Mark Lyndon

Umm, I know it’s your blog and you can do what you want, but why did you remove one link and not the other? What do you mean by this: “scare tactics from those who practice shoddy work”?

That first link seems to show a healthy penis, albeit with a much longer than usual foreskin, yet it was being presented as something that “should on instinctive level suggest” that circumcision is a good thing. In countries where they cut women, they find intact female genitalia distasteful, especially if the labia minora are larger than average, but that doesn’t make it acceptable to cut parts off girls.

My link gave a warning, and showed the damage that can result from circumcision. Yes the images are graphic, but I didn’t think they were out of place, since we’re talking about genital surgery on infants, and a link to an explicit image had just been posted. It’s worth noting that many of the problems are cosmetic rather than medical complications, and men who have been circumcised apparently usually don’t even realise that their skin tags, skin bridges, twists etc were caused by circumcision. Most of these complications only arise with circumcision of newborns btw.

There are only two countries in the world where more than 50% of baby boys are circumcised – the USA and Israel. 90% of male Christians never get circumcised.

A whole gallery of pictures suggesting why cutting parts off genitals is the wrong thing to do:
(link removed by Cheryl)
Re comment 69: If intact male genitals have a “bacteria trap”, then surely intact female genitals have a much bigger bacteria trap. Harder to clean too. Women seem to maintain hygiene without surgery though.

That’s a paper by one urologist. There are hundreds of similar papers, both for and against. I posted links to the official position statements on male circumcision of four national medical organizations. Hardly “medical misinformation”.

I’m all in favor of immunizations, but I don’t see a comparison with circumcision, and I’ve never heard circumcision described as “immunization by amputation”.

There are only two countries in the world which circumcise a majority of baby boys (the USA and Israel). 90% of Christians worldwide do *not* circumcise, and in the most Christian countries in the world (places like Mexico, Poland, Brazil, Spain, Italy), the practice is almost unknown.

Like I already pointed out before, circumcision in Biblical times was very different from the usual operation today anyway and only changed in 130AD, but I’m guessing you want baby boys to have the same operation you had. I can’t help thinking that you wouldn’t be so keen to tell people how great circumcision was if you weren’t circumcised yourself.

I posted the official position statements on male circumcision of various national medical organisations. That doesn’t make me a “reprobate” or a spammer.

@Robin Winkel: Some people think that parts of females are the “source of a lot of sexual sin”, and use that to justify cutting girls. Doesn’t make it right.

Jesus had almost none of his inner foreskin removed btw, because that’s not how they did it back then. They only used to cut off the overhang, and Jesus would have looked a lot more like an intact man than a man who has had a modern western circumcision. The procedure was changed by rabbis (not Christians) in 130AD to prevent Jewish men from pretending to be Gentile.

Funny how Christians didn’t circumcise for the best part of two millennia, and yet because of some seriously bad *medical* opinions in the late 19th century, some Christians are looking for reasons to do it today.

90% of Christians worldwide do *not* circumcise, and the Catholic church has been opposed for centuries.

A “beneficial procedure for health”? “We should all favor circumcision for health purposes”?

You might also want to check out the following:

Canadian Paediatric Society
http://www.cps.ca/english/statements/fn/fn96-01.htm
“Recommendation: Circumcision of newborns should not be routinely performed.”

http://www.caringforkids.cps.ca/pregnancy&babies/circumcision.htm
“Circumcision is a ‘non-therapeutic’ procedure, which means it is not medically necessary.”
“After reviewing the scientific evidence for and against circumcision, the CPS does not recommend routine circumcision for newborn boys. Many paediatricians no longer perform circumcisions.”

Royal Australasian College of Physicians
http://www.racp.edu.au/index.cfm?objectid=65118B16-F145-8B74-236C86100E4E3E8E
“In the absence of evidence of risk of substantial harm, informed parental choice should be respected. Informed parental consent should include the possibility that the ethical principle of autonomy may be better fulfilled by deferring the circumcision to adolescence with the young man consenting on his own behalf.”
(almost all the men responsible for this statement will be circumcised themselves, as the male circumcision rate in Australia in 1950 was about 90%. “Routine” circumcision is now *banned* in public hospitals in Australia in all states except one.)

British Medical Association
http://www.bma.org.uk/ethics/consent_and_capacity/malecircumcision2006.jsp#Circumcisionformedicalpurposes
“to circumcise for therapeutic reasons where medical research has shown other techniques to be at least as effective and less invasive would be unethical and inappropriate.”

The Royal Dutch Medical Association
http://knmg.artsennet.nl/Diensten/knmgpublicaties/KNMGpublicatie/Nontherapeutic-circumcision-of-male-minors-2010.htm
“The official viewpoint of KNMG and other related medical/scientific organisations is that non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors is a violation of children’s rights to autonomy and physical integrity. Contrary to popular belief, circumcision can cause complications – bleeding, infection, urethral stricture and panic attacks are particularly common. KNMG is therefore urging a strong policy of deterrence. KNMG is calling upon doctors to actively and insistently inform parents who are considering the procedure of the absence of medical benefits and the danger of complications.”

(the website doesn’t seem to like a bracket next to an angle bracket)

UK: from 35% to about 3% (less than 1% among Christians)
Australia: 90% to 12.6%
New Zealand: 95% to below 3% (mostly Samoans and Tongans, less than 1% among whites)
South America and Europe: never above 3% (includes many of the world’s most Christian countries eg Poland, Spain, Italy, Brazil)

(some of that was truncated)

UK: from 35% to about 3% (

I too have wondered what on earth Paul was thinking. It didn’t make any sense to me the first time I read it, and it still doesn’t.

Why is that only the USA seems to find medical needs for circumcisions at a later age though? The rate is 1 in 150 in the UK. It just looks like they’re trying to find reasons to do it. The other possibility is that parents used to be told to retract their sons’ foreskins, and this itself causes problems.

It’s actually less painful to be circumcised when you’re older – you can use general anaesthetic, and you don’t have to separate the foreskin (in Scotland, hospitals will perform circumcision for Muslims, but the child must be at least six months old, so that general anaesthetic can be used). In most countries, 99% of Christian males are intact, and 99% of them have no problems. If there is a problem and they need to be circumcised, then it’s easier to have it done later on anyway.

drops in male circumcision:
USA: from 90% to 56%
Canada: from 47% to 14%
UK: from 35% to about 3% (

Cheryl, it sounds like your son had a bad UTI, and I’m sorry to hear that. However, if you’d gone to most doctors in the world, they wouldn’t have thought that being intact was the cause, or that circumcision was the cure. Circumcised boys get UTI’s too, and girls get them about four times as often as boys, but then the treatment is antibiotics, not surgery. Circumcision wouldn’t even be considered in a European or South American hospital. Stretching isn’t applicable btw.

(there is one medical reason that babies do get circumcised for, and that’s hypaspadias)

I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree, but I believe that circumcision is not just unnecessary for Christians, but wrong. Three Popes have spoken out against circumcision, and it also appears to contravene the Catechism.

It’s only in the USA that doctors find reasons to circumcise small boys. In other Christian countries, less than 1% of males ever need to be circumcised, and it *never* happens before puberty. I very much doubt that any British or Australian or South American doctor would have thought that your son needed to be circumcised, especially not if he was still a baby. US doctors try to find reasons to circumcise though, and don’t know what intact penises are supposed to be like, so they find problems where none exist. Conversely, you can find doctors in many countries that will argue that there are significant health benefits for various forms of female circumcision. Over 90% of Egyptian girls are circumcised by surgeons in clinics (though their version does a lot less damage than regular male circumcision)

Circumcision is not painless at any age, and in fact hurts newborns *more*, since a) you can’t use general anaesthetic and b), you have to separate the foreskin from the glans, which is the most painful part of the circumcision.

I also regard male circumcision as mutilation, and it is also the view of the Catholic church that circumcision is a sin.

The clitoral hood is the exact equivalent of the foreskin, and both are called the “prepuce”. Cutting off a clitoral hood *is* illegal in the USA, and has been since 1997. In fact, just making an incision without removing any tissue is illegal.

I agree that removing the clitoris is considerably worse than regular male circumcision, but many forms of female circumcision do not remove the clitoris, and most forms of Type I female circumcision do less damage than standard male circumcision.

The more you find out about female circumcision, the less difference you will find with male circumcision. For instance:
1) Male circumcision amongst Christians in the USA became popular in the 19th century to stifle male sexuality. Christians didn’t circumcise anywhere until then.
2) The USA is almost the only country where Christians circumcise (the Philippines is the other, where the practice was introduced by Americans).
3) Clitoridectomy used to be performed in the USA on “wayward” girls.
4) Almost every country which practises male circumcision also practises some form of female circumcision.

Actually, females have a foreskin too. It’s normally called the clitoral hood, but medically they are both the same thing – the prepuce. Cutting the prepuce off a girl is illegal though. Why don’t boys get the same protectection?

Hardly any Christian countries circumcise boys, and for Catholics, it’s actually a sin (http://www.catholicsagainstcircumcision.org).

There are also Jews who oppose circumcision:
http://www.jewishcircumcision.org/
http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.org/
http://www.circumcision.org/