You fellows are not typical adult white hospital-born Americans, a tribe that was overwhelmingly circumcised at birth. Many boys who fit this description and came of age before 1980 or so, did not learn that their penises had been surgically altered until after high school.

The popularity of infant circumcision is not highest in the South (which is heavily black, and some blacks still refuse circumcision) but in the Midwest. It is weakest west of Denver, wherever Latinos are numerous, and in university towns.

Canadians are pretty much the same people as Americans, and have similar medical and hygiene practices. But there’s a difference: they, unlike Americans, have pretty much given up on circumcision. A big natural experiment has begun. If the foreskin is a bad thing, a comparison of USA and Canadian urology records around 2040 or so will let us know for sure.

This is known as the Fallacy of the Vivid Instance. Nobody is posting the stories of the billions of men who lived all their lives with foreskins to which nothing much ever happened. Yet every single mishap gets spread about like confetti, and is made the excuse for many more (unnecessary) circumcisions.

I don’t consider this statistically. I would just rather lose what seems to be a useless part of the anatomy—at a time when I won’t remember it—than have to deal with it later when any problem will be much more painful and embarrassing.

For the record, I am a maternity room nurse. I can honestly say most doctors are financially motivated to recommend and perform circumcisions. Some of them flat out lie or use scare tactics to pressure parents to consent, while others take a neutral stance (even if they’d never circumcise their own child, they don’t mind accepting payment for cutting someone else’s child).

And also for the record, infant circumcision is not recommended by ANY medical organization world wide. I believe when the WHO recommended circumcision it was for adults only in the high HIV regions of Africa.
But babies are not having sex. They would only catch HIV through an infected mother or a blood transfusion, and circumcision would protect them from neither.
Plenty of grown men in the US have acquired HIV and all other std’s despite being circumcised as both infants and adults. Because of that, I can not believe that circumcision does anything to lower my own child’s risk of disease. Abstinence or condom use, without exception, is the only thing that will keep any of us “safe”.

Lastly, I’d like to comment on the info on the demographics of those choosing not to circumcise. While it’s true that some Hispanics are not circumcising, some do to be more “Americanized”. I personally know plenty of US born, white, Christian, “mainstream” parents in the south and SE who are not circumcising their boys. I did not because as a nurse I know how painful it can be and how often complications occur. I also know MD’s, vets, teachers, engineers, ministers, a few waitresses and even a pilot from the south who did not circumcise their boys. So while circumcision still may be prevalent in the south, there are those of us educated enough not to put our babies through unnecessary and risky surgery for no apparent reason.
Thanks!
Lydia

The NYT is here reporting, just under one year ago, that the WHO is recommending universal circumcision for this very reason.

“Imagining how that must feel makes me totally in favor of neonatal circumcision.” This is known as the Fallacy of the Vivid Instance. Nobody is posting the stories of the billions of men who lived all their lives with foreskins to which nothing much ever happened. Yet every single mishap gets spread about like confetti, and is made the excuse for many more (unnecessary) circumcisions.

There’s an entire international movement emerging to treat routine neonatal circumcision as a bodily integrity violation analogous to FGM. Check out the campaign website at http://www.icgi.org/.

Interesting story about it being compulsory in 1941. I’d like to see the official records, though. Puts a new slant on a boy being done “to look like his father” – it’s like the old story about the wife cutting the ends off the meatloaf because her mother did (and the great grandmother turned out to have done it because HER meatloaf tray was short). Don’t take that parallel too far.

Now a study has just come out showing that circumcision DOESN’T prevent STDs. It’s by Dickson et al at J Pediatr 2008;152:383-7. Of the 499 men remaining in a 32 year old birth cohort in Dunedin NZ, 40% were circumcised. “the incidence rates for all STIs were not statistically significantly different — 23.4 and 24.4 per 1000 person-years for the uncircumcised and circumcised men, respectively.” What do you bet this study won’t get worldwide headlines, like the one that claimed it did?

My boy is 7 months old and we had him done on day two – won’t remember a thing…