 213,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer every year, nor the 40,970 who will die from breast cancer every year.
Around 400 men in the UK (which does not practice routine circumcision) will get penile cancer each year. 400. More than 100 times that number will die of breast cancer in the US this year and every other year. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime.
You wanna talk cost and benefit some more?
If it’s ridiculous to remove breast buds with those odds, it’s even more ridiculous to remove foreskins.
I don’t think anyone here has argued that a man has no right to a circumcision on himself. What we have said is that the choice should be left up to the individual whose penis it is.
The difference is that if you went by a pure assesment of the benefits, breast bud removal blows away circumcision. The point I’m making is that though the benefits of breast bud removal would be high, the procedure is ridiculous if done to an infant. Circumcision, if it has a benefit at all, has a much, much smaller one, and is therefore equally ridiculous.
The same benefits, to an even greater degree and much, much more reliably, can be achieved with condom usage and not being promiscuous.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but will relate an experience I had in college.
I dated a grad student for awhile in college. He was a virgin and uncircumsized. The first time we had intercourse(no toys, missionary position), he split his foreskin. Ye gods, there was blood everywhere.
We were the talk of the ER. Yippee–didn’t help that I was a nursing student and so knew some of the folks in the ER.
He had to have an adult circ. He had spinal anesthesia and had a terrible reaction to it (that really has nothing to do with the circ per se, I’m just finishing the story).
So, adult circ is not always this um, cut and dried procedure, either.
Put me off sex for months…
spazurek states
While no one is claiming an absolute parental control, I an more intrigued with your claim of an absolute right of bodily integrity. My cutting my kids nails and others getting their kid’s ears pierced violates that too, I guess.
catsix merely states as fact something that the evidence says is false and the cite already provided:
Again no study has shown that to be the case. The above anecdote is an extreme example of the converse and studies show, if anything, a lesser degree of painful intercourse and erectile difficulties and greater sexual variety in circumcised males.
How can it not have an effect on sexual pleasure when you cut off a part of the body that is, in addition to its function of protecting the glans, an erogenous zone?
Considering that there is such a large difference in functional impact (as storyteller points out) and such a large difference in benefits (as catsix points out), then I think that pretty much shows that the two are really not analagous at all.
It seems clear to me you base your opinion on the matter based on what you perceive as the medical benefits.
So, you are pro-circumcision for boys based on medical reasons, correct?
Nails are dead. That’s just grooming.
Ear piercing, done at an age before the kid can object, does indeed violate the kid’s right to bodily integrity. To me this is more obnoxious than outright wrong because it’s a pretty trivial bodily alteration – something that certainly cannot be said for circumcision.