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As a new born, his senses are not sufficiently developed for him to be aware of it. That is not the case with an older child or an adult. As said above there are health reasons for it. The foreskin was protection when cave men went around naked.
There's a loss of 16 different, unique, functions with foreskin removal. The overwhelming majority of those are Feeling, sensation, but a significant number are part of the immune system.
The "health benefits" are Cleanliness related, something that can Easily be taught. There are billions of men who've had ZERO issues, it's not some life or death thing.
Consider that the US is the only country where male genital mutilation is commonplace. There is no other country in the world where it's commonplace. The only other group who do it are jews.
No, many years ago it was intended to help with personal hygiene and to prevent masturbation and other perceived issues of the time.
Nowadays, men should know that they need to wash their privates. Many still don't do it, often enough ...
Here are few of the foreskin's functions:
- Protection of the penis of incontinent infants.
- The tissue of the foreskin is richly supplied with blood vessels and contains a lot of nerves. It therefore contributes significantly to the pleasure of intact males during sex.
- It provides natural lubrication and therefore prevents dryness, which is often responsible for painful intercourse and chaffing or abrasions (which both contribute to the entry of STDs and viruses/bacteria).
There is a significant change in the penis with one-third or more of the entire penile skin removed by circumcision. This removal of sexually functioning tissue will alter sexual functioning. Over the years, circumcized men report that there is a progressive loss of penis sensitivity, that they need excess stimulation to reach orgasm and that coitus can get painful.
It is not uncommon for circumcized men to feel a sense of parental violation, to express feelings of mutilation and to be dissatisfied with the look of their circumcision.
In many countries circumcision is not offered. The removal of a functioning, normal body organ is contrary to the motto of medicine "First do no harm".
Circumcision is a breach of fundamental medical ethics.
Greedy doctors promote newborn circumcision for purely financial reasons. There is clear evidence for this.
Male circumcision is being done a lot. About 80% of newborn males are circumcised in the US.
It is a good source of income for the medical industry and will continue to be done for profit as long as profits doing the procedure can be made. Male circumcision is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise.
There's a loss of 16 different, unique, functions with foreskin removal. The overwhelming majority of those are Feeling, sensation, but a significant number are part of the immune system.
The "health benefits" are Cleanliness related, something that can Easily be taught. There are billions of men who've had ZERO issues, it's not some life or death thing.
Consider that the US is the only country where male genital mutilation is commonplace. There is no other country in the world where it's commonplace. The only other group who do it are jews.
South Korea is a nation, and its on earth. Many other groups do it as a manhood ritual normally at around 9 years of age and boys have been known to cut themselves if a medical missionary doesn't come around or their parents can't afford the local paramedical. The upper classes in the Philippines are increasingly having it done as an infant rather than wait for an 8 year old to maybe do it himself to prevent teasing.
Apparently Asians, Latin Americans, Europeans, Canadians and Australians don't suffer all the dreaded consequences of not circumcising that Americans do. I guess it's the penis equivalent of the metric system. Circumcision only came about in the US as a result of the influx of Jewish doctors who preached it's benefits. Before then, it wasn't done.
There are countries where female genital mutilation is still done because others want their girls to "look like everyone else", plus it's easier to keep clean and the men find it more attractive. All good reasons to keep doing it.
I was circumcised as a newborn and obviously I don’t remember it. Personally, I’m glad I was and I can’t imagine not doing the same for any potential sons I may have in the future. I used to play high school football and we all had to take showers after practice in this one big shower room, so it was all hanging out for everyone to see. Some of us had circmcisions, some of us didn’t (particularly Hispanics for religious/cultural reasons), but I’m glad I was the former and not latter.
However I once dated a woman who was suprised I was circumcised and stated she would never do it to a newborn.
So what do you think? Is this an unethical procedure to do to a newborn? Or do parents have a right to decide what’s good for their own kids?
It's cut and dried to me.
Yes, I think it is unethical to circumcize a newborn, unless there is a medical problem with that specific newborn's penis that will only be fixed by circumcision.
I was circumcised as a newborn and obviously I don’t remember it. Personally, I’m glad I was and I can’t imagine not doing the same for any potential sons I may have in the future. I used to play high school football and we all had to take showers after practice in this one big shower room, so it was all hanging out for everyone to see. Some of us had circmcisions, some of us didn’t (particularly Hispanics for religious/cultural reasons), but I’m glad I was the former and not latter.
?
Agree. Like you, through participation in HS and college sports, I’ve been in many group showers. Never once did I, or any of my friends who were circumcised, regret our parents decision. I knew some guys who were not cut who had some self image issues with it. Many guys(and women) think it just looks better circumcised. That definitely counts a lot.
I really have to laugh at a woman telling me I was mutilated and abused by my parents.
Sorry girls, you don’t have one, you don’t get to preach to me how I should feel about mine.
I was circumcised as a newborn and of course don't remember a thing. I am glad that my parents made that decision for me. It's my preference. If they didn't I'd have gone back later in life to have it performed.
Might as well expand that question to vaccinations, trips to the pediatrician, vegetables, elementary school, naps, and an entire host of other things. Yet if you ask any average toddler, they would be completely against any of these things.
Which would be relevant if we were considering the merits and demerits of those things from the perspective of what a toddler would say or want. However I do not think we are doing that - so the relevance of your point here escapes me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MinivanDriver
There are medical benefits to circumcisions.
Could you lay out exactly what those are - and the evidence for them? You offered one link to these but it was a very biased and far from complete page. For example under the section "What are the risks of circumcision?" they do not list "death". Yet if you look at the medical records on male neonatal death you find that circumcision is linked to 1.3% of them.
Your biased link lists some benefits but at best they are far from proven. And at worst they are quite ridiculous to claim as a benefit. Let us consider them one at a time.
1) "A decreased risk of urinary tract infections". The first thing to note here is that UTIs are in fact a possible complication of circumcision too. Therefore this pushes up the quantity of circumcisions that have to be performed in order to achieve a net profit in infections prevented. Which is not a useful thing. The second thing to notice is that UTIs are not that serious and can be treated quite easily. Easily enough that it does not in any way warrant surgery after birth to prevent it. They are also quite rare in men in general - to the point even your own link when you click on it discusses only UTI in women. So citing it as warrant for surgical procedures on new borns is at best tenuous and desperate. Finally it should also be noted that the "evidence" of the benefits at all are over stated and usually go back to things like a Parkland Hospital study which had a methodology that did not support these conclusions. And in fact in a better controlled study later the number of unnecessary operations needed to prevent one hospital admission for UTI would jump to 195. Thats a lot of mutilated penis required to prevent one easily treated infection. Meanwhile other studies such as Israeli studies actually showed _increases_ in UTI associated with circumcisions while researchers in Japan also found "Awareness of these findings will eliminate unnecessary circumcision in boys."
2) "A reduced risk of some sexually transmitted diseases in men.". Again your link offers no evidence for this claim whatsoever. Rather they - like so many others - rely on it being repeated so often that people just believe it to be true. In fact when a meta analysis is performed on the data - rather than biased citation of cherry picked single studies - we find little to no impact on STI transmission from circumcision status. And even less from the assumption that circumcision must be performed in new borns rather than adults themselves choosing to do so later in life. After all - very few new borns and toddlers and pre-teens have an active sex life. One meta analysis for example concluded that "Consequently, the prevention of STIs cannot be rationally interpreted as a benefit of circumcision, and a policy of circumcision for the general population to prevent STIs is not supported by the evidence currently available in the medical literature." and even on rare occasion when benefits are suggested - rather than proven - in third world countries the people writing the studies rush to caution that "Translating findings from adult studies, mainly performed in the developing world, into policies regarding neonatal circumcision in the developed world would be premature and inappropriate at this time.". While another article notes that "The second study by Dickson,[58] based on data from Dunedin, confirmed this revised opinion: up to 32 years of age, circumcision made no significant difference to the risk of STI acquisition. In fact, circumcised men were slightly more at risk, with 24.4 cases per 1000 person years, compared with 23.4 cases among the intact. “These findings are consistent with recent population-based cross-sectional studies in developed countries, which found that early childhood circumcision does not markedly reduce the risk [of] common STIs in the general population.”"
3) "Protection against penile cancer". Must like UTI above the numbers of Penile Cancer are already very low. Thus arguing for a mass benefit across a population is a weak approach here. However given these low numbers it is nigh impossible to show any relative benefits between circumcised and uncircumcised men in the US. Further what _tiny_ benefit was shown simply disappeared when basic penile hygiene and the effects of smegma and phimosis were taken into account. So it seems what _tiny_ benefit there is attained by whipping off the foreskins of entire populations - would probably just as easily be attained by basic hygiene education. The links in studies to Cervical Cancer however are more laughable. In order to show that link they had to reduce the data set to women who A) claimed to only have had one sexual partner ever and B) were with men who specifically had a high risk of contracting HPV. Hardly convincing then that in a _general population_ rather than a contrived cherry picked one - that circumcision is usefully linked with cervical cancer reductions.
4) Prevention of balanitis (inflammation of the *****) and balanoposthitis (inflammation of the ***** and foreskin). This is where your link starts to become something of a comedy act. claiming that circumcision of the foreskin prevents inflammation of the foreskin? Sure - well removal of the eyes would likely prevent eye infections too! Sure whip out peoples hearts while you are at it. They are unlikely to get heart attacks. And why not give everyone a lobotomy. They will never get depressed then! I think it is entering the realm of the patently ridiculous when circular arguments that "removal of X will stop infection of X" is being offered to justify "removal of X".
5) Prevention of phimosis (the inability to retract the foreskin) see "4" above as it is the same crap going on here.
So in summary your link here is biased - incomplete - and in parts patently ridiculous. Further it is based on the mangled concept that new-borns should bear the brunt of sexual hygiene in adults despite themselves not having a sex life of any kind. What few imaginary benefits can be obtained are not immediately medically necessary and should at best be left up to elective surgery in adults later in life. Finally without evidence of benefit I would tend to err towards 1000s and 1000s of years of evolutionary natural selection on this one and assume there is some reason this feature evolved.
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