Circumcision: The Elephant in the Hospital. - Page 26

On September 09 2011 13:16 sephirotharg wrote:
Fair enough. I suppose I deserved to have the thread closed. It was a dick move (see what I did there?) to start my own reply thread. So without further ado, I give you my reply to this thread:

The sad part about this post is the fact that it will likely convince absolutely nobody to change their position on circumcision either way. That said, when I see an obviously biased "information" piece I tend to react strongly (the author of the original thread does not explicitly indicate either way the status of his penis, and presents his information as fact). This issue evokes a particularly strong reaction in me, being as I am circumcised. So you can well guess that I am biased in this matter as well, though I'm up-front about that fact. What I intend to do is offer a step-by-step rebuttal of the original post, and see where the discussion goes from there.

Without further ado, let's begin our analysis:




This is a complaint you will hear me level many, many times throughout this analysis: source please! The author speaks of a mystical "we", making no attempt to define who this "we" is. Are those contending the health benefits of male infant circumcision respected medicinal practitioners, or middle-school students? Precision of language is necessary if we are to present facts as they exist. Without sources for your claims (or rather, your claim that someone else is claiming health benefits of circumcision), we cannot evaluate them objectively. Proper definition of subjects is crucial to discussion.



Wait a second. The author says circumcision "hurts like fucking hell", but does not provide any solid, empirical evidence. And we can assume that the author is uncircumcised (if he/she is not, feel free to correct me). Therefore, having never experienced it him/herself, how can the author speak to the pain of a circumcision? "Well", you say to yourself, "there are empirical ways to measure pain". To which I reply that there most certainly are. But does the author cite any study using these measurements? No. Instead he/she (hereafter I will refer to the author as a he, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary) cites a nebulous figure of "95% of the circumcision videos I've watched" and goes on to explain that "the baby almost always shrieks with agony". 95% is quite high; the information we are lacking is how many videos the author watched. If they watched 3, that is very different from watching 3,000 videos. Perhaps an even more egregious sin than finessing statistics is the fact that the author uses anecdotal evidence, ass opposed to empirical evidence. It's quite possible that the author chose to watch mostly those videos that showed a child shrieking in pain; but a few incidents of children in pain does not a pattern make. Now if there were to be some empirical, procedurally-rigorous scientific study examining this subject, we could establish that pattern. However, you fail to back up your assertion that circumcision results in screaming babies. If you look at the studies I have provided, you will see that circumcision does in fact produce pain in children; however, these same studies point to effective measures that can be employed to lessen the pain and trauma. The author also contends that the screaming must be caused by the procedure, to which I reply: correlation does not causation make. It is possible (despite your roundly unscientific experiment presenting "evidence" to the contrary) that being restrained causes the children to cry; or perhaps the stress of being surrounded by unfamiliar people wearing outlandish garb causes a stress reaction; or the absence of the child's mother causes him to cry; or the coldness of the operating table; or hunger; or many other variables that may combine to cause crying during circumcision. Just because the two often occur simultaneously does not mean that the one must be caused by the other.



Stop. Citing and quoting Wikipedia? Really? There's a reason that colleges tend not to accept Wikipedia as cite-able material. For that same reason we should not use it even to give us definitions. Instead, let's agree to use a much more trusted and decidedly less-openly-editable resource: the Mayo Clinic.


And here is the source for that definition.

Let's continue our analysis.



I'll say this criticism once, as it applies to every bullet point within your list: no source. You say that this information comes from the Inactivism Pages, yet you provide no link directly to the information, instead pointing us to the general website link at the bottom of your post. Rigorous standards must be upheld when citing informative (and supposedly authoritative) material, whether this be a college paper or a forum post. Also, I see no real support for the author's argument in this tidbit. Scientific theories change all the time, and old suppositions are tossed out as new evidence comes in. I'm not surprised that it was espoused as a cure for masturbation in olden days; the fact that it was advertised as such bears no relevance on the discussion.




Well, for all my cries for objectivity and empirical studies, I have to get a little subjective here. Frankly, I would prefer pain when I'm a newborn to early death due to HIV. And according to the facts you cite, circumcision does in fact protect people from HIV. If circumcision can save even one person from HIV, I would favor circumcision. After all, we would all agree that protection for some is better than protection for none, yes? And because I value empiricism in my debates, here's an interesting quote for you to examine:



And the source for that quote.

So the fact remains that even if circumcision in and of itself does not increase protection against HIV, circumcision and proven HIV-protective measures (namely condom use) have been found to be correlated. And I suppose I should add that studies have been done after the one which you cite, studies that include much larger sample sizes (such as the one I sourced above, which studied approximately 26,000 men). So disqualifying evidence based on small sample size should no longer be a problem.

The analysis continues.



Wait, what? I'm sorry, but when did this turn into an issue of sexual orientation? I will grant you that in the United States new HIV cases occur more frequently in MSM (men who have sex with men) than any other group; yet, the percentage is only 53% of new cases among MSM, with nearly half of new cases reported each year belonging to groups other than gay men. So the largely unjustified (and to be fair, implied) accusation in this statement that HIV is a gay disease is patently untrue. Furthermore, I could find no evidence that remaining intact protects anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, from HIV any more so than does circumcision. So even if circumcision provided gay men and women no additional protection (a hypothesis which I personally doubt), the two states of penile intactness (if you will) are even in the protection provided, or lack thereof.



No source. I will grant you that the possibility of blood loss during circumcision does exits, but the incidence of death during circumcision is two deaths per million circumcisions, a much lower fatality rate than a relatively safe activity, driving. The NHTSA estimates eleven traffic related fatalities per 100,000 people in the USA in 2009, a much higher rate of occurrence than death by circumcision.

And now we get to the truly wacky and wild:



Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on there a second. You say that circumcision has very negative effects on sexual pleasure, yet have no citations or evidence to back that up. Cite a source. I imagine you are thinking of the Inactivism Pages study that finds that the foreskin is the most sensitive area of the penis. Be that as it may, penis sensitivity is only one factor in attaining sexual pleasure. The (perceived) attractiveness of one's partner, the presence or absence of foreplay, the various implements and medicines used, and in some cases the presence of genuine love are but a few factors that can contribute to sexual pleasure.

You also fail to cite a source for your assertion that circumcision can narrow the urethra. If you don't have a source, I can't take what you say at face value.

Then you take yet another stab at getting into the heads of circumcised males, a group of people to which you (probably) do not belong. Claiming that circumcision leads to an inferiority complex is amazing. What's ludicrous is that you do it without sourcing any study whatsoever. Even if you know a circumcised male that feels inferior because of his lack of foreskin, generalizing that feeling to all circumcised males and then extrapolating that out to make sense of behavior you don't approve of is an incredible leap of (il)logic.

Moving on, we come to this passage:



Need I remind you that there are, in fact, many places in the world where a daily shower is unheard of? In fact, the U.N. classifies nearly fifty countries as LDCs, or less-developed countries. I believe this would suit the criteria of defining places where the "hygiene myth" would in fact apply. And if you take the time to read, you will notice that said list does not include the likes of India and China, two countries with roughly 1/3 of the world's population between them, many of whom have little to no access to showers. And of course we have the niggling trouble of the unsourced assertion that "both partners have a lot more pleasure in sex".

I think I have said enough.

Note: this comment was edited for content (removing some of the more personal-attack stuff that was heat-of-the-moment and ill-advised).