In fact, breastfeeding and physical contact with the mother have
been shown to be far more effective at preventing UTI's than even
proponents of circumcision claim for MGM. If given a chance, nature
elegantly protects infants from infection by immunizing, via breast
milk, against the very organisms which the child's skin, in the
company of his mother, would be colonized
by. [39]
Recent research in Japan, a non-circumcising country, has found a much
lower rate of UTI's among intact children than the earlier American
studies. [40]
Of course, for any other bodily tissue the standard of care for infection
would be antibiotics, not amputation. Thankfully, the fact that UTIs
are far more common in girls is not used to push FGM in this
country. [41,
42,
43]
MGM has also been routinely prescribed for "phimosis," a
condition in which the foreskin of the penis is abnormally
non-retractable. But phimosis in intact boys is greatly exaggerated in
the USA because ignorant doctors confuse it with normal attachment,
and also because they frequently cause an iatrogenic version of it,
again by advising parents to forcibly retract, leading to infections and
scar tissue. In any case, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently
admitted that true, non-iatrogenic phimosis, which occurs in less than
2% of intact males, can be successfully treated in 85-95% of cases by
the simple application of a steroid
cream. [44]
This miraculous medical
breakthrough, coming decades after the introduction of steroid cream,
is illustrative of the cavalier contempt medicine has demonstrated for
male sexual integrity.
Between iatrogenic UTI's and phimosis, many boys who survive the
high-tech birthing industry whole and intact later succumb to the
knife in early childhood, and any future younger brothers are
more likely to be circumcised immediately after birth. Currently
around 80% of all US-born males have been circumcised. [45, 46]
For decades MGM has been endorsed for the prevention of penile
and cervical cancer. But in a letter to the American Academy of
Pediatrics in 1996, physicians at the American Cancer Society wrote:
"As representatives of the American Cancer Society, we would like to
discourage the American Academy of Pediatrics from promoting
routine circumcision as a preventative measure for penile or cervical
cancer. The American Cancer Society does not consider routine
circumcision to be a valid or effective measure to prevent such
cancers. Research suggesting a pattern in the circumcision status of
partners of women with cervical cancer is methodologically flawed,
outdated and has not been taken seriously in the medical community
for decades. [...] Fatalities caused by circumcision accidents may
approximate the mortality rate from penile
cancer." [47,
48]
Another, more recent study widely trumpeted in the media as
proof of an increased cervical cancer risk among partners of intact
men, has been found to suffer from numerous methodological flaws
and exceedingly unstable
statistics. [49,
50]
The primary risk factors for both penile and cervical cancer are
the presence of the human papilloma virus and the use of
tobacco. [48]
On the issue of sexually transmitted diseases (STD's), one
obvious point should be stressed: children are not sexually active,
thus infant MGM cannot reasonably be promoted based on STD
prevention arguments. The child can and should be given the
opportunity to judge the facts for himself when he is old enough to
give informed consent for this very important decision with the full
knowledge of the value of his intact organ. The miniscule rate of adult
circumcision provides strong evidence of what this decision would
be. [51]
With that said, the jury is still out: the body of medical
literature gives no clear indication of whether circumcision protects
against
STDs. [52]
Many studies have reached contradictory or null
conclusions, such as a well controlled study of 1400 American men
published in the April 1997 issue of the Journal of the American
Medical Association which found that "Circumcised men were slightly
more likely to have had both a bacterial and a viral STD in their
lifetime. While these differences are not statistically significant, they
do not lend support to the thesis that circumcision helps prevent the
contraction of STDs. Indeed, for chlamydia, the difference between
circumcised men and uncircumcised men is quite large. While 26 of
1033 circumcised men had contracted chlamydia in their lifetime,
none of the 353 uncircumcised men reported having had
it." [45]
Regarding AIDS in particular, it should be noted that among the
industrialized nations, AIDS is positively correlated with
circumcision. [53,
54]
Indeed, of the industrialized countries, the USA
has by far the highest AIDS rate and the second highest circumcision
rate, the latter second only to
Israel. [54]
This flies in the face of
recent, widely reported but deeply flawed surveys of AIDS and
circumcision in Africa, which did not control for the strong correlation
between the circumcision status and the socioeconomic status of
African men. Muslim men, for instance, tend to be both circumcised
and non-promiscuous. In circumcising tribes, intact men may tend
to be shunned by women, and to frequent prostitutes. In more
secular African cultures, circumcised men tend to have access to the
western model of medical care, and so are less likely to have easily
treatable STDs such as gonorrhea, the presence of which causes
genital lesions which promote the passage of the AIDS
virus. [55]
Remarkably, a strong case has been made that medicine itself
drives most HIV transmission in Africa through the use of dirty
hypodermic needles, which are far more effective in HIV transmission
than sexual intercourse. [56]
Notwithstanding the World Health Organization's
rebuttal, [57]
their admission of a 30% worldwide average rate of dirty needle usage hardly
inspires confidence that iatrogenic HIV infection isn't a major public
health menace in AIDS- and poverty-stricken Africa as well as the rest
of the developing world, where every year an estimated 10 million people
are infected, and 1.8 million die, of lethal diseases transmitted by unsafe
healthcare. [58]
The WHO's apparent success at keeping this long-foreseen iatrogenic
holocaust, and its curiously ineffectual response to it, from "the
front pages of newspapers around the world" is a testament to the
power, prestige and impunity of the holy church of medicine.
Other recent medical research has resorted to comparing the
density of HIV receptors in the foreskin and cervix, concluding that
the higher density of receptors in the foreskin is a rationale for
circumcision. But a similar comparison between the inner labia and
glans penis would probably argue for the practice of FGM. In any
case, a causal link between intact male genitals and HIV transmission
has never been demonstrated, and confounding factors, such as the
pathogen-killing secretions under the foreskin, may well result in a
net loss of biological defenses from MGM, even before the behavioral
and structural anatomical consequences are considered.
For instance, the dried out internal organ which is the end of a
circumcised penis provides less lubrication and so increases abrasion
during intercourse, creating possible infection sites in both partners.
This may account for the nearly 5-fold difference in US vs European
male-to-female HIV transmission
rates. [59]
Abrasion is further
exacerbated by the tightness of the penile skin, which can no longer
slide freely on the shaft. Some circumcisions are cut so tightly that
erection produces tearing in the penile skin, creating further sites for
the passage of pathogens. Condoms are more likey to fall off of a
circumcised penis, and American men are less likely to USE
condoms [53]
(the most effective line of defense against STD's)
probably because of the lack of sensitivity most of them already
endure. Circumcised men are also significantly more likely to engage
in risky sexual behavior such as anal intercourse, possibly in an effort
to compensate for
desensitization. [45,
60]
Furthermore, a small
amount of inner foreskin is usually left on the penis, and it's well
known that mucous membrane is more vulnerable to infection when it is dried
out. [52]
Finally, MGM's adverse impact on sexual satisfaction
for both partners may increase sexual promiscuity.
Finally we reach the deeply embedded
cultural mythology which may be the real driving force behind medical
MGM in the USA, the same irrational fear that drives FGM in Africa:
that intact genitalia are somehow "dirty," that expert human
intervention is needed to remedy unmentionable defects in the design
of the most critical developmental objective of millions of years of
evolution, the reproductive organs. But about 80% of the men in this
world are
intact. [2,
61]
If male foreskin is such a pathologically
disease-ridden piece of anatomical garbage, why aren't men all over
the world lining up at clinics to be cut? The fact is that in terms of
the difficulty of maintenance, an intact penis is somewhere between
the eyes and the mouth, in other words between low and medium
maintenance. If doctors applied the same hygienic standards to the
mouth as they do the penis, they'd cut off our lips and pull all our
teeth. We spend far more time brushing our teeth than the second
that it takes for an intact man to retract and rinse under his foreskin,
and even in the absence of running water, urination (urine is a sterile
liquid, by the way) serves to flush out the region under the foreskin and
keep it clean. A study of 1000 young intact men, published in The Journal
of Urology in 1973, found only 2% had a significant accumulation of
smegma. [62],
Intact male genitals likely require less maintenance than that of
females. But of course the assumption is that men are somehow incapable of
keeping themselves clean. If there's a grain of truth buried in that
social edifice, could it be related to the shame and stigma attached to
male autosexuality, of which medical MGM is only a manifestation?
On the basis of over a century of similarly ambiguous, sloppy,
value-laden and selectively publicized research, the high priests of
American medicine have successfully promoted and defended their
idiosyncratic practice of genital surgery on six generations of normal,
healthy, non-consenting boys, repeatedly indicting, but never
managing to convict the foreskin for one malady after another. HIV is
only the most recent example of this pattern. Even the US taxpayer
has been drafted into the crusade, donating more than $35 million in
medicaid payments per year for involuntary circumcisions, many of
which would likely not have occurred without government
subsidy. [63]
But despite medicine's most strenuous efforts, MGM, the USA's most
common surgical procedure, remains in search of a disease. But in any
case, even the most enthusiastic claims of circumcision proponents
must be weighed against its scientifically demonstrable
drawbacks. [64],
Indeed, routine circumcision can only be defended by ignoring the
crucial erogenous value of the male prepuce, to both men and women.
When all the pseudo-medical diversions are disposed of, one is
left with a number of useful observations regarding medical genital
mutilation:
- No one volunteers to be tied down to a table to have parts of
their genitals crushed and cut off without anesthesia. Therefore,
it should be obvious even to those who haven't seen a screaming
baby boy being brutalized in a soundproofed hospital room,
that "routine" infant circumcision would not be so routine if
children could defend themselves from doctors. Unburdened of
the medical and social rationalizations for MGM, and facing the
immediacy of his anguish, the child likely sees circumcision for
what it is: a particularly brutal sexual assault and forcible
amputation.
- The only operative "indications" for routine infant circumcision
are the phobias and ignorance of the parents and the
powerlessness of the infant.
- The central issue of MGM is obviously human rights, specifically
every human being's right to a natural, complete, fully
functional and ecstatic sexuality, free of forcibly imposed
handicaps. Despite the medical establishment's obsession with
the purported pathologies of male genitals, doctors have no
more right to enforce Victorian sexual mores on struggling,
screaming children now than they did a century ago.
- The most virulent, chronic and debilitating pathology associated
with male foreskin appears to be the compulsion to cut it off.
As we'll see below, the medicalization of this compulsion results
in a particularly perverse and destructive form of child abuse.
Now let's examine how a typical medical circumcision is performed.
First the child, after 9 months in the fetal position, is tied down
spreadeagled and straight-backed in a circumstraint, a plastic board
molded to the outline of an infant's body, which is equipped with
velcro straps. Next he is covered with a sheet which has a hole
through which his penis is threaded. Then his penis is thoroughly
swabbed with sterilizing solution. Naturally, this frequently provokes
an erection. Some physicians deliberately provoke erections in order
to judge the "cutoff line" and to aid in the surgery itself. In any case,
in the infant's brand new, wide-open, pre-verbal consciousness, this is
his first sexual experience: a torturous
nightmare. [65,
66,
67,
68,
69]
Because the foreskin of an infant is attached to the head of the
penis by the same tissue that bonds a fingernail to a finger, it must be
skinned away before it can be cut off. So the doctor forces a metal
probe between the foreskin and the head and tears apart this flesh
(called synechia) which bonds them together. Next, the doctor has
several options for the actual amputation. One commonly used device
for this step is called a gomco clamp. This essentially functions as a
thumbscrew for the foreskin. I am not making this up. Surgical
scissors are used to cut a slit along the length of the foreskin in order
to insert the metal "bell" which serves as one jaw of the clamp. The
foreskin is pulled over the bell and the other jaw of the clamp is
attached. Then, by tightening a screw, the foreskin, one of the most
densely innervated tissues of the body, is audibly crushed
along two lines (inner and outer foreskin) around its circumference.
(Since all the nerves of the foreskin pass through this crush line,
the pain perception may be similar to that of putting virtually
the entire erogenous surface of the penis in a vise.)
The clamp is left on for a few minutes to promote blood clotting, then
the foreskin is cut off at the crush
line. [70,
71,
72]
Afterwards, the
raw, bleeding, formerly internal organ is wrapped in bandages and a
diaper, and then repeatedly burned with urine and its breakdown
product, ammonia, and exposed to infectious fecal matter while
healing.
For many years the mainstream medical orthodoxy, put forth
after it was no longer acceptable to torture children in the name of
"moral hygiene," was that babies don't feel pain. It wasn't until 1978
that researchers even suggested using anesthetic during circumcision,
and even today, most medical circumcisions are performed without
anesthesia, according to the
AMA. [73]
This is in stark contrast to
what is known about infant pain perception and its profound and
lasting effects on the victim, as well as the plainly obvious reaction of
the infant boy, who forcefully communicates his torment to anyone
who will look and listen. Choking and breathing problems arise due
to the continuous screaming. Surges in adrenaline and cortisol and
large increases in heart rate, all established physiological indicators of
torture, have been
measured. [74]
Some babies appear to go into
shock. [75]
Later, problems with sleep, mother-child bonding and
breastfeeding, and increased sensitivity to stress and pain are all
commonly seen after
MGM. [76,
77,
78]
To all appearances, the infant
is left in a state of post-traumatic stress. Sometimes older boys have
recurring flashbacks of their circumcision, a classic sign of PTS.
Impaired bonding at this critical stage is well correlated with social
dysfunction and even criminality later in
life, [79],
while breast feeding is
known to have many health and psychological benefits for both the
mother and the
baby, [80,
81,
82,
67,
83]
contrary to American medical
doctrine of only a few years ago.
In a definitive study of neonatal pain perception published in the
New England Journal of Medicine in 1987, the authors wrote:
"Numerous lines of evidence suggest that even in the human fetus,
pain pathways as well as cortical and subcortical centers necessary for
pain perception are well developed late in gestation, and the
neurochemical systems now known to be associated with pain
transmission are intact and
functional." [84]
Research for a study on
the efficacy of various types of pain relief during circumcision,
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in
1997, was halted early because researchers began to question the
ethics of subjecting their placebo group to MGM without anesthesia.
Of 11 infants in the placebo group, two experienced prolonged periods
of apnea, and one infant had an episode of projectile vomiting and a
sudden "lack of tone in
limbs". [85]
Other immediate pain-related
complications of infant MGM include heart injury, pneumothorax (a
stress-caused life-threatening condition involving the introduction of
air into the chest cavity), and gastric
rupture. [74]