Justification for neonatal male circumcision

Here are the main reasons that I am against circumcision: -Circumcision leads to decreased sexual pleasure and sexual dysfunction -Why circumcision started, and the puritanical history of circumcision in the United States -The violation of human rights, and the implications associated with bodily modification without consent -Agendas by the medical and industrial sectors influencing the continuation of the practice -effects of traumatic procedures on the adolescent brain, contradictions within the medical establishment, and the dangers associated with circumcision There are many reasons for the loss of sensitivity after being circumcised. One reason is due to the loss of tissue surface area. Removing erogenous tissue, nerve endings, and sexually protective coverings reduces sexual sensitivity; it also leads to a decrease in sexual pleasure for both partners [1,2,3] and can lead to problems, such as erectile dysfunction [4,5].The foreskin is a section of the shaft skin, and creates sexual response nerve impulses. It also acts to let signal from other nerves further down the line pass through. It should be expected that subtracting a large amount of these nerve cells, as well as severing the natural impulse pathways from the remaining ones, would reduce the amount of total nerve impulse created and ultimately received by the brain. The second reason falls on the build up of keratin (the same compound that makes up fingernails) on the glans head, and the inner foreskin. Both normally protected by an inner environment of moisture, they become constantly exposed to the dryness of the outside conditions, as well as the abrasion of clothing. To compensate for this, the glans and other exposed parts build a layer of keratin to be protected from damage and painful sensations. This, of course, means that the erogenous nerves that create sexual sensation are buried under additional layers, requiring more stimulation to achieve the same response. The second point is how circumcision started in the United States. One of the main advocates of circumcision, John Harvey Kellogg believed that many ailments, including syphilis, were caused by masturbation. He recommended circumcision to be the treatment, due to it"s lowering of sexual sensitivity and association of sexual pleasure with pain, since the procedure was to be done without anesthesia [6, PP. 294-296]. He also argued that a clitorectomy or clitoral acid application was a suitable female treatment. The male practice caught on; the female versions did not. The next point is of the human right"s applications. By law in the United States, it is illegal to discriminate protections and opportunities based on sex. While medically necessary procedures are usually performed on infants without being viewed through the human rights filter, medically unnecessary procedures are. Male genital modification is considered acceptable for parents to request of their child, while female genital modification isn"t acceptable. As we see with the issue of abortion, both sides have human rights factors in mind. I am not going to delve into which side is right; I am only going to borrow the implications. -The view that abortion is not acceptable argues that making a decision on the part of the child"s body before it can consent is unconstitutional. -The view that abortion is acceptable due to the rights of the mother to make decision on her own body also, by extension, has the rights of the child in mind. Once the child is delivered, it is no longer part of the mother, and just like the mother, no outside power has the right to make decisions on it"s body. How far do we take the right"s of the parents to modify their child"s body? Do we let them do whatever they believe should be done, while not protecting the child, or should we offer the child protection from bodily intrusion without medical necessity, until it can decide for itself? Circumcision is a huge industry, costing around $1,000 on average through different age groups as well as different methods of anesthesia [7] sometimes costing more than Lasik eye surgery [8]. This makes hospitals and individual doctors very significant amounts of money. With such high amounts of profits to be made, skepticism in the analysis of research and proposed benefits is very necessary. Not only this, but circumcised men use the largest portion of the world"s produced Viagra, and significantly higher amounts of lubricant [5,9]. Combined with the industry of hospitals selling amputated foreskins for cosmetic products [10,11] there is a very large, profit system behind the continuation of circumcision. The AAP, which you cited, has not always justified circumcision, ex. 1999-2002. They have also come out with a statement recently stating that painful procedures on infants should be avoided due to the lasting, negative effects of pain on the developing infant brain [12,13,14] this, naturally, applies to circumcision. In infants, anesthesia is not used routinely, and even when it is used, it"s effectiveness on infants has not been proven, and has come into severe question [15,16,17] this being the case, it seems the AAP is not heeding their own advice. Dangers of circumcision are not limited to temporary conditions. Complications can and do occur during and after the surgery. Conditions such as clotting, uncontrolled hemorrhaging, systemic shock, and infection occur. When too much shaft skin is removed, or when it is removed improperly, latent complications such as abnormal penile torsion. Some cases of complication led to partial or even full amputation of the penis [18,19,20]. Unfortunately, around a hundred infant deaths occur each year due to complications resulting from circumcision [21,22] Considering the harms and risks have equal statistical probability to the conditions circumcision is claimed to prevent, and the fact that each condition has an effective modern treatment alternative (proper hygiene/antibiotics for infections, light stretching/topical ointment for phimosis, and proper sexual education/ condoms for STD transmission) circumcision, a procedure created thousands of years ago as a sacrificial religious practice, cannot still be considered a reasonable procedure to put hundreds of thousand of infants through. To systematically surgically modify hundreds of thousands of infants to prevent what may or may not happen to a couple hundred men is not right. Sources: 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 2. http://www.circinfo.org... 3. http://www.nocirc.org... 4.http://www.academia.edu... 5. http://www.thewholenetwork.org... 6. https://www.archive.org... 7.http://health.costhelper.com... 8. http://www.lasik.com... 9. http://canadafreepress.com... 10. https://sites.google.com... 11. https://www.scientificamerican.com... 12.https://www.aap.org... 13. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org... 14. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org... 15. http://www.cnn.com... 16. http://www.circinfo.net... 17.https://www.psychologytoday.com... 18. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 19. http://www.cirp.org... 20. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 21. http://www.circinfo.org... 22. http://www.icgi.org...