Reply to According to American Academy of Pediatrics Benefits of Circumcision Outweigh Risks

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]This is nothing more than a "good ole boys" decision; men perpetuating something that was done to them.  Currently, about 80-90% of all adult males are circumcised in the US.  Since the rates have been plummeting for the past decade, in another 10-20 years, the majority of adults - including doctors and hospital administrators - will themselves be intact.  Once the majority of pediatricians, OBs, and AAP policy makers are intact, there is no way they will continue to encourage this procedure to be performed. [/b]

What is especially interesting here is that there is no new study or research that influenced this updated policy.  As others have mentioned, this is simply about getting Medicaid and private insurance companies to continue paying for it.  Any willing parent can dig into the research and see that the scientific case for circumcision is extremely flimsy.  Yes, cutting off an otherwise healthy body part can ensure that the body part will never have an infection later in life.  But why the foreskin when there are so many other body parts that cause incurable disease?  For example, men develop breast cancer at triple the rate they develop penile cancer.  Why not remove all male newborn breast buds?  Think of the medical benefits!  Of course the difference is, so many adult males in this country have had their foreskin removed, that they simply do not understand that the foreskin could have any value, and they have a psychological need to justify their own circumcision by encouraging the continuation of the practice.  Again, that is going to change as the younger generation of intact boys grows up.

In terms of circumcision, no other pediatric association in the developed world comes to the same conclusion that the AAP does; in fact many are now leaning towards prohibiting or outlawing the procedure in non-consenting newborns.  The only reason this has continued to be acceptable here, is because the doctors themselves are cut.  Oh, and because it is a multi-million dollar business for hospitals.  Very difficult to undo that.  I challenge any parent who is asking a pediatrician or OB for advice about this, to also ask the (yes, personal) question of whether the doctor is himself cut.  I guarantee that those who are encouraging you to do it are cut themselves, and therefore can't actually understand from a personal perspective the benefits of having a foreskin.[/quote]

[b]This is a very, very weird way to frame this decision. [/b]I believe that male privilege and white privilege exist, but to assume that they made this decision based solely on a a "good old (circumcised) penises" club is to completely deny the science without being able to refute it. I've read both things: the science is not supportive and there are more studies coming out that will be even more supportive of circ.

Really what kind of conversations do you imagine took place? [/quote]

I actually don't think it is weird at all.  Circumcision has been a cure in search of a disease for the past 50 - 80 years, meaning that it was first done to curb masturbation, then every few years a new illness would be trotted out that circ supposedly cured, only to have that refuted a few years later.  Over the years, circumcision has supposedly treated literally hundreds of various things -- the latest of which is now this UTI and STD business.  (both of which, incidentally, can be either prevented or cured with far less invasive options, as they are in females).  That said, no one is refuting the fact that if you amputate a body part, it can never become infected or diseased.  However, the fixation on the foreskin is completely arbitrary.  There are many other 'expendable' body parts which have the potential to cause much more severe damage to the person over the course of a lifetime.  Consider this -- if we started cutting off labia, and continued to do so for decades, and spent 50 years trying to find a justification for it, we undoubtedly would find some benefit - case in point is that labial cancer occurs in far greater numbers than penile cancer.  Removal of the labia at birth (when arguably it would be easier since the baby girl cannot remember the pain, and there is less skin to deal with) would completely eradicate labial cancer in grown women.  Yet no one is suggesting that we start this practice.  So science tries desperately to justify something that[i] cut men already want to do to their sons and is already a strong (though fading, of course) cultural preference[/i].  Men who are not cut, or countries where the pediatricians and OBs are not cut, think that cutting their newborn sons is downright [i]horrific[/i].  Again, the science itself is extremely flimsy, as proven by the fact that dozens of other industrialized (non-cutting) countries evaluate the same data and think there is absolutely no reason to recommend circumcision, and in fact that it is harmful and should be outlawed.

Men have a very deep psychological need to have both robust and "normal" genitalia.  And, cut men very much need to justify what was done to them.  For all of you women who say that you didn't necessarily have a strong opinion, but that your DH "felt strongly that he wanted it done to DS" -- I guarantee that your DS was cut himself.  It changes the way they read the evidence.  For a man on both individual or cultural levels, agreeing that circumcision is bad or even just unnecessary takes an enormous amount of courage.  So, what I guess I'm proposing is that the bias is so intense that it strongly influences the policy writers.  In fact, I would bet big money on the fact that the entire team of men writing this new policy -- which was not based on any new scientific research, by the way -- are cut men.[/quote]

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