Any other Aussie lads want to contribute to this thread? Share your experiences fellas.
The debate has flared again today in newspapers around Australia. Don't think many parents will start 'snipping' though.
Doctors' new challenge: foreskins have got to go
The debate has flared again today in newspapers around Australia. Don't think many parents will start 'snipping' though.
Doctors' new challenge: foreskins have got to go
That Brian Morris should have his face scalped. Heard him on the radio yesterday he is a dickhead. Was treating the whole thing like a joke, laughing and giggling about chopping off babies foreskins.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this piece of work. The newspaper article doesn't reference the original article, but you can find it with a quick google search. It's in an open journal, not one of the majors, so that needs to be taken into account, but in terms of the authors, I'm surprised. We all know that Brian Morris has a very fixed view on the benefits of circumcision but from scanning the list of other authors, there are eminent figures who I wouldn't expect to have an axe to grind either way other than to comment objectively on the evidence. I've got a couple of decades of experience in public health and there are authors here that I look up to, so I think this is worth consideration.
The crux of the article is not so much that all boys should be circumcised, but that public hospitals should remove the ban on circumcision so that if parents want to make a choice informed by the evidence, they can do so in an affordable, accessible way. They also say that pain relief should be given - not something we got as kids. Frankly I think it's a reasonable conclusion from the evidence.
People on either side get too bogged down in the emotion of it. When I was a kid, parents were called hippies or neglectful if they didn't get their sons circumcised. Now they're called child abusers. Let's get real, look at the evidence and let people make informed decisions. Let's be honest, if you start using emotive language about immunisation you can easily turn people off that too (oh no, you're not going to hold my kid down and inject them with a disease while they scream) but we let the evidence of a dramatic drop in disease speak for itself. Why can't we do the same for circumcision and let parents make their own informed decision?
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this piece of work. The newspaper article doesn't reference the original article, but you can find it with a quick google search. It's in an open journal, not one of the majors, so that needs to be taken into account, but in terms of the authors, I'm surprised.
Worse. It's in a pay-for-play journal, and purports to be an evidence-based meta-analysis. The most solid way to evaluate an intervention in an evidence-based context is to look at what's going on in the real world. Australia and New Zealand have already done the experiment: going from the highest non-religious circumcision rates in the world 40 years ago to rather low today. And what's been the outcome? More disease? More complications? More sexual problems? None of these. In fact, Dr. Robert Darby has done a good job of showing that there's a very positive correlation in Australasia between the cessation of circumcision and male paediatric health, now spilling over into improved adult health. It may or may not be causation, but no one can claim with any credibility that an evidence-based approach makes the case for circumcision as a valid public health intervention... precisely what Morris and colleagues insist it is.
The so called U.S. MEDICAL EXPERTS also said that there's a lesser change of contacting HIV if the male partner is uncircumcised. I have only one question. If the United States has the highest number of circumcised males, WHY does it also have one of the highest HIV rates in the world?
Worse. It's in a pay-for-play journal, and purports to be an evidence-based meta-analysis. The most solid way to evaluate an intervention in an evidence-based context is to look at what's going on in the real world. Australia and New Zealand have already done the experiment: going from the highest non-religious circumcision rates in the world 40 years ago to rather low today. And what's been the outcome? More disease? More complications? More sexual problems? None of these. In fact, Dr. Robert Darby has done a good job of showing that there's a very positive correlation in Australasia between the cessation of circumcision and male paediatric health, now spilling over into improved adult health. It may or may not be causation, but no one can claim with any credibility that an evidence-based approach makes the case for circumcision as a valid public health intervention... precisely what Morris and colleagues insist it is.
Personally I think the evidence is mixed. I'm not saying there aren't good ethical reasons why you wouldn't circumcise as a preference, but I can also see why parents would choose it. I think it's a fascinating topic, but not one to get hot under the collar about.
Personally I think the evidence is mixed. I'm not saying there aren't good ethical reasons why you wouldn't circumcise as a preference, but I can also see why parents would choose it. I think it's a fascinating topic, but not one to get hot under the collar about.
The debate has flared again today in newspapers around Australia. Don't think many parents will start 'snipping' though.
Doctors' new challenge: foreskins have got to go
Go for it! A quick scan shows Morris's hand all over it, suggesting the others just signed it off. Several of the references are to Morris's previous rambles. (I've tried tracing them back in the past.) Some are to opinion pieces by fellow circumcisionists. One study I'm familiar with doesn't say what Morris says it does, about the incidence of recurrent UTIs. It couldn't because they only established the circumcision status of about half the 68 boys who got any UTIs, and 5 of the 8 boys with recurrent UTIs out of the ~35,000. (And in the US, they'd notice when a boy with UTIs was not circumcised, but not when he was.)I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this piece of work. The newspaper article doesn't reference the original article, but you can find it with a quick google search. It's in an open journal, not one of the majors, so that needs to be taken into account, but in terms of the authors, I'm surprised. We all know that Brian Morris has a very fixed view on the benefits of circumcision but from scanning the list of other authors, there are eminent figures who I wouldn't expect to have an axe to grind either way other than to comment objectively on the evidence. I've got a couple of decades of experience in public health and there are authors here that I look up to, so I think this is worth consideration.
Morris is on record as saying "circumcision should be made compulsory" and referring to"universal circumcision".The crux of the article is not so much that all boys should be circumcised, but that public hospitals should remove the ban on circumcision so that if parents want to make a choice informed by the evidence, they can do so in an affordable, accessible way.
They all say that now. It's a sop. Circumcision can't be made painless, especially not for the whole 10 days or so it takes to heal.They also say that pain relief should be given - not something we got as kids.
Because the penis doesn't belong to them. Vaccination doesn't irrevocably cut part off. Vaccination demonstrably, strongly reduces contagious, fatal diseases of children (now rare precisely because of vaccination). None of that is true of circumcision.Frankly I think it's a reasonable conclusion from the evidence.
People on either side get too bogged down in the emotion of it. When I was a kid, parents were called hippies or neglectful if they didn't get their sons circumcised. Now they're called child abusers. Let's get real, look at the evidence and let people make informed decisions. Let's be honest, if you start using emotive language about immunisation you can easily turn people off that too (oh no, you're not going to hold my kid down and inject them with a disease while they scream) but we let the evidence of a dramatic drop in disease speak for itself. Why can't we do the same for circumcision and let parents make their own informed decision?
With regards to health costs. Lack of circumcision visibly increases the number of minor infections in childhood. Once a male makes it to adulthood with a functioning foreskin, the number of complications is small (short of acquired phimosis from infections/diabetes).
Note that many of the childhood infection are not serious, but as longa s parents of nervous and bring the boy to the hospital, it counts towards the health care costs.
In a society where parents have proper education on the care of foreskin (not the anti circ "leave it alone" stiff) and are not shy to teach their son about how to care for his foreskin, the incidence of foreskin problems is greatly reduced.
So 2 countries iwth different culture/taboos may have different experience when they stop circumcising boys because one may have a population that is too shy/taboo to discuss foreskin care to their son while the other has no problem with it.