The Sensitive Issue of Circumcision

[ponderingturtle]

I'm sorry, I don't see any difference between following obscure and seemingly pointless guidelines because you believe in a God and following obscure and pointless guidelines because your ancestors believed in a God.

I really have no response to "oh, it's cultural" other than "Your culture makes no sense."

Those are exactly the reasons I refuse to wear pants when protection is not needed.

 

[ponderingturtle]

As can I.

Stupid mistypeing, I ment Circumcised.

 

[Darat]

I don't now about anyone else, but the subjective seem to me to be very important in sex....

Anyhow, that's not really my argument. My main reason for opposing circumcision is that I think that it is wrong to permanently alter a child's body (and put him throught the pain and discomfort) unless there is evidence that it will benefit the health of that child significantly. I guess we just disagree about that, and you are happy with a potential slight benefit. It just comes down to how much weight we put on each side.

skeptigirl has also said another consideration she uses is the sex of the child.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

skeptigirl has also said another consideration she uses is the sex of the child.

To be fair she has said she would support hoodectomy (I think that was the term that was used, I have never heard of it before) for baby girls if it were shown to have benefits on a similar level to circumcision.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

I don't now about anyone else, but the subjective seem to me to be very important in sex....

Not according to skeptigirl et al.. So long as a circumcised man still enjoys sex, that's all that matters. That he may have enjoyed it significantly more had he not been circumcised is not important. Individual choice isn't important either. Not when there's a small risk of a treatable condition in his first year of life. No, what matters to skeptigirl et al. is parental power choice.

Anyhow, that's not really my argument. My main reason for opposing circumcision is that I think that it is wrong to permanently alter a child's body (and put him throught the pain and discomfort) unless there is evidence that it will benefit the health of that child significantly. I guess we just disagree about that, and you are happy with a potential slight benefit. It just comes down to how much weight we put on each side.

I still think Zimbardo, Milgram and Asch are a better explanation for what's going on. But of course, those who circumcise their boys think they're way to smart to have their behaviour determined by such primitive drives.

 

[GreyICE]

You have repeated your false statement yet again. You just dismiss the policy statement with the very thorough review of the literature done by the AAP which found some evidence.

I have no issue that you personally conclude the medical benefits are not of enough value to you to outweigh what you perceive as the downside.

Claiming there is no evidence is a false claim.

Any benefit must consider the downside. If there is a drug that cures a condition that is fatal 5% of the time if not cured, but the drug kills 7% of its users, there's no evidence that the drug has net benefits. I think it's very fair to say there is no evidence the drug is beneficial.

Similarly, there's no evidence that the benefits are in any way outweighing the complication rate with circumcision in this country.

 

[I Ratant]

...

Similarly, there's no evidence that the benefits are in any way outweighing the complication rate with circumcision in this country.

.
And that's the fact.

 

[TheDaver]

Think of it from an action vs inaction standpoint.

You’ll realize that the decision to circumcise is just plain irrational.

 

[madmonk76]

My cousin, (who is a nurse) and I just had this argument.
She asked me if the doctors had told me to retract my son's foreskin everyday.
I asked her if she was completely insane. Then I realized she was assuming I'd had him circumcised, even tho she'd just changed his nappy.
When I told her that we hadn't, she seemed shocked and a little offended.
She wanted to know why, and she asked it in this tone that seemed to imply I'd done him some sort of disservice by not butchering his penis.
At one point she said, "Well, anyway, it's supposed to be cleaner..."

I cannot even begin to explain how offensive I found her attitude.

 

[Rasmus]

Cleaner?

Sure!

Why, that#s why my parents had all my toes amputated when I was but a week old - so I couldn't get any dirt between them and catch an infection or something ...

 

[madmonk76]

She must be under the impression that men the world over have never bothered to wash themselves in their lives, ffs.

 

[Primus]

I never get the cleaner thing. It's like saying everyone should shave their head because its cleaner. Bypassing the fact that you could just wash your hair.
Personally I had a loss of sensation having been partially circumsized at the age of 14. Having said that it was done rather roughly and with a rugby boot so probably isn't a fair example. Still grateful for whats left though. I would be pissed off if my parents had taken it upon themselves to get rid for no good reason.

 

[rocketdodger]

The results are consistent with some affect from the circumcision. The results are not consistent with an overwhelmingly negative effect which supports the level of objection coming from the anti-circ activists.

The level of objection isn't because of an "overwhelmingly negative" effect. The level of objection is due to a demonstrably negative effect, however slight it may be, coupled with the facts that the procedure is 1) performed on people who have no say in the matter and 2) irreversible.

The simple fact of the matter is that if you went around the planet and offered to give adult males a free circumcision you wouldn't find many who would take up your offer.

So medical/religious/cultural reasons aside, you really have no good argument here.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Think of it from an action vs inaction standpoint.

This is very much true, but with all the talk of mutilation and the like in many peoples minds it is not two options that are about equal with neither being able to be strongly recommended based on evidence.

So it really depends on how much weight you give to the supremacy of inaction over action.

You’ll realize that the decision to circumcise is just plain irrational.

why is valuing inaction over action so much more rational than recognizing little difference?

 

[Upchurch]

I have to admit that I'm as utterly floored by the response this thread has received as I am by the emotionally charged, and unsolicited, advice we've gotten on this subject in real life. People feel very strongly about a topic I've hardly given any thought to. I kinda feel like I blundered into the wrong bar and in inadvertently started a brawl.

I'd just like to thank everyone again for their input. As I said pages and pages ago, we'll listen to what the doctor says, but unless she has some super compelling reasons to do so, we are not going to have the kid circumcised.

 

[ponderingturtle]

The level of objection isn't because of an "overwhelmingly negative" effect. The level of objection is due to a demonstrably negative effect, however slight it may be, coupled with the facts that the procedure is 1) performed on people who have no say in the matter and 2) irreversible.

The simple fact of the matter is that if you went around the planet and offered to give adult males a free circumcision you wouldn't find many who would take up your offer.

So medical/religious/cultural reasons aside, you really have no good argument here.

The thing is that it might well not be the same thing. This deals with a developing nervous system vs an established one.

Perform a hemisphereectomy on an adult and you will have severe problems across the board. Do it on a young child and you get slight weakness on one side.

 

[Lonewulf]

I have to admit that I'm as utterly floored by the response this thread has received as I am by the emotionally charged, and unsolicited, advice we've gotten on this subject in real life. People feel very strongly about a topic I've hardly given any thought to. I kinda feel like I blundered into the wrong bar and in inadvertently started a brawl.

I'd just like to thank everyone again for their input. As I said pages and pages ago, we'll listen to what the doctor says, but unless she has some super compelling reasons to do so, we are not going to have the kid circumcised.

It's hard for me to not be emotional when I see otherwise intelligent skeptical people like Loss Leader using the exact same kind of vague tactics that I see from, say, Creationists or the like.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

...we'll listen to what the doctor says, but unless she has some super compelling reasons to do so, we are not going to have the kid circumcised.

Ah, the rational approach: Assume your kid is one of the 99 boys who will not get a UTI, rather than the 1 who will.

Hope everything goes well.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

The thing is that it might well not be the same thing. This deals with a developing nervous system vs an established one.

Perform a hemisphereectomy on an adult and you will have severe problems across the board. Do it on a young child and you get slight weakness on one side.

LOL!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy

Results
All hemispherectomy patients suffer at least partial hemiplegia on the side of the body opposite the removed or disabled portion, and may suffer problems with their vision as well.

This procedure is almost exclusively performed in children because their brains generally display more neuroplasticity, allowing neurons from the remaining hemisphere to take over the tasks from the lost hemisphere. This likely occurs by strengthening neural connections which already exist on the unaffected side but which would have otherwise remained small in a normally functioning, uninjured brain.[1] One case, demonstrated by Smith & Sugar, 1975; A. Smith 1987, demonstrated that one patient with this procedure had completed college, attended graduate school and scored above average on intelligence tests. Studies have found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor after the procedure[2], and minimal changes in cognitive function overall.[3] Generally, the greater the intellectual capacity of the patient prior to surgery, the greater the decline in function. Most patients end up with mild to severe mental retardation, which is usually already present before surgery. When resectioning the left hemisphere, evidence indicates that some advanced language functions (i.e., higher order grammar) cannot be entirely assumed by the right side. The extent of advanced language loss is often dependent on the patient's age at the time of surgery.[4]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15009226

PURPOSE: Long-term neuropsychological outcome was studied in 71 patients who underwent hemispherectomy for severe and intractable seizures at The Johns Hopkins Hospital between 1968 and 1997 and who agreed to participate. Seizures were due to cortical dysplasias (n = 27), Rasmussen syndrome (n = 37), or vascular malformations or strokes (n = 7). Both presurgical and follow-up results are available and reported for 53 patients. METHODS: Patients and caretakers were interviewed, and patients were administered standard measures of intelligence, receptive and expressive language, visual-motor skills, adaptive/developmental functioning, and behavior. RESULTS: Mean age at surgery was 7.2 years. At follow-up, on average 5.4 years after surgery, 65% are seizure free, 49% are medication free, and, of those responding, none rated quality of life as worse than before surgery. Mean IQ was in the 70s for Rasmussen and vascular patients and in the 30s for cortical dysplasia patients. Language and visual-motor skills were consistent with IQ. For Rasmussen patients only, language was significantly more impaired for left than for right hemispherectomy, both before surgery and at follow-up. Adaptive skills were mildly impaired, with greatest impairment in the physical domain. Cognitive measures typically changed little between surgery and follow-up, with IQ change <15 points for 34 of 53 patients; of the remainder, 11 declined and eight improved. Behavior was free of major problems, but social interactions and activities were limited. CONCLUSIONS: The most significant predictor of cognitive skills at follow-up was etiology, with dysplasia patients scoring lowest in intelligence and language but not in visual-motor skills. Regardless of etiology, most patients showed only moderate change in cognitive performance at follow-up.

So yeah, if the patients are mentally retarded before they have half their brain disconnected, their IQ's don't change much after if they have it done when they're a kid.

 

[Loss Leader]

So medical/religious/cultural reasons aside, you really have no good argument here.

Yes, that's right. If you push aside religious and cultural reasons to perform circumcisions, there are no religious or cultural reasons to perform circumcisions.

It's hard for me to not be emotional when I see otherwise intelligent skeptical people like Loss Leader using the exact same kind of vague tactics that I see from, say, Creationists or the like.

Except, of course, that Creationists want to teach Creationism to your kids. They want to make their point of view standard policy and impose it upon all children.

I, as I have explained, am not suggesting that anyone circumcise their child, that circumcisions be mandatory or even (how about this) that Jewish people should be required to circumcise their children. I don't actually want anybody to do anything they don't want to do for their children (as regards circumcision).

So, whatever I am doing is hardly vague and certainly not a tactic.