Posted on 03/30/2009 8:49:51 PM PDT by Inappropriate Laughter
The first best thing that happened to me was when Old Doc spanked me after I was born.
The second best thing that happened to me was Old Doc didn’t perform a circumcision.
BTW, Old Doc was a willing POW in WWII. He knew, at some point, those GIs would need medical treatment . A real hero, IMHO.
Whoops! Time for gender alter.
Wow—it took 15 posts before someone mentioned “tips”!
“Poyfect!”
One of the funniest SNL commercials ever!
Only when it’s performed the way this sorry excuse for a doctor performed it. Research is piling up fast showing huge health benefits of circumcision by reducing sexually transmissible diseases including AIDS and cancer-causing HPV.
Shouldn't be too hard for your study... Apart from the USA and Israel, 99% of the world's population remains uncircumcised. I guess this could be an addition to the "we should be more like Europe!" mantra.
I wished I hadn’t been circumsized.
I couldn’t walk for a year afterwards!
a real drag...eh? 
did I just say that!
Wow, you forgot the Muslims. They trump the US and Israel, purely on the basis of numbers.
By their religion alone, I'd suggest that they probably don't have as much adultery as people of other faiths.
Sweden is a almost completely a population of uncircumcised males, except for the Jews and Muslims. How would their STD rates compare with those of, say, Bangladesh, or Pakistan, where circumcision rates are near-100% ?
Interesting. My ob/gyn did my son’s circumcision and botched it. At the time he dismissed the errors saying it was a scab and it would heal. It did heal...and now my son has a thick ring of lumpy scar tissue. It’s a mess. Poor kid.
Umm, no I’m not a proponent of genital “mutilation” in anyone. That which does no harm, and promotes good health is not “mutilation”. It was not “mutilation” when I had my tonsils out at age 5.
The relevant HPV strains cause the rare penile cancer in men (rare indeed, but certainly not rare enough from the standpoint of the unlucky few who get it). They also cause the fairly common cervical cancer in women, who get it from their male partners. The rate of male-to-female transmission is much, much lower with circumcised males. Bottom line, men who don’t want to transmit cancer-causing HPV (or HIV or any of the other diseases that lurk and thrive under the foreskin) to their partners will view circumcision as a positive thing. And not surprisingly, women (like myself) who are aware of these disease-reducing effects, will view circumcision as a positive thing. By conrast, surgical removal of the cervix would be major surgery with major risks, and completely eliminate the possibility of natural child-bearing (and seriously dim even the prospects of child-bearing via complicated artificial insemination and Caesarian section).
There’s a reason why circumcision is historically so widespread, and continued to spread into the Western, Christian world from its origins in Jewish and Islamic religious traditions. This is not some primitive barbaric practice. It’s a practice that was gaining ground very rapidly in the US in the 1950s and 1960s, for purely hygienic reasons (which have more recently been documented to have very quantifiable disease-protection effects), with many uncircumcised fathers choosing to have their infant sons circumcised. The practice bears no resemblance whatsoever to the purely superstitious and uniformly health-damaging effects of the various forms of female genital mutilation, which are conspicuously practiced only in societies which are utterly male-controlled.
I would think that the scar tissue could be effectively removed by a good plastic surgeon, which the botching doctor’s malpractice insurance certainly ought to pay for.
Is it common for circumcisions to be performed by ob/gyns? It’s very minor surgery, but still, and ob/gyn doesn’t seem to quite fit the bill . . . Seems like it should be a job for a pediatrician (or when feasible, a urologist or even a plastic surgeon).
Apparently my ob/gyn “did this sort of thing all the time” and he was the only surgeon available at the time. (This was in West Virginia)
My son’s pediatrician has said he’ll need a complete re-circ - something my husband and I are NOT putting him through again. It’s a no-win situation at this point...although, my mother-in-law jokes that it’ll be a win-win situation for his girlfriends when he’s older. ;)
Still would be a good idea to make a legal claim, putting the insurer in a position of financial liability for any corrective procedures your son may choose to pursue in the future. I firmly believe it’s a good idea for this procedure to be routine, but it should be routinely performed by doctors who are fully competent to perform it. The way our system is set up, the best way to ensure that is to put insurance companies on notice that the alternative is unacceptably expensive. Then they can require specific training in the procedure in order for physicians to be covered when they perform it.
I agree with you and we will probably revisit the whole issue again soon. Thanks for taking the time to consider the situation.
I always assumed it was a mohel.
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