Circumcision decreases penile cancer. After reviewing the data from 50,000 cases in the past 50 years, Dr. Thomas E. Wiswell, a neonatologist noted that less than 1 percent of these cases were found in circumcised men. Circumcision protects a future wife from cervical cancer. In 1988 approximately 7,000 women died of this disease. The American Academy of Perdiatrics has cited that there was a significant decrease in cervical cancer when the male partner is circumcised.
Circumcision helps prevent urinary tract infections.
This motivated the pediatricians to join the campaign against circumcision. By 1983 the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology also agreed there was no value in circumcision. Meanwhile, urologists continued to deal with the reality of urinary tract infections, cancer and other conditions among the uncircumcised. This resulted in the pediatricians reversing their opposition to circumcision in 1989. Studies conducted at U.S. Army hospitals involving more than 200,000 males showed a greater than tenfold increase in urinary tract infections in uncircumcised male infants.