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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think there's lots of room for reasonable people to disagree on this issue.  I was swayed by the reduced incidence of penile cancer and STD's, but as many have pointed out, an educated person in a first world country doesn't generally rely on a circumcision as protection against STD's, and Gardasil will probably be a preventative against penile cancer.

[b]I've also had doctors tell me that circumsized boys have a reduced incidence of UTI's.[/b]

Interestingly, I thought that the best way to research this would be to find a study of men who had circumcisions done as adults.  There is such a study, but these men were mostly doing the procedure to treat condyloma, a congenital conidiotn in which the foreskin is shortened and causes pain.  These test subjects were therefore so relieved to be getting a circumcision, that their opinions on life before and after didn't seem quite relevant to the average guy.[/quote]

This has always been fascinating to me.  Why do doctors and parents alike think it reasonable to amputate healthy skin simply to potentially protect against a UTIs?  What will you do when your daughter gets a UTI?

Doctors should also be explaining these facts:  1) baby boys, regardless of their circumcision status, are going to get fewer UTIs than girls, and that 2) the reduction in UTI's by circumcision applies only to the baby's first year of life (after that things even out naturally and the number of UTIs is still lower than girls), 3) breastfeeding provides significantly more protection against UTIs than circumcision does in that first year of life, and 4) the studies used to come up with this data have been hotly contested for a variety of reasons - while meanwhile other studies have come out that circumcision actually increases the rate of UTIs in newborns.  And of course, the most important tidbit:  if your son (or daughter) gets a UTI, they can easily be treated with antibiotics.

Lastly, there is some debate about the entire UTI issue anyway, and many - especially those from countries who do not routinely circumcise - believe that the reason there is any increase in UTIs in intact boys, is due to the forcible retraction that has historically been practiced in this country; NOT because intact penises are more likely to become infected.[/quote]

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