ALI A. RIZVI said ...
This year, 1.2 million male babies in the United States will have between 35 and 50% of healthy, functioning penile skin -- containing over 20,000 nerve endings and the five most sensitive areas of the penis -- removed in a procedure that all of the major medical associations in the world, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Canadian Paediatric Society, have deemed medically unnecessary.Overall, routine, non-therapeutic circumcision costs over $2 billion a year; in most states, it is still covered by Medicaid, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars to the taxpayer. Despite near-universal recommendations against performing it routinely, it is the most common surgical procedure performed in the United States.Having started among ancient Egyptians and ancient Semitic peoples as a religious sacrificial ritual, the practice didn't take hold in Western societies until the late 1800s, when Western society was mired in masturbation-related hysteria. Dr. John Kellogg (yes, the Corn Flakes guy) was seminally (ahem) influential in the fight against what he called the "practice of solitary vice." CONT=>
3 comments:
You never answered me...is HIV/AIDS a "myth" or is it a CIA coverup of using infected vaccines? I can't keep your conspiracy theories straight.
Well, I strongly believe that circumcision is unnecessary and invasive. I belonged to a group in college called Students for Genital Integrity LOL! But we were activists against female and male circumcision. We didn't circumcise our boy.
HOWEVER, in order to evaluate the circumcision AIDS rhetoric, you need to know a bit about penile physiology. As mentioned before, the penis and vagina are rich with Langerhans cells. The foreskin is a sheath that contains over ten thousand nerve endings and also very special mucosal tissue which HIV LOVES to bind to.
I believe that infant circumcision is a human rights violation regardless of gender. But if my son chooses not to get a circumcision he is at greater risk for HIV infection.However, if he lives a morally righteous lifestyle and has safe sex outside of marriage, then I think he'll be just fine.
In Africa, the WHO was wrong to recommend that men get circumcised. What they ought to have recommended is that circumcision take place in medicalized environments to reduce the spread of infectious diseases via unclean circumcision rituals...but I digress...
Great post. Slowly the word is getting out. Thanks very much.
The claim that HIV targets Langerhans cells is based on a few in vitro (in glassware) experiments performed by circumcision enthusiasts on the foreskins cut off cadavers. Langerhans cells are universally found in all skin. There is minimal variation between parts of the body in their content of Langerhans cells. They are found in all genital tissue including the glans, foreskin, shaft, scrotum, clitoris, clitoral hood, labia, and vagina.
A couple of other things:
1. In the three randomised controlled trials, they circumcised a total of 5,400 men. 64 of them got HIV in less than two years (while 132 of the non-circumcised control group - that's the whole basis of the "60% protection") but 327 of the circumcised men are unaccounted for, and finding out independently (as they were encouraged to do) that you were HIV+) would be a powerful inducement not to go back. This makes the "circumcision prevents HIV" case a lot less "compelling".
2. In at least six African countries, more of the circumcised men have HIV than the non-circumcised, according to the National Health and Demographic Surveys. This is a much more focused correlation than just comparing country against country. It may not prove anything, but it certainly needs to be explained before embarking on mass-circumcision campaigns that might do more harm than good. I don't know of anyone who's even begun to try explaining it.
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