Routine Circumcision for Disease Prevention?

I have just learned startling information. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is considering recommending routine circumcision for infant boys in the United States. That recommendation, should it be made, would come from a review of studies done on African males and the spread of sexually transmitted infection (STI) such as HIV/AIDS. The study concluded that circumcised men had a lower transmission rate of STIs--not “no transmission”, just a lower transmission.

Should the CDC make such a horrific recommendation, I believe I would lose nearly all confidence in them as scientists. For years now we have been insisting to our young people that the only way to avoid STIs is to use a condom or to abstain from sex. These are good, sound pieces of advice. We have historically been a country of circumcised men and we have learned through the 80’s that the spread of HIV was not deterred by circumcision. To recommend circumcision as a method of preventing the spread of sexually transmitted infections would undermine more than two decades of scientifically sound advice to our youth and adults, by suggesting that a circumcised penis is protected from such diseases. Even if the circumcised penis is 50% more protected than an intact penis, you could still contract a deadly disease. As my husband says, to rely on circumcision for protection against STIs is like putting five bullets instead of six in the gun before you put it to you head. Wearing a condom means that all penises are equally protected from disease. American men are acculturated to condoms and have access to them. They remain the best form of protection outside of abstinence.

In addition to this ridiculous notion that circumcision is protection from STIs, it is important to remember that circumcision is a surgery NOT WITHOUT RISK. Infection, surgical error, the well-proven interruption of mother-infant bonding, significant pain and even death are all potential consequences of circumcision. Imagine yourself having this decision made for you as an infant. Imagine something going wrong during the procedure or as a result of a subsequent infection. How would you feel if this destroyed your ability to enjoy your sexuality as an adult, and made your chances of finding a life partner significantly more complicated? How would you feel if your healthy infant died from a completely unnecessary surgical procedure? This happens.

Clearly I am opposed to circumcision. I believe it is genital mutilation. If someone suggested that I cut out my own or my daughter’s clitoris for any reason, I would be appalled as would most of you. And yet we persist on cutting off the most sensitive and pleasure giving part of a man’s body. I understand that it is difficult to change cultural norms and to right the host of misinformation out there. Most of the people I know who have chosen circumcision for their sons have done so at the advice of a parent, a doctor, or because they wanted their son to look like their father. But the research simply does not support a medical need, and people can change. There are religious reasons too. But I find that a difficult justification to swallow in the US since most Americans identify as Christians. The New Testament references circumcision at least five times saying that we should leave the body as God made it.

All of our body parts have a reason for being there. Even that crazy appendix is now understood to be part of the immune system. The twelve square inches of highly erogenous tissue that makes up the foreskin of an adult penis has a purpose too—both for pleasure and procreation. Where I live, in the Northwest, just about 70% of baby boys are being left intact as attitudes and awareness change. And just like in other western nations where circumcision is relegated to the Jewish and Muslim populations, the parents of these babies are able to keep them clean and to teach them morals. What’s done is done, but what hasn’t been done need not be. Circumcision is painful, potentially life-changing, and above all 100% unnecessary.

P.S. Do you want to know where all those infant foreskins go when they cut them off in the hospital? They are sold to bandage companies for research.