Posted on 04/05/2006 5:19:29 PM PDT by Giant Conservative
The debate about neonatal circumcision is over. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), neonatal circumcision is the result of ignorance, bad medical practice and American social and cultural pressure. Regarding the three most commonly cited justifications for neonatal circumcision (penile cancer, venereal disease and penile hygiene), the AAP now states that the benefits are negligible, which means that the majority of American men are walking around without foreskins for no good reason. Yet, the barbaric practice shows no sign of abating, and for this reason I plan to shed some light on the cultural dark spot of circumcision.
The U.S. stands alone as the only country in the world (including developed, developing and undeveloped countries) where neonatal nonreligious circumcision is routine for physicians and their unwitting patients.
In contrast, 80 percent of the planet does not practice circumcision, and since 1870 no other country has adopted it. China, Japan, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Scandinavia, Holland and Russia have never condoned the practice (except for religious purposes), and of the other countries that do practice neonatal nonreligious circumcision (Canada, Australia and Great Britain), there has been a regimented decline in circumcisions by about 10 percent per decade in accordance with the advice of each country’s own respective medical institutions.
If we take a look at the latter group of English-speaking countries, the statistics show just how wildly disproportionate the U.S. endemic is when compared with its English speaking cousins. In the second-highest-instance countries, Australia and Canada, the amount of neonatal nonreligious circumcisions is estimated to be about 30 percent, compared to Great Britain where only 1 percent of males can expect to have their foreskins cut off before they have even acquired one-word language acquisition to be able to say “No!”. In the U.S., however, the number of circumcised males is estimated to be approximately 80 percent. Only in America has medical science taken a back seat in the fight for the foreskin.
As Edward Wallerstein aptly points out in Circumcision: The Uniquely American Medical Enigma, “[i]n 1971 and 1975, the American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on Circumcision declared: ‘…there are no valid medical indications for circumcision in the neonatal period.’” Subsequently, this decision has been endorsed by The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 1978 and by the AAP in 1999.
And yet, Wallerstein highlights that “[t]he ‘firm’ declarations should have caused a marked drop in the United States circumcision rate. They did not.” The truth is that neonatal circumcision is deeply rooted in American culture: so much so, in fact, that many American parents actually believe they are doing their sons a service, when, in only one foul slice, the dangers of penile cancer, venereal disease and bad hygiene are purportedly quashed (along with premature ejaculation, masturbation, and general ugliness). But American parents have been grossly misguided.
The AAP affirms that the majority of reported benefits by which parents justify circumcision are groundless hearsay. Notably, penile cancer might be preventable through circumcision of the foreskin, just as the potential for most diseases is eliminable by the complete removal of the vulnerable body part — I bet I could guarantee you would never contract Hotchkiss brain disease if you let me cut your head off too — but the fact is that the foreskin is an important, healthy and irreplaceable part of a child’s body, and in the absence of overwhelming medical evidence proving the link between retention of the foreskin and penile cancer, the AAP has had no choice but to disregard this cultural claim.
Furthermore, as far as the argument that circumcision reduces the risk of contracting venereal diseases goes, Wallerstein crucially highlights that “health” circumcision originated in 19th century England, where the theory emerged that masturbation was responsible for such things as asthma, hernia, gout, kidney disease, rheumatism and even alcoholism.
The Victorian aversion to all acts sexual was fertile ground for genital mutilation to take root and, since the English cultural practice stormed the U.S., beliefs about the purported benefits of the practice have barely changed, while Great Britain has become a born-again circumcision virgin. Consequently, the link proposed between any disease and the foreskin is outdated fallacy — including venereal diseases.
As if that was not enough, the AAP also states that “there is little evidence to affirm the association between circumcision status and optimal penile hygiene.” Consequently, parental supervision of the foreskin is a far more appropriate measure for reducing the chances of infection in a boy’s penis than a radical surgical procedure, especially when the short-term effects of circumcision can include anything from changed sleeping patterns to psychological disruptions in feeding and bonding between mother and infant, profuse bleeding, subsequent infection from surgery, and even death.
Moreover, the AAP recognizes that circumcision causes extreme pain and trauma for infants, since circumcised infants exhibit deterioration in pain threshold as much as six months later when receiving mandatory vaccinations, while the long-term physical and psychological damage is undocumented.
In short, the idea that neonatal circumcision is the answer to all of men’s ills is erroneous. Like the Jewish religious practice of circumcision, American nonreligious circumcision is dependent on the acceptance of cultural beliefs, and the sad truth is that Americans hold to the norm as tenaciously as they hold to the scalpel, although they do not entirely know why because they are not being told.
Religious circumcision is one thing, but circumcision for no good reason ... well, what is the sense of that? There is none! Removal of the foreskin is a cultural mistake, and I hope that on reading these facts you will break the ghastly cycle if the choice ever becomes your own. It’s about time the foreskin became sacred too.
I are open to argument. I are even open to invective. But when someone descends to "imbecile" in a post I just have to draw the line and borrow Slappys purse anvil.
I think the phrase is either "ka-ching" or "kaboom." Not sure.
Your point about the article, on the other hand, is something I clearly missed. The authors have clearly covered themselves on the question I raised (arguments on that are a seperate matter). The poster, on the other hand...
Victim of "Giant Cons" ??? Too bad.
Most women prefer a german helmet over a turtle neck any how... quit cryin about it...
Well then, site some.
Muslims don't cut enough off.
Sorry man but I'm gonna call that one wrong. There are a lot of nerves in the foreskin, take it away and you are going to lose SOMETHING. However all is not lost.
On the bonus side, you are going to last longer, it's going to put more friction to her (more feeling), it's cleaner, it looks neater and finally .... your hand (or her hands) won't slip off the end.
Well, let's put a scalpel next to your foreskin and have that doctor with a glint in his eye and a swish in his wrist. I PROMISE you that your mind would all of a sudden focus on this huge, life threatening issue at hand. :)
GREEN BAY BABY
A Green Bay Packers Fan is drinking in a New York bar when, he gets a call on his cellphone.
He hangs up, grinning from ear to ear, and orders a round of drinks for everybody in the bar announcing his wife has produced a typical Green Bay baby boy weighing 25 pounds.
Nobody can believe that any new baby can weigh in at 25 pounds, but the Packer fan just shrugs, "That's about average back home, folks, like I said, my boy's a typical Green Bay baby boy.
Congratulations showered him from all around, amid many exclamations of "WOW!". One woman actually fainted due to sympathy pains.
Two weeks later, he returns to the bar. The bartender says, "Say, you're the father of that typical Green Bay baby that weighed 25 pounds at birth.
Everybody's been making bets about how big he'd be in two weeks. So how much does he weigh now?"
The proud father answers, "Seventeen pounds."
The bartender is puzzled, concerned, and a little suspicious. "What happened? He already weighed 25 pounds the day he was born!"
The Green Bay father takes a slow swig from his Leinkugel's beer, wipes his lips on his shirt sleeve, leans into the bartender and proudly says,
"Had 'im circumcised!"
Maybe you should be banned worldwide.
I'm glad my parents made the right call. By this standard, piercing your ears is barbaric.
Let's ban people that decide what to ban on everyone else's behalf.
Wasn't it CS Lewis who said he'd take a robber baron over a moralist any day as s fascist autocrat? He reasoned that the robber baron's interest in running everyone's lives might ebb and flow, but the moralist sees no end or rest in doing right.
Oh no, it's another circumsion thread.
Plus, it's just nasty.
I had the job done when over 50 due to accident injury---sex has never been as good since they cut nerves and claim they will grow back in time----baloney---might be ok when a baby with years to 'grow back'?---would never do to any kid if I had the say about it
ROTGLMAO!!!!
It has started, again.
Ummmm I thought it was a uniquely JEWISH RELIGIOUS "enigma".
Be that as it may, I'm not Jewish and they did it to me when I was eight days old.....I couldn't walk for nearly a year!
My father was raised on an Iowa farm with 6 brothers in the 1920s and 1930s to Italian immigrant parents, obviously a-religious.Neither he nor any of his brothers were circumcised. I am eternally grateful to my parents for not having me circumcised, although it was so "different" , that I was self-conscious for years in the locker-room at school---there is no way to cover up your penis and not look like a dork, so I remember I would pull up the skin surreptitiously moments before I thought it would be exposed to the eyes of members of my gym class. HOWEVER, I know what desensitization is, and my thesis is that, however an uncircumcised penis may be the father of premature ejaculation, an uncircumcised penis is an organ that basically is getting desensitized 24 hours a day, and MAY contribute some of the more unfortunate
sexual habits of the American male.
Circumcision may not have been "a way of life" then as it has become today---and maybe a poor farm family of 6 boys had better things to do with its scant money than pay for "extras" like circumsion---there are no doubt LOTS of factors contributing to they way things were then and the way they are now. And I don't soft-pedal the "barbarism" argument---it is just one factor among many, and maybe ANY ONE OF THEM could and should be enough to help get this practice on the path to unpopularity , which is where it belongs.
CORRECTION"---in the above "an uncircumcised penis is an organ that is basically getting desensitized 24 hours a day" , should of course read "a CIRCUMCISED penis is an organ....etc." making the most important distinction between an uncirc'd and a circ'd penis.
" THEY DID IT TO ME WHEN I WAS 8 DAYS OLD AND I COULDN'T WALK FOR A YEAR".---I AM SURE THAT'S AN OLD JOKE, BUT I NEVER HEARD IT BEFORE, AND IT IS A GOOD ONE!
The 'general ugliness' is plenty of reason alone, in my opinion. I'm glad I was "mutilated" and I would choose the same for my son.
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