Results of the 1999 to 2004 United States National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey demonstrated that more circumcised men reported having been diagnosed with genital warts compared with uncircumcised men (4.5% and 2.4%, respectively).

That means in the US men are 53% more likely to have genital warts if they ARE circumcised.

http://www.webmd.com/sexual-conditions/hpv-genital-warts/news/20080403/thwart-genital-warts-dont-sleep-around

Intact of AZ
Apr 23, 2008 13:28:37 PM [permalink] [report comment]

Should parents amputate sexual tissue from their children?

My interest in this topic is driven by the neonatal circumcision damage done to my penis. As a teenager my penis would tear and bleed during erections, and I would cry from the pain of my testicles being pulled. My father took me to a doctor in Lexington, who basically shrugged and scowled at me. His advice: just live with it.

A hundred years ago U.S. circumcisers, with great medical authority, assured parents that the intended sexual damage from circumcision - of boys and girls - was morally beneficial. Today circumcisers are frantically trying to assure parents of the absurd notion that amputation of sexually sensitive tissue from boys does not affect sexual sensation or function, while no medical association recommends neonatal circumcision, and few intact adult males need this surgery, either for medical or psychological reasons. What then are the motives of doctors who offer to amputate - the word used by the American Academy of Pediatrics in their medical description of circumcision - sexual tissue from non-consenting minors? What rights are boys missing that allows adults to strap them down and cut off perfectly healthy, normal, sexual tissue, while the same thing done to an adult - or a girl - is considered a felony?

I could never figure out what caused that wretched ring of scar tissue, and I couldn't imagine just what circumcision had cut off, until I shared a room with another student at a scientific meeting in Hong Kong, where I presented some research on polar motion. There, I got a fleeting glimpse of a man with a whole penis. I couldn't believe it: where was the scar tissue? What was that neat glove of unblemished skin that hid his glans? Why wasn't there hair on the shaft? Pathetic: at the age of 35 I finally figured out what was done to me.

But I don't think I was particularly clueless: in circumcised America, I bet most men don't know that they are missing about 15 square inches of skin and mucosal tissue that is an integral part of the penis. Ironically for women who support male circumcision, the clitoral hood, clitoris, and labia were once targeted by American doctors using similar excuses they now give for cutting males. I also don't think that my poorly done circumcision - as if there could be a good way of amputating part of a babies' penis - is that rare, if the complications rates touted by the medical profession are correct. At the very least, there must be thousands of men in the U.S. suffering from what could only be described as genital mutilation. How could that happen in the U.S., with all our glorious talk about freedom and justice for all?

Circumcision is now in the news a lot because it appears that sexually promiscuous African men, when circumcised, get HIV from infected women at about half the rate of their countrymen with a whole penis, and amazingly circumcisers have pounced on this as another reason to continue the cutting of baby boys in the U.S. But in the end there is no proven medical reason for cutting off the foreskin, which is why no medical association in the U.S. or anywhere recommends neonatal circumcision.

I feel cheated and robbed. I had no choice, there was no benefit, and the risks were realized with a dark, purplish ring of scar tissue where nature had once placed part of my penis. With most of the shaft skin amputated, every erection is an uncomfortable reminder of that smirking doctor I saw as a teenager. Forced genital cutting is a cultural disease, passed on from one mutilated generation to the next, that has no place in a free society.

john of TX
Apr 16, 2008 21:50:49 PM [permalink] [report comment]

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