Should boys be circumcised at birth or should their penis remain “pure”? Do a little digging and you’ll find people who have strong opinions on both sides.
Circumcision is a surgical procedure in which the skin, called the foreskin, covering the end of the penis is removed. A doctor usually performs circumcision in the first few days of life. An infant must be stable and healthy to safely be circumcised.
Generally parents circumcise sons for cosmetic, religious (such as followers of the Jewish and Islamic faiths), social or cultural reasons.
Although the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) believe circumcision is not essential to a child’s health, based on a recent analysis, they discovered that for newborn boys, the benefits of circumcision outweigh the risks.
“The AAP used to be neutral on the position and allowed it to be a family decision. They updated their policy,” said Dr. Karla Loken, a St. Vincent Health obstetrician gynecologist.
In the American Journal of Pediatrics, the AAP concluded that neonatal circumcision later reduces the transmission of HIV infection from 40 to 60 percent; decreases risk of many sexually transmitted infections including herpes simplex type 2, gonorrhea, chlamydia and the human papillomavirus; reduced risk of penile cancer; lowers risks of urinary tract infections; and makes hygiene easier.
“If you have something like HPV, that’s much more easily passed through the uncircumcised male to their partners. The impact this has on women is that if you have HPV, the risks of cervical cancer goes up dramatically,” said Dr. Mark Cain, professor of urology at Indiana University and chief of pediatric urology at Riley Hospital for Children.
Currently, the three most common methods of circumcision in newborn males are the Gomco clamp, the Mogen clamp and the Plastibell device. During circumcision, there are risks of bleeding, infection or urethral injury.
Loken said that circumcision is historically done soon after birth, but there are instances where boys will be circumcised after a few weeks of birth, typically due to a urological defect. Youth and adult males can also be circumcised later on in life due to medical issues such as recurrent urinary tract infections.
“There are kids who get penile skin infections from the foreskin and those kids, if they’ve had more than one, benefit from circumcision,” added Cain.
In a recent study, 55 percent of American boys were circumcised – a rate that is said to be declining. This is good news for some parents and “pro-uncircumcision” groups such as Intact America.
Their mission is to protect babies and children from circumcision and all other forms of medically unnecessary genital alteration, whether carried out for cultural conformity or profit, in medical or non-medical settings.
“The rest of the world doesn’t do this for medical reasons,” said Georganne Chapin, executive director of Intact America in a previous interview. “Countries that have better health status and spend far less on health care would no more line up their baby boys and cut off their foreskins than they would poke out their eyes.”
In 2007, the World Health Organization estimated that only six percent of the male population age 15 and older (and non Jewish or Muslim) in the United Kingdom was circumcised, versus 75 percent in the U.S.
Intact America has started a campaign against the AAP charging that “(The AAP) acknowledge—over and over in the report—that no good studies have been done on certain health risks. And the report ignores the growing accounts in medical literature, in the mainstream press and on the internet, of botched circumcisions, sexual dysfunction, psychological impact, and – in at least 100 instances a year – death.”
The AAP does suggest that if parents choose not to have their son circumcised, to talk with a pediatrician about how to keep their son’s penis clean.
“Keep in mind that the foreskin will not fully retract for several years and should never be forced. When your son is old enough, he can learn how to keep his penis clean just as he will learn to keep other parts of his body clean,” they said.
“As parents, we can educate our kids and hope their behaviors will be such that they avoid exposure to any of these things, but people need to know that if their child is uncircumcised they’re at a higher risk for diseases,” Loken warns.
Experts do agree that parents should have conversations and do research about circumcision well before the baby is born.
