Category: Circumcision

Subjective requirements have no standing.

Via Timothy Sandefur, here’s an interesting quote¹ from H.L. Mencken. The more robust excerpt that Mr. Sandefur presents deals with science versus religion, and how readily people of science submit to people of religion when truth exists solely on the side of science.

[I]t is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. To admit that the false has any standing in court, that it ought to be handled gently because millions of morons cherish it and thousands of quacks make their livings propagating it—to admit this, as the more fatuous of the reconcilers of science and religion inevitably do, is to abandon a just cause to its enemies, cravenly and without excuse.

I would not use moron in my context (unthinking, maybe?), but this is spot-on as to why I refuse to bow before religion as a justification for infant male circumcision.

Religion is not an objective standard by which to judge anything, so excusing its invocation in the face of a healthy child lacking any and all medical need for surgical intervention on his genitals is absurd. Too many individuals correctly deem routine/ritual infant circumcision as a violation of the child’s rights, yet immediately clarify that they won’t judge if someone wishes to impose it as a religious requirement. I will judge, because the judgment is objectively valid.

Every person has an inherent right to remain free from harm without his explicit consent. No individual has a right to practice his or her religion on the body of another person who cannot (or does not) consent. Proxy consent assumes an implicit consent, if the parents even care what their son might choose. Regardless of the intent, such an undertaking is clear, identifiable harm. The body is healthy. There can be no way to confirm that the child would consent. Should he desire the unnecessary surgery for a ritual (or no) reason in the future, he retains that option. If it is forced on him, he is deprived of his option. The only reasonable assumption is that he would reject the surgery, even though we know that will not be unanimously true.

It is always better to offend the sensibilities of a cherished, mistaken notion than to permit an offense on the physical body of a non-consenting person to avoid offending the sensibilities of the offender.

¹ “Counter-Offensive,” reprinted in H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Fifth Series 120-127 (1926).

Rejecting a collectivist concept of human rights.

Following up on my entry questioning Dr. Richard Shweder’s analysis in defending subjective justifications of male genital cutting by eliminating any consideration for the individual. He responded with more:

In an earlier comment (comment #59) I made brief note of some of the weaknesses in the standard human rights discussions of this topic (both there and here I am recounting published material in the two essays for which links were provided on the November 30 and December 5 Tierneylab). What I did not note in my earlier comment was that one of the more problematic aspects of a human rights argument for those engaged in the global eradication campaign is that the global eradication campaign itself appears to violate several recognizable or conceivable human rights. A short list of such rights includes the right of peoples and nations to autonomy and self-determination, the right of parents to raise their children as they see fit, the right of members of a family to be free of government intrusion into decisions that are private, the right of members of a group to favor their own cultural traditions in the education and socialization of their children, even the right to freedom of religion. …

I can only believe that Dr. Shweder is making this up as he goes along. He has a desired outcome. When no map to his outcome exists, he’ll create one and pretend it represents reality. Note the key foundation he uses, “recognizable or conceivable human rights.” He’s on an island with his conception. The whole notion is absurd.

Conceivably, conceivable could work. Standards of civilization progress, as evidenced by so many changes mankind has brought about demonstrate. Two hundred years ago, slavery fit within the widely accepted notion of a natural order. Today we not only know that to be false, we do not pardon those who believed such blasphemy over what they should’ve known. We understand the context, of course, but it doesn’t alter the fundamental problem.

Dr. Shweder doesn’t seek to progress properly. He ignores the individual’s supreme role in the existence of competing rights. Should the individual’s right face conflict from the group’s alleged claim on his body, Dr. Shweder does not dismiss the latter as subservient. The individual may choose to submit, but choice must exist. Dr. Shweder leaves as reasonable that the group may legitimately override the potentially contrary wishes of the individual. If enough people agree, the majority owns the minority. Unless we’re resurrecting the notion that slavery has a place in mankind, the conflict Dr. Shweder imagines is a mistake. Without medical need, it can never be correct to force bodily modification on another person. The “right of members of a family to be free of government intrusion into decisions that are private” does not grant members of a family to harm other members of the family.

Dr. Shweder writes of the “right of peoples and nations to autonomy and self-determination,” but only the individual has such a right. Collectively groups must reach their own outcomes. Extraneous, subjective input may be provide guidance, but it must never dictate. Still, that outcome must be a never-ending series of individual choices resulting in macro-level reality within society. Dr. Shweder’s suggestion leaves open the question of whether or not it’s legitimate to force downward from within, when that question is a settled “no” beyond the realm of the individual.

The uniquely American love of baseball throughout the 20th century is an example. Citizen or immigrant, rich or poor, white or black, distinction didn’t matter; Americans loved baseball. It inspired heroes and poetry, dreams and faith. The individual who did not embrace baseball may have faced scrutiny, but attempts to force him to love baseball would’ve violated a core more valuable and basic than baseball. No man is less an American if he fails to include baseball in his life.

The same truth exists for the individual who wishes to reject the surgical alteration of his or her genitals. He may not exercise his right to reject it, but he must be given the choice. Any category of supposed rights that excludes this is a fallacy not consisting of actual rights. Such a category must be discarded from the debate.

Be scared to scar your baby boy.

Bernadine Healy M.D. writes an ethics-free, logic-free essay in the latest U.S. News & World Report on male circumcision. She mostly offers the recycled nonsense promoted by people uninterested in thinking the issue through. However, Dr. Healy searches for a new bottom in the discussion. She comes as close to stating it as anyone I’ve read:

I caution parents, however, against delaying the decision until the child is old enough to decide for himself. Get real. Not many teenage boys would relish the discussion, let alone the act. Nor do I think they would have the perspective to weigh the medical pros and cons.

So, because he would not relish the discussion or the act, it’s better to force it on him as an infant? As if his presumed refusal as a teenager is not a timeless opinion, as true when he’s 13 hours old as it is when he’s 13 years old. And how unfairly low does your opinion of teens have to be to guess that he wouldn’t have the perspective to understand that his foreskin is healthy and doesn’t require surgical removal? How unfairly high is your opinion of parents if you trust that they’re worried more about his (absurdly low) risk of HIV than the risk that daddy junior will freak when he sees that junior daddy looks different?

In a time when it is appropriate to question the use or overuse of certain medical procedures, however minor they might seem, having these discussions in medical journals and in public circles is healthy.

Just don’t have them with your kid when it’s his genitals at stake. He might not understand. He might even say “no”. Otherwise, yeah, let’s discuss this.

What is not healthy in this free flow of ideas is to diminish the real abuse of female genital mutilation with a trumped-up portrayal of the “abuse” that infant circumcision allegedly exacts on our helpless baby boys.

This is the obtuse thinking of a dullard. For (not) the last time, comparing male and female genital cutting does not diminish what is done to girls. That is evil. It is unnecessary. It should not occur. It is a basic violation of the right to remain free from harm.

But the exact same thing is perpetrated upon boys. That is evil. It is unnecessary. It should not occur. It is a basic violation of the right to remain free from harm.

There is nothing complicated about understanding this. The mutilation of boys rises to the level of unacceptability of what is done to girls. No one is saying that the comparison now justifies cutting girls. Stop hearing what you want to hear and listen to what is being said. Medically unnecessary genital cutting on non-consenting individuals is wrong, ethically and morally. Gender is not a factor in the violation.

The individual possesses non-derogable rights.

Carrying his earlier argument to a new realm, one government official understands basic political philosophy.

Tasmania’s Commissioner for Children has again called on the State Government to review laws covering the circumcision of baby boys for cosmetic reasons.
…

“If I have a religious obligation, a religious belief that my child should do X, Y and Z and that conflicts directly with a human right of the child, then the human right of the child will prevail,” Mr [Paul] Mason said.

That’s exactly right. The right to remain free from harm is primary. When an action will cause objective harm to another without his or her consent or need, it is not valid to subjegate that most basic human right to any claim made by another person. Any other right, particularly the alleged right of one person to act on another, is secondary (if it is legitimate).

**********

Compare that to the follow-up to the John Tierney entry on female genital mutilation I discussed last week. Mr. Tierney seeks a clarification from University of Chicago anthropologist Richard Shweder. In his clarification attempting to dispassionately explain the realities of genital cutting for cultural reasons, Dr. Shweder states:

“Female genital mutilation” is an invidious and essentially debate-subverting label. The preemptive use of that expression is just as invidious as starting a conversation about a women’s right to choose by describing abortion as the “murder of innocent life.” Pro-choice advocates rightly object to the presumptive disparagement implied by that label; many African women similarly object to naming a practice which they describe in local terms as “the celebration” or the “purification” or the “cleansing” or the “beautification” as “the mutilation”. Notably in most ethnic groups where female genital surgeries are customary, male genital surgeries are customary as well and are named with the same terms.

Overall I felt Dr. Shweder presented a dispassionate analysis of the objective issues at hand. The point, as I understood it, was to leave out cultural and value judgments on the actions. One can say “this is what it does” without ruling on whether that’s valid. Making that judgment is valid, of course, but we should all start by understanding the facts.

I submitted a comment, which can be read here. I conceded that I’m not dispassionate about this, and stated the basic truth that each individual must be left to decide. However, I also read a subjective acceptance of male genital cutting into Dr. Shweder’s initial comment, which I mistakenly retracted here. I say mistakenly because Dr. Shweder posted a further clarification:

Secondly, some components of the statement of the right (a right to “develop…in conditions of freedom…”) seem to deny the reality of normal and healthy developmental processes and development promoting social relationships, which are often commanding and hierarchical and always constraining and limiting of options, often to a rather high degree. For example, children are not free to decide not to go to school or not to have an inoculation; they are not free to decide to move to some new residence or location, or to select the religion that will be practiced at home, etc. etc. A very particular and culture-specific (and perhaps social class specific) kind of liberationist or radical autonomy perspective (of the kind advocated by one commentator) seems to have been written into this rather ideologically loaded (and hence subjective) formulation of a supposed “natural right.” The moral order consists of many and often conflicting “goods” and values, of which unrestrained freedom of choice for every individual is not necessarily the only good.

Even the idea of a right to bodily integrity seems problematic as a possible foundation for criticizing this particular kind of socially endorsed genital alteration. For one thing, if there is a natural human right to bodily integrity of the type supposed, it would extend to the practice of male genital surgeries as well, and might well run counter to the rights to religious freedom and family privacy of Jews and Muslims around the world. (I am prepared to defend the rights of Jews and Muslims, and others, to circumcise their infant sons and have discussed the issue of gender equity in this regard in the essay for which a link was provided above. One of the many reasons I became interested in this topic was because of my awareness of an association of ugly attitudes toward Jewish minority groups with the ready and rhetorically loaded description of them as barbaric “mutilators” of their children.)

Secondly[sic], it is not at all clear what “the integrity of the human body” actually amounts to, once the overheated and sensationalized morbidity, mortality and sexual dysfunction claims are viewed with a cautious or skeptical eye. As noted above from the cultural perspective of Jews, Muslims and those Africans (Muslim and non-Muslim) who “circumcise” their children (both boys and girls) the human body lacks integrity (contains unbidden, immature, problematic or even ugly and disgusting components) until it is improved, purified and made “normal” by means of cultural intervention and the status conferring procedure of a genital modification.

To be fair, what comes before this is mostly sensible in challenging the notion that all female genital cutting is uniform. I can’t vouch for the validity of his specifics, but the human imagination’s ability to create invasive rituals is not rigid in its degrees of cruelty, nor does it obsess on gender as a dividing criteria. Opponents of forced genital cutting of either sex have a strong enough stance on principle that it would be wise to stop falling into unquestioning assumptions that rely upon female oppression and male benefits as the sole storyline.

Unfortunately the excerpt above is so maddeningly idiotic that it destroys whatever credibility Dr. Shweder built before this mental detour. I could spend all the bandwidth of the Internet rebutting these three paragraphs in sufficient detail. Most of the ridiculousness seems to stem from Dr. Shweder’s refusal to acknowledge the individual’s place within a culture. If enough people value something, the dissenter’s opinion may be ignored. That is simply wrong in the context of rights. Dr. Shweder’s preference does not fit that reality, so he creates his own structure of societal obligations masquerading as rights.

Rereading Commissioner Mason’s statement above clarifies what Dr. Shweder misses. Cultural perspective is not objective. Just because a large number of people believe something does not make it true. Humans are fallible. Ultimately, Dr. Shweder (and all proponents of forced genital cutting
, in general) misses because his foundational assumption is flawed. Whether or not an individual rejects the beliefs of his society is not the issue. Whether or not he has the option to reject them is.

In my view, the culture’s opinion is valid if the individual wishes to submit. In Dr. Shweder’s view, the individual’s opinion is not valid if the group wishes submission.

Sloppy Burial of Relevant News

How much media play will this news get in the United States?

Circumcision may reduce a man’s risk of infection with the AIDS virus by up to 60 percent if he is an African, but it does not appear to help American men of color, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

Black and Latino men were just as likely to become infected with the AIDS virus whether they were circumcised or not, Greg Millett of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

“We also found no protective benefit for a subset of black MSM (men who have sex with men) who also had recent sex with female partners,” Millett told reporters in a telephone briefing.

Looking at the link, note that it appears filed in the “Africa” category. It’s filed from Washington, D.C., discusses the absence of protection black and latino men receive from circumcision, but it’s miraculously pushed to another country’s news. Why, if not to bury the article from U.S. readers?

Also, the article, in its opening phrase, uses the same lazy assumptions for Africans that nearly every previous story has spread. Nowhere does it mention that voluntary, adult circumcision may reduce a man’s risk of female-to-male transmission. It’s only important that readers be reminded that circumcision is now officially awesome.

The nonsense continues:

Doctors believe circumcision protects men because of specialized cells in the foreskin of the penis, which is removed in the procedure. The foreskin is filled with immune cells called Langerhans cells, which are the immune system’s sentinels and attach easily to viruses — including HIV.

In addition, sexual intercourse may cause tiny tears in the foreskin, allowing the virus into the bloodstream.

Aside from the incoherent mess of the first paragraph, note that doctors “believe” this is why circumcision appears to work. While I find such speculation absurd, speculating relies on ignoring the possibility that long-term results will not match the short-term results if behavior does not also change. And if behavior changes, circumcision becomes less important.

Nonsense like this complicates the ability to demonstrate the need to change behavior:

The data has been so clear that the World Health Organization now recommends circumcision as one of the ways to prevent HIV infection. But circumcision does not protect men 100 percent — the studies in Africa have suggested it is 50 to 60 percent protective.

This is an ignorant simplification of the data. From one of the three African studies commonly referenced, the trial included 1,393 adults voluntarily circumcised and 1,391 adults who remained intact. Within those two groups, 22 circumcised men contracted HIV in the study period, while 47 intact men contracted HIV. That’s a 1.6% infection rate for circumcised and 3.4% infection rate for intact. That means 69 new HIV cases resulted during the study among 2,784 men. That’s an absolute infection rate of just under 2.5%. That 50 to 60 percent figure is valid, but only in a context not being offered to readers of the news story. It’s not quite as egregious as this, but it makes such egregiousness more likely.

More importantly, that 2.5% infection rate in the study was significantly lower than the 6% infection rate in Kenya. Assuming that the presence of the study measured the actual population, with all extraneous factors controlled for apart from circumcision, the intact men should’ve seen an infection rate of 6%. They didn’t. What was different in the study for the participants that wasn’t as common among the general population of Kenya? I’d theorize the presence of safe sex education in the study helped, but the basic point is that something else was even more helpful than circumcision.

Bottom line: this news article isn’t reporting. It’s one nugget of common sense wrapped in a lazy regurgitation of propaganda.

**********

In its own reporting, the Washington Post can only offer this incredulous reporting, in a larger story about HIV-positive gay men and unsafe sex:

And, in a finding that puzzled experts, another study showed that circumcision — long thought to reduce HIV infectivity — doesnothelp [sic] shield black or Latino men from the virus.

The Reuters story above reports the startling theory that the higher infection rate of HIV among black and Latino men in the U.S. exposes them to more risk, as a group. Since we’re theorizing, might the lower prevalence of HIV in other groups in the U.S. imply that there’s less HIV to be protected from through circumcision? I would call my theory a halfothesis because there’s more complexity than dividing by race, but the basic point is worth considering. The U.S. HIV epidemic does not mirror the epidemic in Africa. Why are we speculating with the bodies of males (children, particularly) based on incorrect assumptions and cultural comparisons of the United States and Africa? We should not be puzzled when the theory fails to transfer to our society.

“Voluntary” and “adult” always get tossed aside.

Always:

The UNAIDS country programme coordinator, Dr Kékoura Kourouma, has advised Rwandans to start circumcision with children at a tender age as one of the measures to protect them from acquiring with HIV/Aids.

“If the government plans to implement circumcision, it would be easier and cheaper when it targets children. This would enable the programme to achieve its targeted objectives”

UNAIDS will sell the rights of children for pennies. Imagine how many condoms and educational pamphlets we could buy in 2022 if governments would instead invest the money spent on circumcising today’s infant males.

He further said that the demand for male circumcision as a method of combating HIV/Aids is likely to increase dramatically due to the prevailing results from two studies, in Kenya and Uganda.

Of course, even though those two studies looked at the affect of voluntary, adult circumcision, not forced infant circumcision. Demand increases now because UNAIDS promotes fear and snake oil solution. Demand increases in the future because today’s circumcised infants embrace the West’s cognitive dissonance. This has been the only plan since the beginning. And the United States willingly extorts those foreskins in cooperation.

The differences become similarities upon inspection.

John Tierney raises the issue of female genital mutilation, wondering whether “African women be allowed to engage in the practice sometimes called female circumcision?” My short answer is, of course, if they’re deciding for themselves as an adult without pressure. There’s far more difficulty, of course, since those ideal conditions don’t appear to exist in countries that practice FGM. Anything that doesn’t meet my short answer must be condemned.

But Mr. Tierney’s question isn’t really my focus here. I’m more interested in the comments that result from his article. There is a mass refusal to permit any comparison of male and female genital cutting in our society. It’s reflexive, to the point that evidence to the contrary is ignored outright. As such, I knew going in I’d find them easily. I highlight a few here to show the intellectual rigidity that vehemently opposes female genital cutting, even with the patient’s consent, while any possible concern over male genital cutting is dismissed.

I can’t believe such ignorance. Please lets get the facts right. Female mutilation is *not* circumcision. The name says it all, circum-cision means “cut around”, i.e. cut around the extra skin on a man’s penis, which has many health benefits — penis cancer is unknown among circumcised men, plus the penis is allowed to grow more freely without a constricting fold of skin.
…

There is no health benefit whatsoever [to FGM] and much less an “aesthetic” benefit as has been claimed. …

*** The sole real purpose of female genital mutilation is to prevent women from feeling sexual pleasure. ***

Posted by Marisa Landau

There’s much more in there, but this excerpt is enough. Aside from the mind-numbingly ridiculous claim that the circumcised penis “is allowed to grow more freely”, notice the immediate rush to claims of health benefits for male genital cutting. Or I should say, notice the immediate rush to inaccurate claims of health benefits. Circumcised men get penile cancer, and the healthy foreskin is not a risk factor for penile cancer. Regardless, because we’ve studied and found potential benefits, it now slips the bounds of medical ethics we hold for every other invasive procedure on healthy children. Why?

I’ll just point out that aesthetic claims are subjective to the person making them. Still we allow aesthetic claims from parents to influence the decision to circumcise their sons. It’s possible that Ms. Landau would reject them, too. (More on this in a moment.) What matters is that she knows why female genital cutting is performed, despite evidence to the contrary. Mr. Tierney quotes Dr. Fuambai Ahmadu:

It is difficult for me — considering the number of ceremonies I have observed, including my own — to accept that what appears to be expressions of joy and ecstatic celebrations of womanhood in actuality disguise hidden experiences of coercion and subjugation. Indeed, I offer that the bulk of Kono women who uphold these rituals do so because they want to — they relish the supernatural powers of their ritual leaders over against men in society, and they embrace the legitimacy of female authority and particularly the authority of their mothers and grandmothers.

I do not know anything about Kono women, so I’m not willing to judge the validity of what Dr. Ahmadu says. I’m skeptical, especially since it appears that minors are subjected to FGM. But reasonable skepticism does not support Ms. Landau’s conclusion without evidence she fails to provide. (Note: This absolute claim is common, appearing in virtually every discussion of FGM.)

Back to male genital cutting, Ms. Landau later states:

…

Male circumcision on babies can be objected too because it is done without their consent, but it does not harm a man’s health and ability to feel pleasure.

— Posted by Marisa Landau

It most certainly harms a man’s health if he doesn’t make it to adulthood. Death as a result of male circumcision is rare, but it occurs. [ed. note: The five links in the next sentence are NSFW.] And other complications frequently occur, including a 100% incidence of scarring and a 100% removal of erogenous nerve tissue. He may be able to feel pleasure, but he does not feel pleasure the way he would if left with his normal, healthy foreskin. Is that not a human rights violation?

Moving on:

The New York Times and John Tierney do this issue a tremendous disservice in continuing to refer to this practice as “circumcision”. Unlike circumcision, there is nothing cosmetic about this procedure. It removes a girl’s clitoris, not exactly on a par with removing foreskin. To call it an “initiation rite” also diminishes its brutality. This practice is about sexual control through a most unsanitary and barbaric “surgery”. How people can equate this with circumcision completely misses the tragic reality of this disgraceful act. Very sad indeed.

— Posted by EvilTwin2

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to believe that subjective cosmetic justifications would make it acceptable, if they existed, but I know the blanket statement that FGM removes a girl’s clitoris is not always true. Regardless, it’s about sexual control. Evidence to the contrary, however unconvincing, be damned.

Remember, too, that medical male circumcision began in the United States to “cure” masturbation in young children. Does the research that finds alleged potential medical benefits legitimize away the original beginnings? If so, what’s to stop us from now seeking potential medical benefits from female genital cutting?

The comparison with male circumcision is misleading. Not only is it less invasive, with much lower risk of serious complications, there IS actually scientific evidence to back up health benefits. …

I have yet to see any science that could justify ritual female cutting.

— Posted by M.I.

I wonder if M.I. would permit any. It would be hard to find any if we’re not allowed to look. If we’re not allowed to look, I go back to my question of whether or not medical research on males is now legitimized, as it applies to children, despite its start. Do we sweep the past away and accept only the facts we like?

These debates merely reinforce the only politically correct, if not factually correct, position regarding medically unnecessary genital cutting: women ar
e always oppressed through surgery and men can never be oppressed through surgery. Gender should not matter in the ethical rejection of forced genital cutting without the individual’s consent. Our society incorrectly demands that we consider it relevant.

Parental powers are not parental rights.

Sherry Colb summarizes the larger point (barely) hiding in the recent Oregon circumcision case:

Though it is, in some respects, very unusual, this case nonetheless highlights a somewhat hidden and more widespread assumption embedded in our laws – that if a couple’s mainstream religion requires them to inflict harm upon their child, then the law will not interfere with that prerogative.

Within the article, Ms. Colb offers a few key rebuttals to the idea that legally permitted practices are valid by virtue of being permitted. We think we’re rational. That does not mean we are.

There are still those who claim that the procedure is painless for newborns, though such claims seem inconsistent with the infant’s capacity to feel pain and discomfort in other respects. Nonetheless, because no one can “ask” a newborn about the sensation, and because he might not remember the experience for very long, it strikes some who observe the ritual as relatively innocuous. Perhaps because the newborn baby is still so different from the rest of us, we can imagine – as many do in the case of other sentient animals – that their experience of pain is somehow not as terrible as our own. (And yes, I realize that one could say this of unborn babies as well, but that discussion is for another day.)

This is an old stand-by. Would you rather be circumcised as a newborn when you won’t remember it or as an adult when you will? But this is argument is silly because it ignores two key points. First, the child feels pain when he is being circumcised and while he heals. This matters. Second, there is a third choice, the extreme likelihood that a male not circumcised as an infant will neither need nor want circumcision for himself in his lifetime. Advocating infant circumcision relies on ignoring this truth.

Speaking of the Boldt case, specifically, Ms. Colb states:

The child also – and significantly – has a second parent, a mother, who does not want her child circumcised. The mother therefore can and does make arguments on the child’s behalf that would ordinarily be unavailable to him – such as the suggestion that amputating a healthy part of a child’s anatomy containing a concentration of nervous tissue is child abuse. If that argument sounds persuasive to the reader, it is at least in part because the case does not involve either an infant or a unified couple asserting its unambivalent authority over its offspring.

I don’t have much to add to that. I quote it here because I’ve witnessed the excuses she mentions. Generally the belief is that this jumps into the second choice from above, that the child will now remember it. It’s too easy to lose the point that his foreskin is healthy, requiring no surgical intervention.

Also, I don’t know if I’ve stated my stance this strongly, but allow me to be clear. Routine/ritual circumcision – the surgical alteration of a healthy child – is child abuse. It is mutilation. There is no intent to abuse or mutilate, but the action does not require intent to create that outcome.

One reason for our collective decision generally not to intervene in one another’s religious practices, despite what I have said, is that such intervention could easily lead to the persecution of a minority religion by a majority religion.

There was a time I worried about being labeled anti-semitic. I do not worry about it now. I know I am not, so such accusations are irrelevant. I accept that people should be free to exercise their religion, to whatever extent they believe it commands. They may raise their children in their religion. If that religion teaches genital surgery, so be it. I can think it’s stupid or admirable as an expression of faith. Neither matters.

But I will only stand aside when the infliction of physical harm (i.e. surgical removal of a healthy body part) involves a personal choice imposed only on the individual deciding. A child does not consent to this intrusion on his body. He can reasonably assumed to desire his healthy body and to be free from unnecessary intervention. He may ultimately choose circumcision, but he must have the opportunity to reject it.

Remember, too, that federal law guarantees that parents may only surgically alter the genitals of their daughters if the surgery is medically indicated. Any other reason is prohibited from consideration. We understand that the individual right involved does not involve an alleged, non-existent individual right to impose surgery on the healthy body of another. Parents do not own their daughters.

They do not own their sons, either, even if God commands it. Man may need to answer to God, but until he meets Him, he must answer only to himself. He need have no reason for wanting the body he was born with or demanding that, absent disease, he not have it taken against his will. Society’s only legitimate purpose here is to protect that right. Denying it out of fear, inertia, or good intentions is a cowardly abandonment of individual liberty.

I’m shocked – SHOCKED! – by this development.

Rejecting our earlier sanity wasn’t enough. Now the United States government wants to perpetuate our cognitive dissonance regarding circumcision through bribery:

The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) has requested beneficiary governments to draft policies that encourage male circumcision to reduce on the risks of spreading of HIV/Aids.

The Principal Deputy Coordinator of PEPFAR, Dr Thomas Kenyon, said via a video link from the U.S., that PEPFAR was prepared to provide funds to any country that is willing to undertake mass male circumcision, Dr Kenyon said.

The only way to undertake “mass” male circumcision involves the systematic violation of infant males’ rights. This, of course, requires a willingness to ignore both the voluntary and adult aspects of the recent circumcision/HIV studies.

I’m supposed to be mollified by this:

“We can only release the funds for circumcision to a country which has come up with a clear policy on how it is going to carry out the exercise.

I’m not mollified. The presence of a policy does not guarantee effective (or ethical) outcomes. In this approach, boys will be injured beyond the 100% guarantee of “acceptable” injury. Boys will be disfigured beyond the 100% guarantee of “acceptable” disfigurement. Boys will die. And men will still get HIV through unsafe sex.

But we’re America. We care. Our money proves it. Isn’t that enough?

(Not Really) Newsflash: UNAIDS lies.

This story should make me angry. I suppose it does, but I’m so numbed to the incredible pile of garbage people distribute in defense of their agenda that I have a harder time bringing forth an outburst than I’d like.

The United Nations’ top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement.

AIDS remains a devastating public health crisis in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding global epidemic.

The latest estimates, due to be released publicly Tuesday, put the number of annual new HIV infections at 2.5 million, a cut of more than 40 percent from last year’s estimate, documents show. The worldwide total of people infected with HIV — estimated a year ago at nearly 40 million and rising — now will be reported as 33 million.

Having millions fewer people with a lethal contagious disease is good news. Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread of HIV. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the epidemic to help gather political and financial support for combating AIDS.

Good intentions are enough, remember. There is no need to worry about effectiveness, even in the reality of limited resources. There’s certainly no need to worry about uncomfortable details. If the method promotes what is good, it is worthwhile. Or so goes the logic of UNAIDS and the United Nations.

Of course HIV is terrible. Yes, we should work to promote effective strategies. But the desire to do good does not justify misrepresentation. We have to have this conversation? This doesn’t discredit, or at least render questionable, everything else the organization claims?

Remember this the next time someone from UNAIDS or the United Nations advocates male circumcision. It can’t even get the ethics of properly representing the problem correct. Who should trust them to get the ethics of genital cutting correct?

Just as frustrating, despite the clear indication that some renewed questioning is justified, the media is comfortable repeating the preferred story line:

Rates are lower in East Africa and much lower in West Africa. Researchers say that the prevalence of circumcision, which slows the spread of HIV, and regional variations in sexual behavior are the biggest factors determining the severity of the AIDS epidemic in different countries and even within countries.

The studies looked at voluntary, adult circumcision. That’s more accurate than a blanket statement about male circumcision. Isn’t the point of this report that details matter? Why ignore the most important scientific and ethical aspect of the recent studies in reporting them? (Unfortunately that’s rhetorical because I know the answer is about cognitive dissonance.)

To the point, researchers said that nearly 40 million people are infected with HIV. That’s not true. But we should believe them about circumcision without clarification on correlation and causation? Why? Statistics from the countries involved in the reporter’s claim are messier than advertised. (See here.) Also, it’s reasonable to assert that education had a far more effective benefit for all study participants than voluntary, adult circumcision had. (See here.)

Still, it’s supposed to be okay to take everything – lumped together without questioning – and trust that something will work if we try them all. I don’t particularly care about anyone pursuing that intellectually lazy path. People should have the right to make stupid decisions about their lives. But I demand that we follow all parameters involved when we make decisions for another. Particularly, voluntary and adult must never be forgotten.