Why The Benefits of Circumcision Are Based On False Assumptions, Erroneous Conclusions and Misleading Medical Information

PreventDisease

The current generation of infant males will have the lowest routine circumcision rates in 40 years. Recent surveys suggest that parents who say yes to circumcision end up regretting their decision. Courts in Europe have recently deemed the procedure equivalent to grievous bodily harm. The claimed health benefits are also being exposed for lacking any scientific evidence and are commonly based on myths and folklore.

Like most medical interventions at a very early age, an infant is not given a choice to consent to specific drugs and procedures. Circumcision is just one of them.

Dr. Laura Robertson from the Institute of Family Medicine in Los Angeles and her colleagues report that of 298 families interviewed one year after deciding on circumcising for their child, 206 families or almost 70% had at least one parent who expressed regrets about the decision. More than 58% of the time, the mother showed the most negative emotions about the decision and 67% of the families were pressured by their spouse or another family member to circumcise.

Although close to 80 percent of U.S. boys born in the 1970s and 1980s were circumcised, that number decreased to 62.5 percent in 1999, and 54.7 percent in 2010 and is now well below 50%. The drop is mostly due to informed parents and not decreases in insurance coverage for circumcision.

Officials estimate that up to 40 percent fewer U.S. boys will have been circumcised in 2013 compared to just a few decades ago. “In the long-term clinics we have interviewed, some Physicians are claiming reductions over 50 percent compared to the 1980′s,” stated Dr. Robertson.

Myths Not Facts 

Part of the reduction is due to informed parents learning the truth about the actual risks of the surgery in contrast to the myths propagated by mainstream medicine.

From the 1980s through today, as the tide has been turning against male circumcision, misleading medical information has begun to surface (yet again) in support of circumcision. This information supports the belief that men with foreskins are more likely to get viral or bacterial infections and pass them on; that the foreskin is tender and thin, and therefore more prone to tiny cuts through which germs can be transmitted. New justifications, such as circumcision to prevent penile and cervical cancer, too often receive the blessing of the medical establishment. But these are justifications that science has been unable to support. Nor is there any scientific proof that circumcision prevents sexually transmitted diseases.

The risks of not circumcising as claimed by the medical establishment are based on false assumptions and erroneous conclusions. For example, in recent studies done in Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda by Ronald H. Gray, a professor at Johns Hopkins University recently reported that men who were circumcised were less likely by half to contract HIV virus and less likely by one-third to become infected with HPV and herpes.

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