So people should be shocked. The point of the bloodstained men is very obvious. Infant male genital cutting ('circumcision") is not just "a decision that parents make for their children" but something that affects MEN, more often than is admitted, adversely. Yesterday on Facebook two posts in a row referred to circumcision deaths known to the posters. How many deaths and major complications are there? The AAP doesn't know, and since it can't get any figures, chose to ignore them.

My thoughts exactly.

Saying "You mention..." twice tends to suggest that I did read your post.

It is not just my "predeliction" that limits "the liberty of parents to make what ever decision [they] want." It is the law. Parents are not "empowered to act to act for Their children until they reach their majority" without limit.
They may not tattoo their child.
They may not brand their child.
They may not pierce their child's genitals.
They may not cut ANY part off their girl child's genitals.
They may not cut ANY other comparable (normal, healthy, functional, non-renewing) part off their child's body.
So what makes this part alone an exception?

It is only when the child grows up that anyone can say that circumcising him was acting "for him". More and more men are saying it was not.

You keep saying "reduces the incidence of..." but when the reduction is small and the incidence was already low, the benefits of circumcision fall below the costs and the risks.

There is NO evidence that circumcising an adult is "much less dangerous than circumcision when older". They are doing mass adult circumcisions in Africa (mistakenly I believe) as an outpatient procedure.

Cutting part of a baby's genitals off denies him the religious freedom guaranteed him by the First Amendment.

The NIH and CDC have not actually made any recommendations on circumcision. The WHO has only recommended it for adult volunteers in regions of high HIV prevalence. The basis of the WHO's recommendation, insofar as it is public, is not convincing.

The total basis of the HIV claim is three studies of a total of 5,400 paid adult volunteers for circumcision, in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. After less than two years, a total of 64 of the circumcised men had HIV, 137 of the non-circumcised control groups. The difference is the famous "60%". But when only the circumcised men were told to abstain for six weeks, several times as many men dropped out, their HIV status unknown, as were known to be infected, we have no idea which, if any, of the men were infected heterosexually, there is plenty of room for doubt that circumcision conferred any protection at all.

None of those have conducted studies about circumcision and sexual pleasure. They have cited (selectively) or reprinted studies carried out by others.

Those claiming circumcision has no effect are subject to a variety of faults:
* selection bias (only volunteers for circumcision were surveyed);
* confirmation bias (the way the studies are written shows clearly that the authors did not want to find any harmful effects);
* lack of statistical sensitivity (sex appeared to be virtually perfect in all men both before and after circumcision);
* missing the point (!) (studies that measured the penis, ignoring the foreskin).
etc.

None of that addresses my point, which is based on your own. To repeat:

'You said "The freedom to be circumcized includes the freedom not to. If you choose not to, then that is your choice. ... I respect the autonomy of other folks."

'I couldn't agree more. I took that very argument at its face value and to its logical conclusion. A man only has the freedom not be circumcised if it has not been taken from him as a child.'

My point about vaccination is that the protection it offers - STRONG, against DEADLY and CONTAGIOUS diseases of CHILDREN - makes it necessary to do (at least in the minds of parents who are not swayed by the anti-vaxxers, whose case is very weak) before children can consent. And we now see epidemics of measles, whooping cough and diphtheria where VACCINATION ITSELF has made the diseases so rare that a false complacency has crept in, and parents think they can afford not to vaccinate, free-riding on the vaccinations of others.

All that makes vaccination an irrelevant analogy to circumcision. Only one of the things circumcision allegedly protects against affects children - urinary tract infections. UTIs, by the circumcisionists' own figures affect 1% of boys (and 3% of girls). So at the very best, 99 circumcisions are wasted for every one that does any good. Only it's less than one, because - again by the circumcisionists' own figures, - one out of ten circumcisions fails to protect a baby who WAS going to get a UTI. He still gets it. And boys can be treated for UTIS as three times as many girls always are, without surgery.

You mention STDs, which affect only sexually active (and somewhat careless) adults, who are free to get circumcised if they think that will help. (It can only possibly help if they are not using condoms.) Again, its protection is only partial, and according to the Dickson longitudinal study of 500 boys and men in Dunedin, New Zealand, not statistically significant.

You mention penile cancer, which affects fewer than 1/1000, mainly old men who have neglected their hygiene and probably smoked. And even the AAP admits that it was not just a foreskin, but an abnormal (phimotic) foreskin that correlated with the cancer. (The 2012 policy says "A history of phimosis alone confers a significantly elevated risk of invasive cancer (OR: 11.4). In fact, in men with an intact prepuce and no phimosis, there is a decreased risk of invasive penile cancer (OR: 0.5).")

The point is not about what the child thinks about the act of being circumcised, but what the adult man will think about the condition of being circumcised. More and more say they are mad as hell and they're not going to take it any more. I support them. You implicitly support them when you say ""The freedom to be circumcized includes the freedom not to. ... I respect the autonomy of other folks." Every boy grows up to be other folks. Respect their autonomy.

You said "The freedom to be circumcized includes the freedom not to. If you choose not to, then that is your choice. ... I respect the autonomy of other folks."

I couldn't agree more. I took that very argument at its face value and to its logical conclusion. A man only has the freedom not be circumcised if it has not been taken from him as a child.

You ignored that. Instead you offer up a number of poor analogies, Do ANY adults object to having had checkups or vaccinations or being left with baby sitters as children? (Vaccination, unlike circumcision, offers strong protection against deadly, contagious diseases _of children_.) There is no other parental decision quite like this one, to cut off a normal, healthy, functional non-renewing part of his genitals, whose main effect is on his sexuality, about which his parents know nothing.

(Isn't it funny that people can drag out the most absurd analogies - voting, signing contracts - to justify cutting part off baby boys' genitals, but just let anyone compare it with cutting part off baby girl's genitals - even the most closely analogous part, surgically, as they do in Indonesia - and all hell breaks loose!)

Adult circumcision is only ever needed in a tiny minority of cases, so that is a poor argument for doing it pre-emptively to babies. And nobody says it is a big deal - on the contrary - when they want to do it en masse to adult outpatients in Africa (mistakenly, I believe).

Exactly. This of course rules out circumcising anybody (in the absence of pressing medical need) without her or his informed consent, given in person when she or he is old enough to do so.

Kellogg cast a long shadow. ("Discouraging masturbation" was still being given as a reason to circumcise into the 1960s, so some now reading this may have been circumcised for that reason.)

Antiquity is not a good reason for doing something either, or we would still be sacrificing children. (One of the origins of circumcision may be as a substitutionary sacrifice for that.) People only believe in the practice, or that science supports it, in the minority of places in the world where it is already customary: the Muslim world, the USA, the Philippines, South Korea, Israel, and parts of Africa. Intactness is not a fad, but taken for granted in the rest of the world.

Except that scientists in Beligium have no financial interest in leaving babies alone.