UK to Consider Male Circumcision as "a potential form of child abuse"

[Suckrates]

3 hours ago, Riobard said:

I find the difference impossible to gauge due to where the member is predominantly positioned. 

As soon as you pull back the skin to reveal the juicy pink head,  gauging it is EASY.......   And somehow I always FIND my target, despite where it is positioned.  

[floridarob]

2 hours ago, thaiophilus said:

6 in a row! Is that a record?

Shhhh, don't encourage him,  he'll try to break his own record 🥺 

[floridarob]

2 hours ago, Suckrates said:

As soon as you pull back the skin to reveal the juicy pink head,

It scares me sometimes with what is under the skin....it's not always pretty....

[Suckrates]

2 hours ago, floridarob said:

It scares me sometimes with what is under the skin....it's not always pretty....

Oh come on now FRob,  this aint your first rodeo.  Employ the sniff test.....   If it is really funky, you will KNOW it as your face gets closer to your target.  Thats the great thing about the human body, it always lets you know when some "self care" is required....   I aint a smegma fan, and have encountered it a few times in my years,  but those the the only ones I walk away from.....  I'm LYING..... I walk away from SMALL ones too !   👎

[unicorn]

16 hours ago, PeterRS said:

...h, has been at the forefront of research on the history and social perception of circumcision in Korea. He is one of such critics [of the procedure]. Professor Kim has been a staunch advocate for abolishing the surgery as a widespread practice...

As often happens, when someone doesn't have facts and science behind him, he resorts to arguing with "here's someone who agrees with me." The risks and benefits of infant circumcision, and the results are simply irrefutable: benefits far outweigh the risks.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2562792/

"The records of 136,086 boys born in US Army hospitals from 1980 to 1985 were reviewed for indexed complications related to circumcision status during the first month of life. For 100,157 circumcised boys, there were 193 complications (0.19%). These included 62 local infections, eight cases of bacteremia, 83 incidences of hemorrhage (31 requiring ligature and three requiring transfusion), 25 instances of surgical trauma, and 20 urinary tract infections. There were no deaths or reported losses of the glans or entire penis. By contrast, the complications in the 35,929 uncircumcised infants were all related to urinary tract infections. Of the 88 boys with such infections (0.24%), 32 had concomitant bacteremia, three had meningitis, two had renal failure, and two died. The frequencies of urinary tract infection (P less than .0001) and bacteremia (P less than .0002) were significantly higher in the uncircumcised boys. Serious complications from routine prepuce removal are rare and relatively minor. Circumcision may be beneficial in reducing the occurrence of urinary tract infections and their associated sequelae."

For those unfamiliar with biostatistics lingo, p<0.0001 means that the odds that the difference was due to chance is less than 1 in 10,000. There is no doubt about it. Infant circumcision prevents serious illness and saves lives. As for the authority of Professor Kim, he's a retired physicist who simply has a bone to pick. He has NOT done serious research into this issue:

AI Overview

 

 

 

Professor Kim Dae-sik (or Dai-Sik Kim) is a prominent physicist known for his work in nano-optics, formerly a long-standing professor in the Department of Physics at Seoul National University (SNU) from 1994 to 2019, and now holds the title of Emeritus Professor at SNU, while also serving as a Distinguished Professor at UNIST (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology). He's recognized for his research on light confinement in nanostructures, leading groups at SNU and later at UNIST, and has been involved in interdisciplinary fields like AI and philosophy.

We routinely  perform all kinds of interventions on children (and especially babies) in order to protect them, since obviously infants lack the capacity for informed consent. The most obvious example which everyone knows is immunizations. Immunizations provide far more serious risks than infant circumcision--for example, fevers, and even febrile seizures (which don't cause permanent damage). However, immunizations prevent serious illness and death, so the benefits outweigh the risks. 

As for the alleged decrease in sensitivity, this has been thoroughly disproven in multiple well-designed scientific studies. The nerves which provide sexual pleasure are in the glans (tip of the penis), not the foreskin. It's difficult for me to understand the depths of stupidity one would need to have in order to believe than someone circumcised as an infant somehow knows he's had a loss of sensitivity. Obviously, the only way to study this issue is to study men who've been circumcised as adults. These studies have been done:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1743609515301727

Results
Searches identified 2,675 publications describing the effects of male circumcision on aspects of male sexual function, sensitivity, sensation, or satisfaction. Of these, 36 met our inclusion criteria of containing original data. Those studies reported a total of 40,473 men, including 19,542 uncircumcised and 20,931 circumcised. Rated by the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network grading system, 2 were 1++ (high quality randomized controlled trials) and 34 were case-control or cohort studies (11 high quality: 2++; 10 well-conducted: 2+; 13 low quality: 2−). The 1++, 2++, and 2+ studies uniformly found that circumcision had no overall adverse effect on penile sensitivity, sexual arousal, sexual sensation, erectile function, premature ejaculation, ejaculatory latency, orgasm difficulties, sexual satisfaction, pleasure, or pain during penetration. Support for these conclusions was provided by a meta-analysis. Impairment in one or more parameters was reported in 10 of the 13 studies rated as 2−. These lower-quality studies contained flaws in study design (11), selection of cases and/or controls (5), statistical analysis (4), and/or data interpretation (6); five had multiple problems.
Conclusion
The highest-quality studies suggest that medical male circumcision has no adverse effect on sexual function, sensitivity, sexual sensation, or satisfaction. Morris BJ and Krieger JN. Does male circumcision affect sexual function, sensitivity, or satisfaction?—A systematic review. J Sex Med 2013;10:2644–2657.

Please note that this article is a meta-analysis, combining the data of multiple (36 to be precise) studies. There is no higher level of evidence than a meta-analysis, so this issue is settled as well. 

[Riobard]

11 minutes ago, unicorn said:

There is no higher level of evidence than a meta-analysis, so this issue is settled as well. 

But surely you realize you are lecturing to a substantial proportion of contributors to the thread who lack reading comprehension and whine about how put upon they are when content mismatches their level of intelligence. 

[Riobard]

5 hours ago, thaiophilus said:

6 in a row! Is that a record?

She got to use her other hand counting up and still bellyaching. 

[Riobard]

3 hours ago, floridarob said:

Shhhh, don't encourage him,  he'll try to break his own record 🥺 

Ah, from the incessant troll that broke the sound barrier of boredom years ago to the degree that nothing meaningful can be discerned from her blather, but there’s no escaping awareness of her constant run on verbal wilderness diarrhea. 

[floridarob]

If this is what passes for wit now, it explains your persistent verbal incontinence. Lots of flow, nothing retained.

Dropping contempt into every thread isn’t insight. It’s just trolling with a thesaurus.

Might be time for your nap and a fresh Depends.... 💩

[floridarob]

1 hour ago, Suckrates said:

Employ the sniff test..... 

Pass.... plus it's not just smell, I'm referring to what some look like, similar to the Alien pic......

[PeterRS]

6 hours ago, unicorn said:

The risks and benefits of infant circumcision, and the results are simply irrefutable: benefits far outweigh the risks.

What else would anyone expect an American to say - even though a large majority of the rest of the world completely disagrees with that conclusion.

[Keithambrose]

13 hours ago, thaiophilus said:

6 in a row! Is that a record?

 

13 hours ago, thaiophilus said:

6 in a row! Is that a record?

I fear so!

[Keithambrose]

1 hour ago, PeterRS said:

What else would anyone expect an American to say - even though a large majority of the rest of the world completely disagrees with that conclusion.

Has Trump spoken on the topic yet?

[unicorn]

4 hours ago, PeterRS said:

What else would anyone expect an American to say - even though a large majority of the rest of the world completely disagrees with that conclusion.

  11 hours ago, unicorn said:

The risks and benefits of infant circumcision, and the results are simply irrefutable: benefits far outweigh the risks.

What a ridiculously pitiful non-argument. While one's personal preference for the esthetics of cut or non-cut is a matter of opinion and personal taste, the risk/benefit ratio is simply a matter of scientific fact and cannot be disputed. 

[Riobard]

7 hours ago, Keithambrose said:

 

I fear so!

Your anxiety reflects such multi factorial pathology. Ask her. 

[Riobard]

5 hours ago, unicorn said:

  11 hours ago, unicorn said:

The risks and benefits of infant circumcision, and the results are simply irrefutable: benefits far outweigh the risks.

What a ridiculously pitiful non-argument. While one's personal preference for the esthetics of cut or non-cut is a matter of opinion and personal taste, the risk/benefit ratio is simply a matter of scientific fact and cannot be disputed. 

I think that if one reads the thread thoroughly and neutrally the meta analytical research conclusions prevail. In some circles the expanded notion of metasynthesis might emerge, that a cost/benefit conclusion be nevertheless contextualized within bioethics. Metananalysis does not dismiss concepts of beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy/ selfdetermination, societal wellbeing, fairness, etc, but there may be a faction that purports that autonomy is essentially retroactively inappropriately nullified by default with infant circumcision. That’s life. 

This can be binned with parental decision substitution across a broad clinical range and the best that can be attempted in actual application is policy steered by the scales of research data. Digging heels in the sand on the view that consent is vitiated will not likely be amenable to shifts when conceit surrounding perspectives is so ingrained.  We cannot give babies, say, standard gamble tradeoff options but latent figurative tantrums are not particularly surprising. All that can be done is be factual, not get too caught up in cherry-picked refute dosed with rebuke, and electively express some degree of empathy regarding a contrarian position whether entrenched in belief systems or actual delusion. 

Fortunately it’s not equivalent in scope to, say, HIV denialism at point of care. 

[Riobard]

8 hours ago, Keithambrose said:

Has Trump spoken on the topic yet?

You are quite the wanderer. Where’s your minder? Tripartite Orientation assessment: time after time annoyingly boring; spaced out; fails to know his place. Ask her. Help may be out there. 

[PeterRS]

5 hours ago, unicorn said:

  11 hours ago, unicorn said:

The risks and benefits of infant circumcision, and the results are simply irrefutable: benefits far outweigh the risks.

What a ridiculously pitiful non-argument. While one's personal preference for the esthetics of cut or non-cut is a matter of opinion and personal taste, the risk/benefit ratio is simply a matter of scientific fact and cannot be disputed. 

Yet again you suggest that in America and with minimal numbers in other countries, the benefits far outweigh the risks. How anyone can expect that ridiculous suggestion to be fact when the vast majority of the non-religious non-cultural uncircumcisied world has decided for its own reasons that such comments are not invalid and circumcision does not factor into their thinking totally beats me and any and reasonable reader!

You are perfectly entitled to undertake the procedure or have it undertaken on behalf of your American patients. But do not tell the rest of the world they are wrong! America may have around 80% of males circumcised, but Britain only has around 20% and in Europe as a whole considerably less. As I wrote earlier, South America has much less and much of Asia even less. Had it not been for Americans, South Korea would not even have known about circumcision until the Americna occupation! And you might even point out that even in the USA numbers are falling.

[Riobard]

The meta-analysis is an Australian and American clinical collab. Of the 36 studies meeting quality criteria I tallied about 6 as American and the remainder distributed broadly globally. Geolocation did not factor into selectivity criteria. Gold standard is predicated on established ratings of strength of methodology and analysis. A meta-analysis does not typically present a null hypothesis, subject to bias, to be tested as supported or refuted, but involves an extensive literature scan and a synthesis of the highest quality proportion of related topic research to yield a judgement about the reality of a specific procedure. An ambiguous weighting of relative harm versus absence of deleterious consequences doesn’t get much traction with peer review, yet a paper is equally publishable with a meta-analytical finding of no particular outcome one way or the other as long as it is not wishy-washy.

It is merely inquiry, and doesn’t completely resolve the conundrum of ascertaining whether something is salutary versus not bad. The data are scattered among these distinctions and the best research practices paradoxically militate against near universal consensus regarding the practice because it’s about a binary balance and there is no established set point between 51% and 100% on the more heavily weighted side of the question’s answer. This largely accounts for positional variability and cherry-picked contrarianism. 

Silo clinical context also plays a role, say, if one’s practice is weighted with HIV transmission considerations and circumcision status’ loading into risk.