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Snip and duck

March 27, 2009 | 10:05 am

Britjewish_2 A couple of decades ago, the trend in Western medicine was to discourage parents from having their newborn sons' penises circumcised, a dramatic turnaround from the trend of a couple of millennia ago. But trend cycles have a way of speeding up, and we're already back to doctors saying biblical Abraham might have had the right idea after all, though he undertook the procedure at a more advanced age.

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that circumcision is associated with dramatically reduced rates of the virus that causes genital warts, the virus that causes cervical cancer in women, and syphilis. This comes on top of findings a couple of years ago that circumcision appeared to have a protective effect against HIV infection. reducing infection rates in males by up to 60%.

As a result, some doctors are calling for circumcision as a public health measure. Knowing doctors, though, and the rate at which medical advice changes (Did wine end up being good or bad for us in the latest round?), males with uncertain sentiments on the subject will likely want to hold off before making radical anatomical modifications. It's a lot easier to eat more garlic -- or give up garlic -- than to undo genital surgery.

Photo: A mohel, who performs Jewish ritual circumcisions, with a client. Credit: Handout from Rabbi Jacob Shechet


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Comments
1.

Sending the memory.

That candle,
when the greatest
level tries to
forget a loving
intention, appears
in my mind
like a distant
idea, and also
this care invents
an emotion.

Francesco Sinibaldi

2.

I think the story here is that some US medical professionals are so obsessed with trying to find a purpose for circumcision that they are fudging data and overestimating insignificant facts. This particular study was partially funded by our tax dollars and by Bill and Malinda Gates. Odd that this 20 -30 % change of risk, where cut men used condoms more and cut men certainly did not have sex some of the time is considered at all. In another Gates funded study HIV positive men and their wives showed CIRCUMCISED men were passing HIV to women at a higher rate. But that study was a dead end so they don’t talk about it. The end of course is to promote circumcision. In particular it is to widen the base in the USA. The US, due to the internet was slowly realizing that not only does circ not make you healthy, it can cause all sorts of problems. People also realized (and in the pre-internet days natural men did not talk about it) that circ removes about 20,000 fine touch nerve endings and the most sensitive part of the male genitals. It is like losing your lips or your fingertips. You may ask why do these people push this barbaric ritual as a health practice?
If you had advocated something, and done something to thousands and it was revealed as bad, it is a natural reaction to defend it. This also applies to men that have been cut. NO man wants to hear that there member somehow has a problem. This also applies to mothers that had their son cut. There is this huge body of resistance to natural in the US. People must recognize the obsession of the medical people. None of this data, if it was not cooked up (and it is at least indefinite as condoms, behavior, sex - they did not know everything) is worth ripping and chopping off a baby boys most sensitive part in a developed country that has good water.
Someone said this obsession and this push for mutilation is hate or anti male sexuality, I think it based on embarrassment and an obsession with trying to find a reason to do this amputation. Let us Americans at least ask the American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on Neonatal [male] Circumcision when they review the policy on circ to have at least one natural male doctor (Someone that knows first hand the joy of these body parts that are amputated) included in the review as well as at least some consideration for the function and make up (thousands of fine touch nerve endings) of these parts. That would be the minimum.
The real story is the obsession (as a UK med said on this story) of American circumcisers trying to keep the practice going in the USA. You see they have skin in this and they want the practice to continue, as otherwise they would be shown to be heinous genital mutilators.



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