The African studies that are so beloved of, and conducted by fetishists are so flawed they are nothing more than scientific fraud.

The AAP is nothing more than a trade association. It’s only concern is the profits of it’s ‘stakeholders’.

Nobody has a right to another persons body for any reason. Forced genital cutting of a minor is a gross human rights abuse and anybody who is unable to understand this fails the humanity test.

Any adult who has this done to their son is an unfit parent. I was mutilated as a baby and I resent what was done to me. I am now middle aged and sex for me is *not* OK.

Julie – September 6th, 2012 at 12:26 am
The option of leaving it up to men to decide for themselves is unacceptable to the fetishists. They get sexual gratification from the act of cutting genitals and since only a tiny minority of seriously mentally unbalanced men would opt for circumcision it has to be forced on infants and children who can’t object.

Finally, below is a comment by a woman I found elsewhere regarding the circumcision fetishists mindset and their pathological lying:

“In and of itself there is nothing at all erotic about the lie. They don’t believe the lies they spread, they know they are lies but they know that certain people are vulnerable to believing those lies and when they do they cut the penises of their own babies. Having a hand in the sale that results in a circumcision is the fetishist’s erotic thrill. It’s a game to them, a kinky game that results in the agony of infants. It’s just a twisted mind f**k game.”

2) Can we at least develop some standardized rules about what parents can do to their children in the name of their personal beliefs? If Jews and Muslims can circumcise their babies, then why can’t a white supremacist tattoo a swastika on their infant’s forehead? (Or to compare apples to apples, their groin area?) Both sets of parents have strong beliefs and presumably have the right to inculcate them in their child without its consent.

Ed: Link now goes to Myers’ blog.

Let’s first begin with this author’s bias.

“The [womb] that I bathed in, the place in which I had my “bones and sinews knitted together,” in the words of Job, was the property of a Jew.”

Jesse Bering has more than one reason to have a strong bias in favor of circumcision. He is of course circumcised, and he comes from a culture where having a foreskin is viewed with disdain. It is surprising to me he has remained with his lover from Mexico. Perhaps he hopes to convince him to part with his foreskin in the future, using the so-called “evidence?”

It is no surprise, then, that he cheerleads the AAP in this piece of pro-circumcision pablum.

What’s interesting to me is how selectively he quotes the AAP. While he repeats much of the nonsense regarding the so-called “medical benefits,” he seems to have missed the part that says that “…health benefits are not great enough to recommend routine circumcision for all male newborns.”

So, I’m not sure what the big hullabaloo is with Bering praising the AAP. It must be that they said positive things about the kind of penis that hangs between his legs, and the historically problematic Jewish “tradition” that caused it.

The culmination that was the latest policy statement on circumcision by the AAP can be summarized to this: 5 years of mulling it over, and “We don’t recommend it, but it should still be an option for brainwashed parents, and the state should flip the bill.” was the best the AAP could do? Seriously? Mr. Burns put it the best: “Spicy, yet spineless.”

The confusing policy statement raises a few questions, as does this very article. How is it the AAP couldn’t bring itself to recommend infant circumcision, but it should be this “option” for parents which the state and insurance companies should cover?

How is it parents are supposed to weigh the same “evidence” that health professionals at the AAP couldn’t use to endorse circumcision, and somehow come up with a more reasonable conclusion?

Without any medical or clinical indication, can a doctor even be performing surgery in healthy, non-consenting minors, let alone be giving their parents any kind of a “choice?”

For a medical board so concerned with a child’s future sex life as a man, why is it they didn’t even talk about other options he may have for protection? The word “condom” does not appear once in either the policy statement, nor the technical report. Somehow circumcision is supposed to be the only option, or I’m led to believe.

Why wasn’t the foreskin, its function, its parts etc. not discussed at all? Bering says it was, but he is either oblivious to this, or he is knowingly lying. Perhaps the policy satisfied his requirements of talking about the function and mechanics of the foreskin, which is not to talk about it at all?

The new AAP policy statement on circumcision raises many questions, but Bering does not make any effort to ask them.

Which raises new questions; why is it Discover decided to come to Bering for any insight on the new AAP statement?

Who IS Bering? Is he a medical doctor of any kind? A surgeon? A urologist? A pediatrician? An epidemiologist?

Just what makes his word on what the AAP has to say of any value?

At the very least, why didn’t Discover have a dissenting voice write?

While Bering commits argumentum ad verecundiam, he seems to be oblivious to the fact that the AAP stands alone in stating “the benefits outweigh the risks.”

The trend of opinion on routine male circumcision is overwhelmingly negative in industrialized nations. No respected medical board in the world recommends circumcision for infants, not even in the name of HIV prevention. They must all point to the risks, and they must all state that there is no convincing evidence that the benefits outweigh these risks. To do otherwise would be to take an unfounded position against the best medical authorities of the West, as the AAP has today.

Discover couldn’t find a more inept person to address this issue. All Bering offers is pure one-sided, biased opinion which he poorly veils with carefully-selected “research.” It is obvious he only chose the parts of the AAP statement that he liked.

While he would like to emphasize the so-called “health-benefits” of circumcision, when all is said and done, the AAP statement still says the “…health benefits are not great enough to recommend routine circumcision for all male newborns.”

It raises the question as to why, even though the AAP can’t bring itself to “recommend” circumcision, it still insists parents should have “access” to it, and the state should fork over the cash.

I posit that the AAP would like to have its cake and eat it too. While it does not want to go against the world consensus that there isn’t enough evidence to endorse infant circumcision, it still would like to justify the actions of its “fellows,” a great majority of which profit from the act.