CDC expected to make recommendations about circumcision

Please talk to your doctor about both hepatitis B immunization and circumcision before you give birth.

While the prevalence of hepatitis B is low in the US overall, it is HIGH in the Twin Cities. This is because hep B is a very common infection in east Asia and parts of Africa. Over the past decades, the Twin Cities has become home to many from those areas so the infection has become quite common in both native and immigrant Minnesotans.

Hepatitis B can be spread to newborns through CASUAL contact, particularly in areas of HIGH prevalence. Two-thirds of hepatitis B infection in children is due to casual contact.

Circumcision remains a very personal decision. It is primarily done for CULTURAL reasons. There are both advantages and disadvantages, medically, to having the procedure done so professional organizations state that it is up to the parents.

Check with your insurance company to see if circumcision is a covered procedure. Since the risks and benefits are equal, insurers don't see any advantage to having the procedure done and many do not cover it.

Eggs-Meat-circumcision what a hoot. When are doctors going to stop telling God that He made another mistake? Do they really believe we are stupid?

In Europe, almost no-one circumcises unless they're Muslim or Jewish, and they have significantly lower rates of almost all STI's including HIV.

Even in Africa, there are six countries where men are more likely to be HIV+ if they've been circumcised: Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, and Swaziland. Eg in Malawi, the HIV rate is 13.2% among circumcised men, but only 9.5% among intact men. In Rwanda, the HIV rate is 3.5% among circumcised men, but only 2.1% among intact men. If circumcision really worked against AIDS, this just wouldn't happen. We now have people calling circumcision a "vaccine" or "invisible condom", and viewing circumcision as an alternative to condoms.

The one study into male-to-female transmission showed a 50% higher rate in the group where the men had been circumcised btw.

ABC (Abstinence, Being faithful, Condoms) is the way forward. Promoting genital surgery will cost lives, not save them.

Mark Lyndon wrote:

In Europe, almost no-one circumcises unless they're Muslim or Jewish, and they have significantly lower rates of almost all STI's including HIV.
Even in Africa, there are six countries where men are more likely to be HIV+ if they've been circumcised: Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, and Swaziland. Eg in Malawi, the HIV rate is 13.2% among circumcised men, but only 9.5% among intact men. In Rwanda, the HIV rate is 3.5% among circumcised men, but only 2.1% among intact men. If circumcision really worked against AIDS, this just wouldn't happen. We now have people calling circumcision a "vaccine" or "invisible condom", and viewing circumcision as an alternative to condoms.
The one study into male-to-female transmission showed a 50% higher rate in the group where the men had been circumcised btw.
ABC (Abstinence, Being faithful, Condoms) is the way forward. Promoting genital surgery will cost lives, not save them.

If what you write above is mostly or entirely correct, then the circ-slows-HIV line the Yanks are pushing is a load of bollocks. I know that the typical European HIV expert rolls her eyes when circ and HIV are discussed, saying "the Americans have this obsession about the foreskin..."

"Circumcision has long been a personal decision left up to parents."

Not so long, only about 40 years. Before that it was often done without asking. In the rest of the English-speaking world it is not offered: it was tried, found to do no good, and abandoned. And since it is a (very) personal decision, there is only one person who should make it, when he is old enough (he will almost always decide against it).

"The focus on circumcision follows findings from sub-Saharan Africa, where studies have shown that circumcised men reduce their risk of HIV infection by half."

AIDS is rampant in sub-Saharan Africa, and that would be a significant reduction, if the studies were accurate. In the US it would mean hundreds or even thousands of circumcisions wasted to prevent - or delay - one transmission that would be better prevented by more certain means.

Meanwhile, part of the same studies show that circumcision does not protect women from infection by men, and may even increase their risk, which is already greater.

"Circumcised boys develop fewer urinary tract infections in their first year - about 1 in 1,000 - compared with uncircumcised boys - 1 in 100."

If this figure were accurate it would mean that 991 circumcisions in a thousand are wasted, 990 on boys who wouldn't have got UTIs, and one on a boy who will get one anyway.

"The risk of penile cancer is reduced in circumcised men."

The risk of penile cancer is very low in all men - lower than the risk of male breast cancer, lower than the risk of the corresponding cancers in women, lower in non-circumcising Denmark than the US. Again, about 1000 circumcisions would be needed to prevent one penile cancer.

"Circumcision ... involves pulling and clamping the skin to cut off blood flow before making the incision."

It also involves tearing the foreskin away from the glans, to which it is usually naturally attached at birth. Premature forcible retraction is one of the main causes of the infections that make many post-neonatal circumcisions "necessary".

"The 10-minute procedure is usually done before the baby leaves the hospital.

Doctors routinely use anesthesia to reduce pain..."

If it only takes ten minutes, doctors are not waiting long enough for the anesthetic to take effect. It wears off in hours, while the pain is renewed with every urination until the wound heals.

"... and complications are rare."

But they can be serious, up to and including death - a high price for an unnecessary procedure.

People are peculiar about this topic. On a plane last winter, I was stuck a row in front of a pregnant woman who explained at great length and in colorful language that she'd never inflict the horrible embarrassment of being uncircumcised on her child.

Think about it. This woman felt -- anticipated, even -- shame on the part of her child. She didn't apparently feel any twinge of embarrassment over discussing that with strangers on a plane, however.... Leaving alone any sense of reflection about the physical experience of the whole thing, or any shame at being so utterly thoughtless about why she was doing it in the first place. Peer pressure? I mean....

Truly, strange.

Good to see you here, O Fearless Leader of Kiwi Intactivism!

Hugh7 wrote:

"Circumcision has long been a personal decision left up to parents."

Wrong. American baby circ began to be done always as a matter of course starting about 1940 and continuing into the 1980s. The above sentence has been strictly true only since 1985-90, when the default became to do nothing unless the appropriate box is ticked on the hospital admission form.

Hugh7 wrote:

"The 10-minute procedure is usually done before the baby leaves the hospital."

No country collects data on the number of circumcisions performed in doctors's surgeries.

Hugh7 wrote:

"Doctors routinely use anesthesia to reduce pain..."

Even though lidocaine has been available since 1950, it was never used with infant circumcision until 1997. Lidocaine is now clearly best practice. But is it standard practice?

In any event, over the course of the previous century about 100 million American baby boys were circumcised without any pain management whatsoever. This was barbaric, full stop. I am not surprised that this has led many Americans to not trust medical opinion about routine circumcision. People that calloused to baby pain are not likely to have opinions worth respecting.

Hugh7 wrote:

If it only takes ten minutes, doctors are not waiting long enough for the anesthetic to take effect. It wears off in hours, while the pain is renewed with every urination until the wound heals.

Good points. I've always wondered about the interaction among baby circ, wearing nappies, and urination. Something tells me this could make for hellish baby pain...

I cannot imagine a more barbaric way to bring a little boy into this world than to have the foreskin ripped from his penis before he's even a month old. I have yet to meet a man who would consent to having such a procedure performed on him as an adult. Hell, a great many men won't even conset to a vasectomy. Yet, they have no trouble inflicting it on their newborn son because they want him to look like daddy.

Tom wrote:

I cannot imagine a more barbaric way to bring a little boy into this world than to have the foreskin ripped from his penis before he's even a month old. I have yet to meet a man who would consent to having such a procedure performed on him as an adult. Hell, a great many men won't even conset to a vasectomy. Yet, they have no trouble inflicting it on their newborn son because they want him to look like daddy.

For decades, I read in books for expecting parents the flat-out assertion that a baby's nervous system was insufficiently developed to experience pain!! This was a blatant rationalisation. I have never witnessed a circumcision and don't want to. And I have read some posts say that they have seen a baby either not cry much or cry as soon as he was strapped down in the spread-eagle position. We can't say that it hurts like hell for every single baby who goes through. But it hurts like hell for an ample majority. American medical research published in the late 1990s pretty much proved that point, as far as I am concerned. Lidocaine is always used in Australasia, though I don't know since when. But I have read nothing saying that Lidocaine has become standard practice in the USA.

Keep in mind that routine circumcision involves a doctor and a nurse. In recent decades, women doctors sometimes do it. The nurse is almost always a woman. Think of all that denial of the feminine nurturing instinct that is going on when a baby is cut without lidocaine. The socialization embodied in the clinical training of doctors is so intense that thousands of medical students have been able to close their ears and minds to the barbarity of it all.

Circumcision became fashionable 1880-1920, a time when local anesthesia was unknown. Doctors and parents were so fixated on the "benefits" of circumcision that they closed their minds to the possibility that they were doing something barbaric.