circumcision and speculative harm

kanuk876 · 2009-02-22T10:06:48+00:00

FTA:

In reality, male circumcision is a procedure which has a known (negative) permanent impact, potentially severe short term costs, dubious long term benefits, and the potential for long term costs which has been basically ignored. If male circumcision was a drug, you would have to classify it as ‘untested’ and it would still be unapproved by the FDA. This is important, because circumcision advocates like to talk about the costs and benefits of the procedure. Obviously, if you don’t know what those costs are, any ‘cost vs. benefits’ equation you come up with is going to be meaningless.

kanuk876 · 2009-02-22T10:13:03+00:00

FTA:

(Sorry, I've tried to omit as much as possible... but it's a good argument).

My view of male circumcision is that it’s a traumatic event, and it seems likely that such a traumatic event will leave psychological scars — even potentially serious ones — given the psychological importance of the organ being affected and the exquisite vulnerability of infancy. ... If these very reasonable assumptions are true, I would expect to see some evidence of a circumcision impact in the gender ratios of certain disorders, particularly psychological disorders.

An early onset developmental disorder like autism would be one place to look. The CDC funded several studies ... According to calculations based on the 2002 figures in that report, the overall gender ratio of autistic boys to autistic girls is a little over 4:1. That, by itself, should be enough to throw up a red flag to anyone evaluating male circumcision. The ‘gender which gets circumcised’ is four times more susceptible to an early onset emotional disorder than the ‘gender which does not get circumcised.’

Now, it’s hardly definitive. ... We have two hypotheses in front of us: 1. Male circumcision contributes to a higher incidence of male autism, and 2. Male circumcision does not contribute to a higher incidence of male autism.

I submit that both of these hypotheses are plausible.

If we were to just stop here, then, this would be enough to condemn the practice of male infantile circumcision, as it has a demonstrated association with a higher incidence of autism, and it has yet to be shown the association is unrelated to the procedure.

But we don’t have to stop there.

We can look at the gender ratios of the incidence of autism in other countries, countries which do not routinely circumcise male infants. ... It was surprisingly difficult to do, but I finally unearthed such a study. Yesterday I was alerted to “An epidemiological study of infantile autism in a French department (Rhone): a research note,” published in 1989 in the Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry & Allied Disciplines. According to that study, the male/female ratio for autism using criteria most similar to the CDC studies referred to above was 2.3 to 1.

The US: 4 to 1.

France: 2.3 to 1.

Wow.

Now that’s not definitive, but it’s awfully goddamned alarming. Male infants are 70% more likely to develop autism (as compared to females) in a country where they are routinely circumcised than they are in a country where they are not.

To support the hypothesis that “Male circumcision does not contribute to a higher incidence of male autism,” you would have to come up with an extremely contrived explanation, such as “When it comes to developing autism, males are exquisitely sensitive as fetuses to differing levels of prenatal care but are completely impervious to the impact of sexual trauma when they are days old.”

In short, anyone who tells you that the long term impact of male circumcision is known to be trivial, or who says the procedure couldn’t possibly be related to the development of disorders like autism, is just plain wrong.

Title	circumcision and speculative harm
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	2
Comments	9
Date	February 22, 2009 8:42 AM UTC (17 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/7zbrq/circumcision_and_speculative_harm/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/circumcision-and-speculative-harm.1054808 https://theredarchive.com/post/1054808

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