Circumcision

[Ivor the Engineer]

Wait, did you just seriously claim that exposing children to elevated levels of UVA/B radiation is not a permanent, medical alteration that could cause deleterious effects in the future? I'm sure many medical doctors will strongly disagree with you on that.

Other potentially harmful things that parents do:
* Feed children too much fast food
* Give children sedatives
* Putting braces on children

I'm not saying I'm pro-circumcision, but frankly I haven't seen any evidence that doing so is more harmful to a child's physical and mental state than any of the above.

Edited to add: my point is that parents make irreversible medical decisions for their children all the time, with potentially dangerous effects. Does this make them bad people or bad parents for not waiting until their children are 12 or older to decide anything? No, it's their job to make these sorts of decisions.

How about this:

http://www.cirp.org/library/pain/taddio2/

Interpretation
Circumcised infants showed a stronger pain response to subsequent routine vaccination than uncircumcised infants. Among the circumcised group, preoperative treatment with Emla attenuated the pain response to vaccination. We recommend treatment to prevent neonatal circumcision pain.

I'm always confused why this particular form of cruelty has to have long-lasting effects to be considered wrong. Anybody?

 

[Loss Leader]

Infant circumcision is like forcing a person to wear glasses that make them slightly short sighted; being able to see is still fantastic and they would not wish to go blind.

Except, once again, you have absolutely no evidence that infant circumcision makes someone "slightly short sighted" - that it reduces sexual function or pleasure in any way whatsoever.

So, it's more apt to say that infant circumcision is like forcing a person to either wear glasses or not wear glasses in such a manner as to have no discernable effect.

 

[Lonewulf]

Except that glasses can be removed. Circumcision is permanent, and when given to infants, is always without consent.

Is there really still a debate about this?

 

[Loss Leader]

Circumcision is permanent, and when given to infants, is always without consent.

I have examined every possible option for gaining consent from my eight day-old son including asking him straight out, performing a little puppet show and strapping on that mind reading device Doc Brown had in Back to the Future. I'm pretty sure he's just going to lie there and ignore me.

Is there really still a debate about this?

Nope, there isn't. No single legislature or court in the western world has ever found a parent not to be able to consent to a circumcision on behalf of his/her son.

 

[ponderingturtle]

The 'strong emotional reaction' is to the inflicting of pain and suffering for a highly unlikely benefit on a non-consenting individual.

That is the job of parents making medical decisions for thier children. They make decisions for non consenting individuals.


There is no such major repercussion of this that makes it medicaly clear that one is vastly preferable to the other. If anything medicaly I would expect if the benefits of being uncircumcised where attached to a medical procedure it would be concidered much more highly unethical to perform that procedure on children than it is with the benifits and risks being the way they are.

Of course if you listen to most anti circ people, the diaparity is so great that if the state of being uncircumcised was the result of an irreversible medical procedure then it would hands down be right to do such a thing.

 

[Lonewulf]

I have examined every possible option for gaining consent from my eight day-old son including asking him straight out, performing a little puppet show and strapping on that mind reading device Doc Brown had in Back to the Future. I'm pretty sure he's just going to lie there and ignore me.

Ah, sarcasm. Nice.

Well, I'm sure your circumcision to your son was nothing like what I had when I was a kid. I mean, babies don't actually feel the pain, the recovery, and everything. A process that every human being should undergo because of the arbitrary desires of their parents.

I tried everything I could to get a little baby to consent to getting shocked by a taser because I thought it would be funny. Didn't work, so it must have been okay.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I grew up in a Jewish family and I was always told that circumcision was beneficial to the baby's health and much less painful if done at 8 days rather than waiting until later when the baby became a child or a man.

It looks like this thread has already debunked the health benefits. (Many ciricumcision health benefits assertions are also discussed and dismissed in this 1992 Journal of Nurse-Midwifery article also: http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/milos-macris/ )

You do realize that they are a source that would never admit any benefit to circumcision right? You are citing propaganda as evidence.

 

[fls]

The question can hardly be re-worded for added clarity, but I'll try:

So, you don't agree with circumcision then, unless it's medically necessary?

I consider the decision to circumcise or not a private decision. I gave you my answer as to my private decision, but you said that wasn't what you meant. Does that mean you are asking me to make this a public decision - i.e. that I am answering for everyone?

'Mental and social well-being' of whom? Surely not the victim; he's too young even to appreciate what's happening. So you must be referring to the parent(s) then. To my mind, disfigurement of your own child in the selfish interests of your own social or mental well-being is a very lame and pusillanimous reason.

Mental and social well-being of the child. How could it possibly contribute to the well-being of the parents? I don't think there would be any expectation (other than lowering the risk of infant UTI's) that the benefit would be only for the present.

I very much doubt that this reason alone determines many parents' decision, where the choice is otherwise completely open.

As do I.

I (and I suspect most un-circumcised men) can easily achieve orgasm without retracting the foreskin, if I so wish. The ability to achieve an erection and thereafter orgasm is not, therefore, determined by sensitivity of the glans. An exposed glans, however, does increase the sensation and experience immensely (well it does for me) during sex.

Because of the tremendous range and variety of human sexual experience, I find it difficult to know what to make of individual descriptions. That's useful information to have, but surely you can see that it wouldn't be able to serve as proof against the practice?

Simply not true. I enjoy ice-cream, but on those rare occassions I've had an entire tub to myself ...!

The situation is not analogous. To stay with the ice cream example...an analogous situation would be, whether or not it took one spoonful or two, the ice cream headache is still just as painful.

Linda

 

[Loss Leader]

A process that every human being should undergo

Not every human being, just the boys.

because of the arbitrary desires of their parents.

Not arbitrary desires, religious desires.

 

[Lonewulf]

Not every human being, just the boys.

Aw, girls shouldn't be circumcised either? Why not?

Oh, right, THAT'S actually bad.

Not arbitrary desires, religious desires.

Ah, right, because the invisible man in the sky said it was okay, so it is...

 

[fls]

But the point is that there seems to be very little on either side. So it is not like if the risks and benifits where reversed they would be advocateing the procedure either. So the point you are coming from is a do nothing unless a significant benefit.

Yes. I have a bias in that direction (I've admitted to this in the past), as does medical ethics in general I think. Without that bias, the balance would be in favour of circumcision.

The favoring of inaction over action as a general principle is a long way away from the strong emotional reactions so many people in the anti circumcision camp have.

Yes. And that is one of the things that spurred my initial interest in this area - that this attitude is considered so inadequate by the anti-circ camp.

Linda

 

[Lonewulf]

Why is it that I have a certain opinion that I suddenly belong in a "camp"? Seriously.

 

[Octothorpe]

I witnessed circumcision "education"

I had just given birth to my son in 1999, and I heard two doctors talking to the new mother across the hall. They asked her if she wanted her son circumcised. She did not know what that was, so they "explained" it to her, noting that the proceedure might reduce urinary tract infections and that it was routine and common. Basically they sold her the proceedure with a 10 second spiel. She bought it. Circumcision was not covered in any of my child birth classes and it was not something my midwife ever discussed with me.

To me it's both about uneducated parents and about doctors selling an unnecessary proceedure. I know its hardly news that doctors perform unnecessary proceedures, and sometimes even harmful ones because "we know best and that's the way we've always done things." I'm glad to see that the Amer. Academy of Pediatrics has come out against the proceedure.

I had a friend who's family physician asked her if she had her new baby circumcised. When she replied "No" he told her that if he had attended the birth he just would have done the proceedure automatically. My friend answered that her daughter would not have taken kindly to that, and found another doctor.

A few people asked why I didn't have my son circumcised, and didn't I think he would be unclean. I always replied that his ears would get dirty but that didn't mean I wanted to cut them off. I would teach him how to wash instead.

 

[fls]

I grew up in a Jewish family and I was always told that circumcision was beneficial to the baby's health and much less painful if done at 8 days rather than waiting until later when the baby became a child or a man.

It looks like this thread has already debunked the health benefits. (Many ciricumcision health benefits assertions are also discussed and dismissed in this 1992 Journal of Nurse-Midwifery article also: http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/milos-macris/ )

Just to let you know, the cirp.org site presents information that is misleading and misrepresentative, giving an anti-circumcision bias. If you are interested in understanding these issues, I would suggest avoiding anti-circ sites.

Linda

 

[Morrigan]

Ah, right, because the invisible man in the sky said it was okay, so it is...

Come on, are you saying this is an arbitrary reason? You must hate Jews or something.

 

[Kaylee]

You do realize that they are a source that would never admit any benefit to circumcision right? You are citing propaganda as evidence.

The Journal of Nurse-Midwifery isn't a legitimate peer reviewed journal? No, I didn't realize that. I still don't realize that actually -- I guess I have more research ahead of me.

ETA:

Just to let you know, the cirp.org site presents information that is misleading and misrepresentative, giving an anti-circumcision bias. If you are interested in understanding these issues, I would suggest avoiding anti-circ sites.

So the Journal of Nurse-Midwifery isn't a peer reviewed respectable journal?

 

[JoeEllison]

Why is it that I have a certain opinion that I suddenly belong in a "camp"? Seriously.

What you should be asking is, if you are in a camp, why haven't you gotten a T-shirt, or at least a hat.

 

[sthomson]

Aw, girls shouldn't be circumcised either? Why not?

Oh, right, THAT'S actually bad.

This is my favorite straw-man. Traditionally, when males are circumcised, it's a rite of passage, or a step towards "Manhood" and all the rights that entails. In cultures where women are circumcised, it's to mark them as property, to prevent them from giving away their virginity before it can be sold, or to punish them for some infraction or another. Often, it is done in unsanitary conditions, and has high risk of infections and other complications.

Again, I'm not pro-circumcision; I'm just pointing out that being circumcisions done in third-world conditions for the purposes of objectifying and subduing an entire class of women is NOT the same as circumcisions done in a sanitary hospital, for misguided but still somewhat harmless reasons. Again, if someone can produce a study that show circumcised males exhibit a loss of sexual pleasure comparable to the loss suffered by circumcised females, then I suppose the argument is more valid.

 

[Henners]

Not arbitrary desires, religious desires.

...because of a non-rational belief, in other words. Now that is abuse.

...and I should know for I am Kublai Kahn, and I expect to be accorded the respect that I deserve.

 

[fls]

While that is certainly true, in general, it is also true that the few dead ones don't complain much.

I know it's tempting to pull out the dead baby argument, but the point is that there are more dead babies from not having circumcision (from UTI's) than there are from having circumcision. Fortunately, there are very few of both.

Linda