What are your thoughts on cirumcision of infants?
Most people seem to agree that femaly circumcision/gential mutilation is a bad practice, but many are still fine with male circumcision of infants. I suppose it might not be as horrific with males, but the reasons for it are more or less the same. Although many sites I have seen claim that infant circumcision of males produces some benefits, I think most people who decide to circumcise their babies do so because of tradition or religious reasons, not because of any supposed health benefits.
I am sure that few people on these forums would support a practice that mutilates an infant's genitals for no reason other than tradition or religion, so I also looked into the health benefits. I found this site: LINK, is called "Circumcision: A lifetime of medical benfits." It seems to have a pretty extensive list of benefits and links to the supporting evidence from various stages of life. I went over all of the benefits there and a lot of the evidence.
I will let other look at the site for themselves but some of the things that kept coming up are not very convincing. For example prevention of foreskin infections was one that kept coming up. I guess if you cut any prat of the body off it won't get infected. Also it can apparently reduce the likelihood of urinary tract infections, but circumcision seems like a drastic measure for such a minor problem.
Another one was women's sexual preference for circumcision. This one seemed interesting so I looked into the evidence which consisted of surveys, presumably from the USA. Women were asked what they prefer and why. Around 70% preferred circumcized men. I found it very strange that of these women 77% gave the reason "seems more natural" as one of the reasons why.
Another one that often comes up is that it can help reduce the spread of AIDS in Africa. I would say that helping to mitigate the impacts of a major epidemic would be justification for the practice in those areas if this claim is true. I'm not really sure why circumcision would prevent spread of AIDS so I am somewhat skeptical of this claim.
In the end I'm not really convinced there is a good reason in a modern industrialized country to have infants subjected to this procedure. Ther are also some negative effects of circumcision that are detailed on sites like these: LINK LINK.
So for those who know the effects (I'm sure there are some doctors here) or for those willing to look into the issue and form an opinion, I would be interested in knowing what you think about infant circumcision in modern industrialized nations. Should it be encouraged, discouraged, allowed, prohibited? Or leave it the way it is?
Most people seem to agree that femaly circumcision/gential mutilation is a bad practice, but many are still fine with male circumcision of infants. I suppose it might not be as horrific with males, but the reasons for it are more or less the same. Although many sites I have seen claim that infant circumcision of males produces some benefits, I think most people who decide to circumcise their babies do so because of tradition or religious reasons, not because of any supposed health benefits.
I am sure that few people on these forums would support a practice that mutilates an infant's genitals for no reason other than tradition or religion, so I also looked into the health benefits. I found this site: LINK, is called "Circumcision: A lifetime of medical benfits." It seems to have a pretty extensive list of benefits and links to the supporting evidence from various stages of life. I went over all of the benefits there and a lot of the evidence.
I will let other look at the site for themselves but some of the things that kept coming up are not very convincing. For example prevention of foreskin infections was one that kept coming up. I guess if you cut any prat of the body off it won't get infected. Also it can apparently reduce the likelihood of urinary tract infections, but circumcision seems like a drastic measure for such a minor problem.
Another one was women's sexual preference for circumcision. This one seemed interesting so I looked into the evidence which consisted of surveys, presumably from the USA. Women were asked what they prefer and why. Around 70% preferred circumcized men. I found it very strange that of these women 77% gave the reason "seems more natural" as one of the reasons why.
Another one that often comes up is that it can help reduce the spread of AIDS in Africa. I would say that helping to mitigate the impacts of a major epidemic would be justification for the practice in those areas if this claim is true. I'm not really sure why circumcision would prevent spread of AIDS so I am somewhat skeptical of this claim.
In the end I'm not really convinced there is a good reason in a modern industrialized country to have infants subjected to this procedure. Ther are also some negative effects of circumcision that are detailed on sites like these: LINK LINK.
So for those who know the effects (I'm sure there are some doctors here) or for those willing to look into the issue and form an opinion, I would be interested in knowing what you think about infant circumcision in modern industrialized nations. Should it be encouraged, discouraged, allowed, prohibited? Or leave it the way it is?
whatever..
