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27th August 2012, 08:58 AM | #1 |
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AAP And Circumcision
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27th August 2012, 10:04 AM | #2 |
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The question isn't so much "do the benefits outweigh the risk" as it is "are the benefits so great that surgery is necessary". Since a few billion men around the world are doing just fine, I'd have to say no.
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27th August 2012, 10:09 AM | #3 |
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If you're uncut in a society where circumcision is the norm, you aren't going to get as many BJs. Life is harsh and sacrifices must be made.
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27th August 2012, 10:23 AM | #4 |
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27th August 2012, 04:19 PM | #5 |
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27th August 2012, 05:10 PM | #6 |
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28th August 2012, 05:44 AM | #7 |
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28th August 2012, 06:12 AM | #8 |
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28th August 2012, 06:22 AM | #9 |
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There's another thread on this here btw: http://www.internationalskeptics.com...d.php?t=242706
I checked out the techier version of the paper. It raises some interesting points but an awful lot of the studies included in this metastudy are the ones conducted in Africa and I am pretty skeptical that the social context of those papers can be lifted up and carried over to extrapolate circumcision's potential effects on HIV numbers in the US. The paper also claims it found no significant effect on sexual function but to reach that conclusion (if I'm reading the paper right) they looked at only one study (and that was one of the African ones too). They've left the potential for goof-ups out of their consideration due to rarity:
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I also found this interesting because I'd never seen it before and it seems to confirm a worry I had about the overall effect of the way circumcision is being promoted in Africa:
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28th August 2012, 08:43 AM | #10 |
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Whether or not cutting a kid's head off saves him catching brain cancer does not justify decapitation on religious grounds.
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28th August 2012, 08:55 AM | #11 |
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28th August 2012, 10:11 PM | #12 |
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Speak for yourself. My experience was different. There's something to be said for standing out from the crowd. I will say that I was told several times that they were surprised it didn't smell, that they'd heard it would smell. I guess people forget that body parts can be washed.
(Writing in the past tense. I was circumcised in my late twenties, after an injury resulted in tearing and scarring.) |
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29th August 2012, 03:01 AM | #13 |
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That's surprising! If you declare complications as rare and all but exclude them from the review, the conclusion is that the benefits outweigh the risks. Amazing!
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29th August 2012, 04:43 AM | #14 |
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29th August 2012, 04:53 AM | #15 |
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29th August 2012, 05:00 AM | #16 |
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As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. |
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29th August 2012, 05:02 AM | #17 |
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29th August 2012, 05:16 AM | #18 |
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Thanks. I followed those threads but got a bit lost in the multitude of studies. I don't recollect studies being done in the US on STD's though.
I'm aware of that, but with 0.6% prevalence in North America you'd still get meaningful numbers if there really was such a difference. Of course, the demographics of HIV patients in Africa and in the US is vastly different. But these studies also claim benefits in other STD's. Are they more prevalent in Africa too? |
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29th August 2012, 05:18 AM | #19 |
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Good. It's about time. Circumcision is not needed in an industrialized nation where one can easily take care of hygiene needs.
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29th August 2012, 05:26 AM | #20 |
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"The WHO estimates that 340 million new cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and trichomoniasis occurred throughout the world in 1999 in men and women aged 15-49 years. The largest number of new infections occurred in the region of South & Southeast Asia, followed by sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America & the Caribbean. The highest rate of new cases per 1,000 population occurred in sub-Saharan Africa." http://www.avert.org/std-statistics.htm |
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29th August 2012, 05:27 AM | #21 |
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I believe it was Jake Johannsen who said that if you've gotten to that point, you've pretty much sealed the deal. The "surgery" took under thirty seconds for each of my children. And the men who were circumcised as infants seem to be doing just fine as well. Is anyone arguing that children should be routinely decapitated for religious reasons? |
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29th August 2012, 05:33 AM | #22 |
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Keep in mind that this is the whole population of the US, they were focused only on heterosexual men. The rate of infection in that population is far lower. The population studied in Africa was a high-risk population, the few studies performed in the US were on high-risk populations. I think the only reasonable conclusion you could draw from them is that there may be a case for offering circumcision to men in high-risk populations.
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29th August 2012, 06:46 AM | #23 |
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Yes, and in Africa the incidence of HIV is higher among hetero men than among gay men, while in the US the reverse is true. So that's one reason why those African studies don't carry over. And secondly, if you're going to argue that it's beneficial for high-risk populations, than you should indicate circumcision only for those high-risk groups. Good luck with identifying the sexual orientation of an infant.
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29th August 2012, 06:47 AM | #24 |
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"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." - "Saint" Teresa, the lying thieving Albanian dwarf "I think accuracy is important" - Vixen |
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29th August 2012, 06:54 AM | #25 |
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29th August 2012, 06:55 AM | #26 |
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29th August 2012, 07:02 AM | #27 |
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More than half the population of Brooklyn NY are either Asian, African, Latin American or Caribbean.
So that fits with the WHO figures. http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/popInfo.php?locIndex=286 |
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29th August 2012, 07:15 AM | #28 |
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It isn't even the identification of sexual orientation that is at issue, even if you could know that an individual child would be heterosexual, there is more to assessing future HIV risk. The lifetime risk of most men in the US population is going to be very low so the change in that lifetime risk by circumcision is going to be relatively low. There are more appropriate risk-factors to focus on and correct such as the disparity between white men and black men.
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29th August 2012, 08:11 AM | #29 |
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29th August 2012, 08:39 AM | #30 |
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29th August 2012, 08:47 AM | #31 |
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Except for the ones that do support the "benefits", with or without quotes, of circumcision.
In particular, the Kaiser Permanente study of urinary tract infections among infant males, in which it was shown that those infections were significantly less common among circumcised infants. |
29th August 2012, 08:55 AM | #32 |
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29th August 2012, 09:22 AM | #33 |
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You can spin the numbers a bunch of ways. You can say that it would take 300 circumcisions to prevent a UTI, or you can say UTIs are 20 times more likely among uncircumcised male infants. Both are correct. Which spin do you prefer? No matter how it's spun, the data is what it is.
And of course, by "correct" what I mean is that I can cherry pick the numbers from studies to suit my needs. The figure of 20 comes from a single study. More recent studies show lower multipliers, around 10. The figure of hundreds of circumcisions to prevent one UTI doesn't sound right, either. I think it's one UTI that required hospitalization, but I'll check the links I looked up earlier to see if that's right. ETA: When participating in that other thread, I felt that the best summary paper on the subject was from the RACP. (Royal Australian College of Physicians? Not sure. It was an Aussie doctor group.) They gave a figure of 111 circumcisions to prevent one infection. In general, their study was without hyperbole and was well documented. Its primary conclusion was that there was insufficient benefit to perform routine circumcision, but that there were health benefits to the procedure, and that doctors should describe benefits and risks to prospective parents so that the parents could make an informed decision. |
29th August 2012, 10:06 AM | #34 |
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29th August 2012, 10:42 AM | #35 |
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29th August 2012, 12:06 PM | #36 |
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29th August 2012, 03:03 PM | #37 |
I would save the receptionist.
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Yes, it's hard to think of something as a surgery when it took place in my parents' living room. Neither of the two mohels we used were doctors. Having read how circumcisions are performed in hospitals, I much prefer the way the mohels did it. |
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29th August 2012, 03:46 PM | #38 |
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29th August 2012, 05:15 PM | #39 |
I would save the receptionist.
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I'm sorry, but what is your definition of surgery? And what would the taxonomic classification of circumcision as surgery have to do with whether it's a good idea? I'll agree that circumcision is surgery, if it will make you feel better. I still chose it for my children and would do so again. If you'd like, I'll agree that all raccoons are "savage, wild beasts." I still think they're adorable. |
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29th August 2012, 10:24 PM | #40 |
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AAP is just using junkscience to support greed.
This takes a little history:
Sexual genital mutilation is a cure looking for a disease. It started as a way of preventing masturbation, which religions mutilating and doctors profiting from sexually mutilating genitals claimed cause blindness, incontinence, insanity, hairy palms, et cetera. When people stopped believe that ********, it changed to cancers and venereal diseases. This canard started in the 1980s: As AIDS entered the news in the 1980s, the sexual genital mutilators looked around the world for cherries to pick. The trouble for them was that the numbers did not back them up: Sexually mutilated America has a higher rate of AIDS than Europe. In Asia, one cannot find a correlation either way. In Africa, they could not find any correlation —— ¡except in East Africa!: In East Africa, they noticed the sexually mutilated Muslims had a lower AIDS-Rate than than intact Animists. This is apples to oranges. Then came the junk-studies. 0 Gather a few thousand intact HIV-Negative men. 1 Sexually mutilate half of them, thus making them incapable of sexual activity for several months. 2 After a few months, test the groups for HIV. 3 Journal-Shop until someone publishes the results. The HIV-Rate of the sexually mutilated men at 6 months was 40% of the intact men, but look at # 1: “ 1 Sexually mutilate half of them, thus making them incapable of sexual activity for several months.” They could not have sex for months. I could do a study showing that eating an apple-a-day reduces the odds of catching HIV: 0 Collect a few thousand young sexually active HIV-Negative young adults. 1 Lock half of them in a dungeon, 1-to-a-cell, and feed those a healthy diet with 1-apple-a-day in it for a few months. 2 Test both groups for HIV. 3 Journal-Shop until some journal publishes it. Even if we give them everything, sexually mutilating genitals is not ever effective and cost-ineffective: They claim, using junk-science, that sexually mutilating genitals reduces the rate of HIV-infection to 40%. Condoms reduce the rate of HIV-infection 95%. Condoms are 8 times more effective at reducing the spread of HIV than sexually mutilating genitals USING THEIR OWN NUMBERS. A condom costs approximately ~.10 U$D. Sexually mutilating men and boys costs approximately ~100.00 U$D. USING THEIR OWN NUMBERS, condoms are tens of times more cost effective. The Europeans do not suffer from health-problems from being intact. The claims of the AAP do not hold water. ¿Where are the health-problems and extra costs for the Europeans? |
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