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00:51, 10 October 2011 Theemperor (talk | contribs) New reply created (Reply to Quick question for you...)
00:29, 10 October 2011 WaitingforGodot (talk | contribs) New reply created (Reply to Quick question for you...)
00:26, 10 October 2011 WaitingforGodot (talk | contribs) New reply created (Reply to Quick question for you...)
00:25, 10 October 2011 Theemperor (talk | contribs) New reply created (Reply to Quick question for you...)
00:19, 10 October 2011 WaitingforGodot (talk | contribs) New reply created (Reply to Quick question for you...)
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14:56, 8 October 2011 WaitingforGodot (talk | contribs) New reply created (Reply to Quick question for you...)
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03:54, 8 October 2011 Theemperor (talk | contribs) Comment text edited  
03:53, 8 October 2011 Theemperor (talk | contribs) New thread created  

(BTW, sorry if this is coming off as frustrated, but that's not your fault, fucking LQT deleted this post two times already and I'm rather peeved about that)

In some recent statements you've made, you've come off as empathetically against any parent that makes any sort of decision about their children's body and state thereof- tattoos, scarifiation, piercing, and especially circumcision. While I can somewhat understand the first few, I don't understand the last one. Because I don't know the exact thought process behind your rejection of it, I'd like to ask you what your opinion on the vaccination of children is. This may seem like a unrelated question, but it's really not. Both are essentiall making a medical decision for a child too young and uninformed to make it for themselves, and I see no reason how some self-professed "rationalists" can uphold one as one of the greatest scientific triumphs even and simoultaneously denigrate the other as a human rights abuse.

I mean, considering the evidence, it seems as if you've essentially decided that, no matter who puts out what evidence, whether it be the CDC, the WHO, the Lancet, or any of the numerous medical orgaizatons stating that it can reduce the transmissions of HIV and UTI's, they're wrong and you're right because you've already formed your opinion. And not only are they mistaken, the scientists conducting the studies are either cooking the results to appease, or are straight-up in the pocket of mysteriously well-funded religous groups- which, if you'll pause for a second, is the exact same argument anti-vaccers make, but with "Big Pharma" instead of "Big Circ".

So how is a parent making the rational decision to (safely, in most cases!) prevent or decrease the risk of urinary tract infections, HIV, and some STD's, guilty of "child abuse"? It seems like you've skipped right over the science and gone straight for the "NO SCIENCE TOUCHING MY KIDS BODIES!!111!" levels that anti-vaxxers often reach and justifying it with moral/ethical arguments that are often paralell if not identical?

I guess what I'm trying to say, is where do you draw the line between "For the good of public health" and "My right to privacy trumps the medical well-being of others around me"? It just dosen't seem like you're basing your position off of facts.

--The Emperor Kneel before Zod!03:53, 8 October 2011

Honest question: is there any evidence that urinary tract infections, HIV, and some STDs are preventable by circumcision alone, as opposed to with proper hygiene (in the case of the first) and safe sexual practices (in the case of the second and third)? In other words if a dude keeps himself clean and practices safer sex, is he any more likely to get a UTI, HIV, or an STD if he's cut as opposed to uncut?

B♭maj7 (talk) Apple acknowledged that 137 workers at a Chinese factory near the city of Suzhou had been seriously injured by a toxic chemical used in making the slick green screens of the iPhone 03:58, 8 October 2011

Well, except the for very small children in the first case, not really. There is definitely strong evidence that circumcision reduces those things, though.

But keep in mind, people often do stupid things, and also in many parts of the world people wouldn't have access to some of those things- so circumcision would still be the correct choice. Pretend it's your child: If it's likely that they will have do something stupid/have unprotected sex at some point in their life, is it better to have to say "Haha, you have HIV or an STD because you were stupid! You should have listened to meeee!" or "Good thing that you didn't get infected because I figured you would do something retarded like that and took precautions!" To go back to vaccines, I'm sure it's perfectly possible to avoid, say, whooping cough by wearing a surgical mask your entire life. Does this mean that we should have everyone wear masks all the time because we didn't want to get them vaccinated? Likewise, should we hope against hope that people everywhere will suddenly magically practice perfect hygiene and safe sex, or deal with things as they stand now?

--The Emperor Kneel before Zod!04:09, 8 October 2011

I think you missed the part where the evidence for a medical benefit to circumcision wasn't massively compelling, or at least where you could say it was "significant" the effect didn't work out in a cost-benefit sense and you had to do some extreme data mining for it anyway.

ADK...I'll spit your truffle!08:11, 8 October 2011

When the scientfic and medial community looked at these "compelling" studies they found these things.

  1. the studies did not follow proper protocol. They were in fact "stopped" when "good results" came up.
  2. the studies massively misreported the actual benefit. They stated 40-60% likelyhood of not getting AIDS; Scientists and the medical community who are experts in statistics restated those numbers as a 2-5% improvement in prevention of aids.
  3. The study's numbers have never been duplicated.
  4. The studies do not apply to gay men, or men in the western world; just those is "Africa" which seems very very very odd. men are men-hiv is hiv. if it works in one country, it should work in another...
  5. When you "follow the money" you find the studies funded by people who were already advocating circumcision for *religious* reasons.

finally

  1. no medical consensus has ever explained the mechanism for WHY circumcision could possibly help keep you from getting aids. there are some "theories' printed, but they simply aren't compelling scientifically.


As to your main point - all else being equal, let's say there really was a reason this might be medially advised. It's medically advidse to PREVENT something that can be prevented a different way. And it's not like vaccination, or giving your child a healthy diet. It cuts part of you off. I do not see where harming little boys to *maybe* protect them from something that actual EDUCATION and condoms WILL protect them from - is a valid reason.

I joked about the fact that cutting off a teen girl's tits will insure she never gets Cancer of the mammory glands - but that doesn't strick me as a compelling reason to do it.

Pink mowse.pngGodotThe Peyote God awaits14:13, 8 October 2011

Well, it would be a top notch cure for breast cancer. Though you can go one further and prevent all deaths from cancer by just killing people at birth.

 

Here's the thing. You're claiming that the "scientific and medical community" looked at those studies, they found them fatally flawed. If that's the case, why are all these scientific and medical organizations still advocating the practice? If the studies were fatally flawed ala Andrew Wakefield (since you claimed that they took money from religious groups with an agenda), then why haven't the scientists lost their medical licences, the studies been retracted, etc.? You're basically claiming that they are fatally flawed, positing a bunch of reasons why with no citations (and other anti-circ pages citing them don't count as citations. I want serious evidence from an unbiased, credible source showing why they are flawed), and then going off and making nonsensical analogies about cutting off breasts, which is just ridiculous- that is nothing like what I am proposing so please stop attacking strawmen.

As to "all else being equal", we'e not discussing all else being equal. We're discussing whether or not it's acceptable to use this as a way to slow the spread of a disease that is causing millions of deaths a year because evidence shows that it would help. I don't think many people would prefer to have a foreskin and also have HIV as opposed to having neither. Sure, condoms and education help better, but that is an approach that has been tried for years, and it certainly doesn't seem to be dropping transmission rates to US levels. The point is, while education may well be a "better" solution, it's also a long-term solution- and people are dying now. There's no reason why we shouldn't do everything in our power to stop deaths just because you feel a bit squeamish about it.

--The Emperor Kneel before Zod!00:00, 10 October 2011
 
 

There is no strong evidence circumcision helps ANY of this. Circumcision removes natural skin, exposes your penile head to dryness that it isn't supposed to feel.

If the "it helps with hygiene" crowd were right, then boys in europe would get more HIV, more UTI, and more std's than boys in the US. This simply is not the case. there are no more cases of STDs or UTIs in france than here, or germany than texas. And AIDS was not more prevelent in Europe than here, in the gay or straight community.

the ONLY place that has ever "proven" that circumcision was effective was AFrica. And since a human man is the same here or there, it tells me the studies are not that good.

By the way, if you *really* think it's a good idea, then do it at 16 or 18, before the kid has started having sex, but is old enough to be asked, "do you want your boy parts cut?" I'm sure they will find the studies as compelling, and the health bennies as important as you suggest they are.

Pink mowse.pngGodotThe Peyote God awaits14:18, 8 October 2011

One more set of facts. There's sorta a "natural study group" if you will, about circumcision and AIDS or HIV.

The US v. Europe. When I googled, I found that .3% of adult males in the US have HIV/AIDS. In France, it's .4% of adult males. In Germany .1 %, in Spain .4 %, etc. (http://www.avert.org/hiv-aids-europe.htm). In the US, well over 50% of all men are circumcised. In Europe, It's less than 10% of the men. Yet the numbers of AIDS/HIV cases are pretty consistent.

That's not science. It's just sorta looking at the numbers. Again, if there really were such significant differences, given the cultural issues for the last 50 years in Europe vs. US, you'd think someone would say "oh my god, americans aren't getting UTIs".

Pink mowse.pngGodotThe Peyote God awaits14:56, 8 October 2011

"Circumcision removes natural skin, exposes your [glans] to dryness it isn't supposed to feel" Yes, that's the point. The explanation that I've seen is that the foreskin is susceptible to micro-tears during intercourse that create pathways for the virus. The glans is much less susceptible to these, so there aren't easy pathways for the virus to exploit. Boom, there's your "mechanism".

Keep in mind re hygiene, you're looking at national statistics, NOT a scientific study. There so many variables that aren't being controlled for that it's pretty much irrelevant. Off the top of my head, Europe has evil "socialized" medicine, which means that all socioeconomic classes get access to affordable care, so you'd expect to see lower incidence rates of STD's and UTI's than in the US, where lower classes often might not have access to good healthcare, so they would be more susceptible regardless of circumcision status, which would massively skew the data. You're absolutely right, "looking at the numbers" is not science, and it's stupid to brng up correlations or anecdotes and think that they are viable evidence to scientific studies.

"the ONLY place that has ever "proven" that circumcision was effective was AFrica" Well no shit, we're discussing this relative to Africa. People aren't dying of AIDS by the millions in the US. It's a serious problem there. It's a minor one here.

"By the way, if you *really* think it's a good idea, then do it at 16 or 18, before the kid has started having sex," Then why not wait until 16 or 18 to vaccinate them? After all, I'm sure they'd appreciate they input before looking at the evidence! We wouldn't want to unduly force people to have medical procedures as a kid, even though we do it for vaccinations and appendicitis and deformities, no, never!

BTW, you still haven't answered my original question of "where do you draw the line between "For the good of public health" and "My right to privacy trumps the medical well-being of others around me"?". Please do so, my intention in my thread was for you to answer that, not randomly spew claims on the subject.

--The Emperor Kneel before Zod!00:12, 10 October 2011
 

And of course you can compare countries. If a medical procedure is effective, it's effective. Biology does not take into account, coustoms.

And again, harming the human body is NEVER an acceptable answer when you have other EVEN MORE EFFECTIVE answers.

Of course, you want to know why the "mirco tear" theory was proposed? Cause rapists who have partners that are not aroused, have to rub harder. So, are we saying that africa has a higher rape problem? of course we are. But circumcision is not the answer for that, either.

castration might be, but that's the feminist in me talking.

Pink mowse.pngGodotThe Peyote God awaits00:29, 10 October 2011