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Thread: (Male) Circumcision: Harmless cultural tradition or horrific genital mutilation?

  1. #51
    The Queen Zuul's avatar
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    Thanks for reviving this thread, Exy, as I've revised my opinion on the issue.

    Quote Originally posted by Zuul View post
    Word. Of all the parenting issues people could fight about, circumcision is way, way down on the list. I wouldn't do it unless my partner felt very strongly about it or there were pressing cultural reasons, but unless somebody's asking for my opinion it's not my place to say anything about anybody who isn't my child.
    Having read more and seriously thought about having children, it isn't at the bottom of the list. Just because we've been socialized to see it as normal in this country doesn't make it normal. It's still an unnecessary surgery on your child's genitals. It's still being done for dubious reasons. Any health benefits (except perhaps from a minuscule effect on a rare type of cancer) that it provides are less than is provided by hygiene and condoms. And some of the reasoning offered is ridiculous:

    Some observers also point out that variation in circumcision practices may help explain why HIV rates in countries or regions differ. In areas where circumcision is common, HIV infection rates tend to be low. In North America, where about 80 percent of men are circumcised, only a fraction of 1 percent of the population is HIV-positive. In western Africa, another area where circumcision is widely practiced, rates of HIV infection among those ages 15 to 49 are just 1 percent to 5 percent. But in eastern and southern Africa, where typically fewer than 20 percent of men are circumcised, rates of HIV infection range from 15 percent to 25 percent.
    From http://www.fhi.org/en/RH/Pubs/Networ...curcumsion.htm

    That sounds pretty good for North America until you consider that in western Europe, the country with the highest percentage of the population that is HIV positive as of 2007--Switzerland--had a rate of 0.6%. Finland, Germany, Malta, Norway, and Sweden all have a rate of 0.1%, the same as Israel. I don't have circumcision stats on Malta, but for the rest they all have a circumcision rate of under 20% (similar to eastern and southern Africa). Israel's circumcision rate is obviously high, at nearly 100%, but their HIV rates are the same as in all those countries where they aren't circumcising routinely.

    And what's the specific number for the USA's HIV rate? 0.47% So in western Europe we're looking at Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the UK as all having lower HIV rates than the US. Yep, circumcision is clearly doing us some good there.

    As far as non-religious circumcision goes, it's a practice that was begun and when its reasoning was found to be faulty a new set of rationalizations was looked for. That's not medicine or science. That's superstition.

  2. #52
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    Reasoning based on what's going on in Africa is inherently problematic because circumcision rates themselves depend on religion, and come tied to different religious standards of sexual behavior.

    The difference in rates of penile cancer is now known to probably result from differences in HPV infection rate, since that's now understood to be the cause of penile cancer.

  3. #53
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    So much as I suspected, all the alleged benefits of circumcision are based on faulty science?

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    Quote Originally posted by Zuul View post
    So much as I suspected, all the alleged benefits of circumcision are based on faulty science?
    I don't think that's true. My impression is that uncut men are more vulnerable to HPV and HIV infection; it's just probably not anywhere near strong enough to explain the disparities in HIV infection rates between different countries. The pro-circ nutjobs who are advocating mass circumcision in Africa like quoting those numbers because it sounds dramatic but it's hard to believe that we'd suddenly see a difference if everyone in Tanzania were circumcised.

  5. #55
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    Quote Originally posted by Cartooniverse View post
    It's mohel, not moil.
    Speaking on behalf of my people, it's a little silly to get too persnickety over the spelling of transliterations. For example, there are a few spellings of "Chanukah," and they're all acceptable. The only really correct spelling is in Hebrew.

  6. #56
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    Weeeeeell...c'mon. You might take issue with someone spelling Kinicky,

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