Male circumcision is a good thing

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I have a question for you ruveyn, as a religious man.
Why is it that god would add foreskin, tonsils, appendixes to the human body if they were only meant to be removed?

How do you as a religious man get off saying that gods work is imperfect and must be perfected by man.
Is that not blasphemy?

can they measure how much you like a German chick dressed as a police officer in leather tying you to a chair, no they cant, but they can measure how how much sensitivity your dick will have when she slapping it with a leather strap.

tonsils and appendix are not useless, tonsils are often that first line of defense in our immune system, why they often get infected. appendix is used for storing good bacteria in case we get dysentery or some thing else that makes us flush out our digestive system.

1) What are the incidences of "major" damage? (a term that you have conveniently left undefined). The best information that I have seen is that severe, acute complications arise in about 1 in 500 procedures, and that ongoing, severe to catastrophic complications are so rare as to be limited to anecdotal reports. Meanwhile, the incidence rate of penile cancer is low, to be sure, but bear in mind that reduced rates of STI transmission should not be uncritically left out of your comparison.

2) Yes, you lose skin. And, indeed, you lose many neurons. But you have failed demonstrate that the sensory nervous system does not compensate for this during later development.

3) You have linked one study. I have linked at least three others that suggest otherwise. We can start linking contradictory studies and all that it will do is prove my point: there is no medical concensus regarding the effects of neonatal circumcision on adult sexual sensititivity and function.



I can certainly agree to the first point. But that premise does not logically lead to your second statement. The medical evidence suggests to me that there is no statistically significant difference in sensitivity of the glans or the shaft as a result of circumcision. While the subjective experience is not comparable, the emipircal data that we can acquire suggests that whatever effect these additional neurons might have, it is not a significant one.

I see a lot of passionate positions being taken on this argument, but I have yet to see one that would stand up to the scrutiny of a peer review by a group of medical students, let along a group of urologists.

Right. I've said, and a number of others have too, that this is fundamentally an ethics question. It is also a medical question, and if infant circumcision were an emergency operation we could argue about medical considerations. In general, the procedure is not done as an emergency operation.

But in the first place it is a matter of ethics. No amount of appealing to the idea of 'peer review' is likely to persuade myself (or any others against) that needlessly* violating a child's right to bodily integrity is an ok thing to do. That is not 'prejudice', that is an ethical stance. Your ethical stance is that it is ok to do that, and that it's a matter of weighing up any 'evidence'. You seem to consider this position to be unbiased or dispassionate, seemingly considering yourself the one cool, rational head amongst a load of ranting loons on either side. It isn't, and you're not.

*And it is needless. There are condoms and good personal hygiene, and penile cancer is very rare. It is a drastic measure when taken for any supposed medical reason. How often, would you suppose, is it taken for medical reasons rather than cultural?

for 1, losing alot more than intended, small chance but it happens.

2. i gave you a study about that

3. i did not see your study, but if you have a study that says other wise i already know which one your talking about and its only measured 4 places its much older and the one i linked is a newer fallow up to the older one(making the older one obsolete). if you want to read more studies i have tuns of them here http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt46886.html when linking studies you really need to check there history, look for fallow ups and so on and so forth. the one i linked to my knowledge is the most recent non bias study about it.

It is not the place of the physician to substitute non-medical judgements for those of the patient, or the person who is legally competent to make decisions for the patient. Our place is to provide our medical expertise and to put it at the disposal of the people who make the decisions. If a resident under my supervision were ever to seek to dissuade a decision make from a course of action on the basis of non-medical considerations, that resident would only get one warning before being sent back for a refresher on ethics.

For a physician who objects on moral grounds to circumcision, abortion or any other procedure, the correct course of action is to withdraw in favour of a physician who is prepared to treat the patient.

My own ethical position is that parents are in the best position to make an informed decision about their sons. It's a given that no physician will perform the procedure without parental consent. Furthermore, I think it is an appropriate ethical position to say nothing on the subject of circumcision until it is raised by the parents. But once the parents have raised the issue, there is no medical reason (absent some aspect of the boy's state of health) to persuade the parents in one direction or another.

The ethical course is to answer parents' questions honestly, and then--absent any contraindications--carry out their instructions.

As to your last question, I am not altogether sure that this is relevant. Reduced likelihood of contracting an STI is not likely uppermost in the minds of parents of a newborn boy. And as I have said repeatedly there is no medical reason to advocate for or against routine neonatal circumcision. If parents decide they want their son circumcised, I would feel myself in no position to gainsay their decision. Similarly, from a cultural background that practices circumcision were to decide that they do not want their son circumcised, no amount of cultural pressure from outsiders would sway me.

But, if Jewish or Muslim parents were to insist on circumcision and there was a valid medical reason not to do so--or at least not to do so immediately--then we would be in a different circumstance.

Jewish Law, Halachah forbids circumcision if it is known that the bleeding disease runs in the family or if the infant is clearly too sickly to be subjected to the procedure. In short, health considerations trump the commandment to circumcise male infants. This is based on the principle that the Torah is to live by, not to die by.

Even the observance of the Sabbath is suspended when there is a question of life/death. For Example, A Jewish doctor is permitted to work on the Sabbath to save or maintain a life.

ruveyn

Of course, ruveyn--you and I both know this. But there are parents who will attempt to ignore, or even defy medical advice to defer circumcision. Not all of us are potential Nobel laureates, after all.

By and large the law recognizes the will of the parents. It is very rare for the State to intervene in the matters. This sometimes leads to unnecessarily dead children. Like when Jehova's Witnesses refuse blood transfusions or Christian Scientists refuse any kind of medical intervention.

So children are sometimes sacrificed on the altar of Separation of Church and State.

ruveyn

We take a different view in our legal system. The state's parens patriae jurisdiction can be brought to bear where parents seek to act in defiance of accepted medical advice and practice. The courts have stepped in at the request of the Public Trustee to order treatment of children in defiance of their parents' wishes. It's a very tricky area in the medical-legal field.

Tricky indeed, especially when State intervention collides with the First Amendment. Congress did not qualify its law that Congress shall not establish a religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof. The courts have held that the FIrst Amendment is binding on the States as well as Congress. So there is a real problem here.

ruveyn

I'm not so sure about that. Certainly the US Supreme Court was prepared to put child welfare legislation ahead of the First Amendment in Prince v. Massachusetts (1944) 321 U.S. 158.

While I cannot speak to its accuracy, this article: http://jwdivorces.bravehost.com/ suggests that it is a matter of some routine for hospitals in the United States to seek court intervention to order transfusions against the directions of observant Jehovah's Witness parents. It seems to me that the constitutional law in the United States is sufficiently flexible to permit the exercise of parens patriae jurisdiction notwithstanding the First Amendment.

I'm kind of curious what feminists think of male circumcision. I would hope they would be against it, it would be kinda hypocritical of them not to be. I don't think it's even any less bad than the female kind of circumcision.

Female "circumcision" is a vastly different exercise, which demonstrably compromises female sexual function. Even if you consider male circumcision to be barbaric, female genital mutilation is on a whole different scale of savagery.

I guess there's different variants of it but yeah, the more extreme forms yes. I'm just saying if a feminist is against FGM they should oppose male circumcision too, since even if it's not quite as severe necessarily in principle it's still a form of mutilation. And honestly I'd probably say most feminists are against male circumcision.