Anonymous wrote:Is Rush on DCUM? See also reference to the CDC - in addition to AAP, HIH, and WHO on medical benefit -- and that since there are pros and cons, one should leave the decision up to parents.

Thursday, Aug 27, 2009 13:35 ET
Limbaugh: You'll pry my foreskin from my cold, dead hands
Circumcision -- tool of the coming fascist, penis-hating regime
By Gabriel Winant

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh attends a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2009. President Bush was presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Limbaugh, who suffered hearing loss as a result of autoimmune inner ear disease, wears a cochlear implant, a powerful hearing aid that is implanted in the inner ear of an individual with nerve deafness. If you had to whip up a too-good-to-be-true story for the right-wing pundit class to freak out over, what elements would you include? There would have to be, of course, an element of command-and-control socialist-fascist invasion and regulation of the most private parts of our
lives, in the name of some spurious "common good." But that alone is a little pedestrian nowadays, so you'd want to add a nice dollop of male sexual neurosis to really kick it up a notch. Then add just a hint of racial fear and beat to a froth.

What are we talking about here? Officials at the Centers for Disease Control, showing touching naiveté about the current political environment, are weighing an initiative to encourage male circumcision, with the idea that there are probably some minor health benefits. Says Dr. Peter Kilmarx, the head of epidemiology for the H.I.V./AIDS Prevention wing of the CDC, "What we've heard from our consultants is that there would be a benefit for infants from infant circumcision, and that the benefits outweigh the risks."

Seems straightforward. Sure, there are reasonable people on all sides of the general arguments about circumcision, but if the CDC takes a rigorous look and decides to encourage the surgery, what harm can they do?

Only a little bit, it turns out, but in a place where it really hurts. Ed Morrissey of the conservative blog Hot Air writes, "If the CDC -- which is part of the same government that will control health care -- decides that circumcision is beneficial and cost-efficient in the long term, that same mechanism would create pressure on doctors and patients to perform them."

Morrissey's argument has the same basic flaw that animated the "death panel" fears: an inability to distinguish between advice and force. If this CDC proposal goes into effect, it, like the now-dead end-of-life counseling proposal, would make available some valuable medical advice. There's nothing on the table to penalize doctors who don't circumcise newborns, or parents who decline the procedure. To have a "mechanism [that] would create pressure on doctors and patients," you need, well, a mechanism. Morrissey can't come up with one.

But when was the last time that stopped these guys? Two days ago, Rush Limbaugh claimed, "It is President Obama who wants [to] mandate circumcision ... And that means, if we need to save our penises from anybody, it's Obama."

So now that we're talking about Limbaugh's penis, all of a sudden, we're in a world where the tiniest measure of government suggestion about sexual health equals a full onslaught against privacy. Expect to see the radio talker at the next march to protect abortion rights with a "Keep your government hands off my private parts" sign.

Gabriel Winant is a graduate student in American history at Yale. More: Gabriel Winant

Anonymous wrote:one son and YES! And I don't regret it.

His half brother it is not and now with 8 years old HE HAS TO DO IT but he is afraid.

Anonymous wrote:

So if you take away all of the improper care problems, problems with the intact male are rare. If your son suffered one of them, you have my sympathies, but your plight does not convince me that we should all circ our babies. (interestingly, breastfeeding reduces UTI's much more than circumcision, but many of the same people who circ do not breastfeed or do not breastfeed for long. They're willing to cut a piece of baby's penis off to reduce the risks of a UTI but they can't breastfeed? I'm not saying this was true in your case, but it's an issue that baffles me at times and I think goes a long way to illustrate that people are NOT circumcising mainly due to health issues but rather culture, because dad is, or cosmetic).

I love how niftily you expanded your characterization of families who opt for circumcision! Yes, they are wicked, wicked people who advance upon newborn babies with scalpel in one hand and formula bottle in the other, grinning menacingly as they move. What other evil tendencies might these baby-butchers have? Feed their children non-organic vegetables? Let them play with plastic, Chinese-made toys? Leave them in carseats with the motor running? Oh evil, evil is their name!

Sarcasm aside, suitable as it may be for this argument, do you have any actual data or reason (based on evidence) to believe that families who circumcise are less likely to breastfeed? Care to share sources? Preferably the ones that have nothing to do with your opinion.

Anonymous wrote:
And, by the way, to PP, a toddler's death from being under a *general anesthetic* for a circumcision is not on point. http://gothamist.com/2011/05/05/circumcision_gone_wrong_leaves_quee.php I have no idea why one would have a general anesthetic -- which has substantial risks always. The normal practice is local or none.

Anonymous wrote:
Sarcasm aside, suitable as it may be for this argument, do you have any actual data or reason (based on evidence) to believe that families who circumcise are less likely to breastfeed? Care to share sources? Preferably the ones that have nothing to do with your opinion.

Anonymous wrote:We did. DS was born last year. Asked my OB what percentage of his patients did it, and he said 80%. (This is in DC.)

Still feel odd about the decision though. If I had to do it again, there's a good chance I would not do it. No complications or anything, just seems unnatural to me. But didn't feel that strongly against it and DH felt strongly in favor.

Anonymous wrote:
All the docs agreed that we needed to wait until DS was recovered from the first UTI (so I can't imagine doing it to a baby who was STILL in the NICU, yikes!). Once he was, we picked a ped. surgeon (who also practices as a mohel). He had an anesthetic injection, but still cried HARD when we got him back in the recovery room and refused to nurse for several hours--that was very hard for me. But he was back to his usual self within a day.
So the way I see it, he lost his foreskin, but it probably saved his kidney.

Anonymous wrote:Not the poster you are arguing with, but it's hard to argue with someone like this. Your views are really skewed here. Yes, FGM is perpetuated as violence against baby girls / women in OUR view. In the view of those doing it, it's culture, tradition, and necessary. You say "there doesn't seem to be a problem" with male circumcision, which just shows that you've completely ignored all of the risks and drawbacks that so many people have patiently laid out here. For all your supposed reasonableness, you just don't want to accept the basic premises that there are risks involved with circumcision. I've laid out, a few pages back, my opinions that the risks outweigh the benefits. Studies that demonstrated UTI's (are you the UTI poster?) are much more common in intact babies are flawed and we've said why. Studies demonstrating HIV reduction are DEEPLY flawed and we've said why. UTI's are caused by a number of things - bubble bath and soap can do it (intact or not). Proper care of the penis and foreskin (aka leave it alone!) are important. In the hospital where my son was born, I was absolutely shocked that a nurse there actually was looking at him and tried to move his foreskin down. She was like "when you clean him, you need to get under these folds." If I hadn't stopped her, she might have retracted his penis. So many of the supposed "problems" with intact men come from mistakes that health care providers make (a friend of mine's son was forcibly retracted by his pediatrician before the mom realized what was happening at 12 months).

So if you take away all of the improper care problems, problems with the intact male are rare. If your son suffered one of them, you have my sympathies, but your plight does not convince me that we should all circ our babies. (interestingly, breastfeeding reduces UTI's much more than circumcision, but many of the same people who circ do not breastfeed or do not breastfeed for long. They're willing to cut a piece of baby's penis off to reduce the risks of a UTI but they can't breastfeed? I'm not saying this was true in your case, but it's an issue that baffles me at times and I think goes a long way to illustrate that people are NOT circumcising mainly due to health issues but rather culture, because dad is, or cosmetic).

Like the UTI argument, in fact there is even stronger evidence here, (I've laid it all out above) the HIV reduction works only in a very, very specific vacuum that is not like the situation we have in the U.S. because we don't practice dry sex and much (not all) of our HIV transmission is man on man or needle driven and this only reduces female to male (not male to female) transmission rates. Your child is SO much better off wearing a condom when it comes time for sex.

I do not know what I think about making circumcision illegal. I'd like to see that happen, but I'm not sure it ever will. I think circumcision will slowly go away when medicaid stops covering it in all areas except where there is medical need (this would just be a manner of coding, so I'm sure some practitioners would have nearly all babies with medical need, but it's a start. Private health insurances frequently follow medicaid's practice, and that will make parents face the fact that they're doing cosmetic surgery on a baby, there is no health benefit, there are risks, and they're on the hook to pay for it.

Until then, I just hope more parents can be counted on to do the research and spare their poor babies this barbaric ritual.