... a cup is not mutilated if it is bored through; but only if the handle or a projecting part is removed. And a man is mutilated not if the flesh or the spleen is removed, but if an extremity is, and that not every extremity but one which when completely removed cannot grow again. Therefore baldness is not a mutilation. [Aristotle was reputedly bald.]

Aristotle (384-322 BCE) Metaphysics 5 (Delta) 27 1024a11-28
(trans. Barnes, Complete Works)

And therefore, according to Aristotle's definition, circumcision is mutilation.

Moreover, that part which hangeth over the end of the foreskin, is moved up and down in coition, that in this attrition it might gather more heat, and increase the pleasure of the other sexe; a contentation of which they are defrauded by this injurious invention. For, the shortnesse of the prepuce is reckoned among the organical defects of the yard, whether it be original or [induced ?] by an artificial procision of it. And although neither of these kinds of brevity doth incommode the action of the yard, which is extension and ejaculation of the seed; yet circumcision detracts somewhat from the delight of women, by lessening their titillation. Hence she in the epigram found herself aggrieved at this invention, thinking it had been more reasonable to have added than to have detracted from that organ.

The skin of the Yard is long and loose that it may swell or slack as the Yard doth, and the foreskin of that skin sometimes covers the head of the Yard, and sometimes goes so far back that it will not come forward again. This skin in time of the Venerious action keeps the mouth of the womb close that no [c]old air can get in, yet some think the action might be better performed without it; the Jews were commanded to be Circumcised, but now Circumcision avails not and is forbidden by the Apostle [Paul]. I hope no man will be so void of reason and Religion, as to be Circumcised to make trial which of these two opinions is the best; but the world was never without some mad men, who will do anything to be singular: were the foreskin any hindrance to procreation or pleasure, nature had never made it, who made all things for these very ends and purposes.

Doctor Bell fell down the well
and broke his collar bone;
Doctors should attend the sick
and leave the well alone.

Never cut what you can untie.

- Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)

Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind[;] as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat that fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Men, it has been well said, think in herds. It will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.

Natural selection will never produce in a being anything injurious to itself, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each. No organ will be formed, as Paley has remarked, for the purpose of causing pain or for doing an injury to its possessor. If a fair balance be struck between the good and evil caused by each part, each will be found on the whole advantageous. After the lapse of time, under changing conditions of life, if any part comes to be injurious, it will be modified; or if it be not so, the being will become extinct, as myriads have become extinct.

Hardly any part of the body which can be unnaturally modified has escaped. ... The motives are various; ... certain mutilations are connected with religious rites, or they mark the age of puberty, or the rank of the man, or they serve to distinguish the tribes. Amongst savages the same fashions prevail for long periods, and thus mutilations, from whatever cause first made, soon come to be valued as distinctive marks.

On Children
Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

- 1923

It is extraordinary that in our day this rather barbaric rite should be practised almost as a routine with infants. From the psychological point of view it is dangerous with or without an anaesthetic. In the rare case where a child cannot urinate it may be done, but is otherwise unjustifiable. Apparently the practice is based on a morbid fear of masturbation, and it is unconsciously propitiatory. When performed at the age of two or three, it is frequently the basis of severe castration fears.

- Maurice Bevan-Brown
"The Sources of Love and Fear"
(Christchurch, NZ, 1948)

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

- Karl Menninger

- Piet Hein
"Grooks", 1966

But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. ... It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid - not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked - to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can - if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong - to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.

"Greed plays a role in causing unnecessary surgery, although I don't think the economic motive alone is enough to explain it. There's no doubt that if you eliminated all unnecessary surgery, most surgeons would go out of business. They'd have to look for honest work, because the surgeon gets paid when he performs surgery on you, not when you're treated some other way. In pre-paid group practices where surgeons are paid a steady salary not tied to how many operations they perform, hysterectomies and tonsillectomies occur only about one-third as often as in fee-for-service situations."

- Robert S. Mendelsohn, MD. "Confessions of a Medical Heretic" (1979)
Chapter 3 ("Ritual Mutilations"), pp. 58-59.

Take that poor penis. Take a knife - right? And start cutting. And everybody says, "It doesn't hurt." Everybody says, "No, it doesn't hurt." Get it? That's an excuse, of course, a subterfuge. They say that the sheaths of the nerve are not yet developed. Therefore, the sensation in the nerves is not yet developed. Therefore, the child doesn't feel a thing. Now, that's murder! Circumcision is one of the worst treatments of children. And what happens to them? You just look at them. They can't talk to you. They just cry.

I believe the time has come to acknowledge that the practice of routine neonatal circumcision rests on the absurd premise that the only mammal in creation born in a condition that requires immediate surgical correction is the human male. If the penile foreskin is not merely non functional but a biological disadvantage so severe as to justify its immediate surgical ablation, then surely, it must have atrophied by now.

- Thomas Szasz

The minute that a surgeon cuts the skin...harm is done. The benefit of a treatment will have to exceed that harm before the doctor is doing good. Unfortunately, many treatments have no benefit or only marginal benefit.

- "Jacobson's Organ and the remarkable nature of smell"
by Lyall Watson, 1999, p 200)

There are still those who deny the existence of human pheromones. But many of the same people go to extraordinary lengths to suppress their production and distribution. Many religions forbid dancing altogether, or limit it to same-sex couples. Some require women to cover their hair with a chador or hajib, effectively isolating odours produced by the scalp. ... The lifting of the bridal veil in Christian marriage ceremonies repeats the same concernts, celebrating the union, giving permission for the oral exchange of phermones in a ritual kiss.

But everywhere else, olfactory intimacy is frowned upon and severely curtailed by shaving off underarm hair and the thorough deodorizing of all fragent sources. Why else would puritans insist on high collars, buttoned-up formality, long sleeves and tight wrist-cuffs? And why, even in our most liberated societies, do we still fuss about keeping nipples covered? It wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that female aureolas are rich in apocrine glands and sex attractants, would it?

And is it just coincidental that male and female circumcision targets two of the most productive pheromonal areas of the body? There is nothing in the Bible or the Koran which calls for such surgery. [Correct except for the Bible and male circumcision] And there is a nice irony in the fact that circumcision ceremonies, almost everywhere they occur, are accompanied by the pheromonal odours of carefully selected plants. Once again, our actions reveal the existence and potency of the very things we seek to deny.

(ibid. pp 208-9)

After the drama of birth and baptism, a child's ordeals are far from over. In many cultures the children must face the ritual genital mutilation we call circumcision. This extraordinary procedure which, were it not hallowed by ancient tradition, would be prosecuted as child abuse, occurs in several forms in different parts of the world, sometimes applied to young males and sometimes to young females. In all cases, parts of the external genitals are removed - the foreskin in males and the clitoris and/or labia in females. Male children are usually mutilated by older males and female children by older females.

Literally millions of cases of these genital assaults occur annually and a whole range of preposterous excuses and explanations have been given as to why this savaging of young humans is necessary. In earlier days most of the explanations had to do with religious dictates, sacred demands that could not be queried rationally. With the fading of religious beliefs in some countries in later years, new excuses had to be found and a set of spurious medical reasons were invented.

...No other species behaves in this bizarre way towards its young, but where religious customs take a hold on a culture it is usually difficult to shift them. No matter how cruel or pointless they may be, they become stubbornly resistant to common sense or objective medical opinion.

- Desmond Morris,
"The Human Sexes:
a Natural History
of Man and Woman"
pp 134-6

I asked Halperin whether his being Jewish factors into his work on circumcision.

“No”, he says, “at least it didn’t during the first couple of years I was doing this research. I didn’t think about the Jewish part at all. … But in recent years the Judaism aspect has crept in now and then. Some doctors – for example, an oncologist in north-eastern Brazil who has to amputate cancerous penises every week – would tell me, not knowing that I was Jewish, ‘Those Jews were so smart; thousands of years ago they figured out this way to precent health problems.’ That was one of the things that began to spin my head around from of thinking of this as a savage ritual from the dark past to thinking of it as maybe a kind of health/cultural innovation ahead of its time. … So I guess it has made me appreciate my own heritage more. And who knows, maybe finding out to my surprise that my own granddad was an occasional mohel was a weird kind of confirmation that I’m maybe in some small way destined to help pass along this health benefit to people in parts of the world where it could really make a difference and perhaps save many lives.”

- Gordy Slack, “The case for circumcision” East Bay Express (San Francisco), Vol. 22 No. 32, 19 May 2000, p. 15

"You see, the religious people - most of them - really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence."

- Carl Sagan, Contact (New York: Pocket Books, 1985), p. 285.

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth…It is simply too painful to acknowledge — even to ourselves — that we've been so credulous. So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.

- Carl Sagan, Demon-Haunted world (1995)

Modern medicine assuredly has all the trappings of a science, and it undeniably makes abundant use of discoveries in the biological sciences, but it remains perilously poised between science and 'healing art', based as much on superstition as logic. The training of medical students still does not predispose to scepticism or an open mind in the face of text-book authority. The stance that doctors take on controversial issues com­monly owes more to what they imbibed from their mentors than to a critical evaluation of the evidence.

The problems may be intrinsic to a profession forced to grapple eternally with the anfractuosities [windings and turnings] of human nature and the limited options for experimentation.

...

Nobody seems to have questioned the reality of ptosis ["dropped organs"] for some fifty years, but the medical profession took a grip on itself in the late 1920s, when doubts were at last voiced. Over the next two decades ptosis quietly slipped out of the text-books, but in some centres floating kidneys were still being surgically corrected in the years fol­lowing the Second World War. Ann Dally reports sightings of dropped organ diagnoses in 1992, however, so one cannot be sure that patients are not even now being subjected to this highly unpleasant ordeal. Tonsillectomy, to which untold numbers of children were subjected during the first half of the twentieth century, was fortunately in general without overt ill-effects, and so its efficacy was barely ques­tioned until the mid-1950s, when the practice gradually fell out of favour. The same was true of uterine 'dilatation and curetage'.

Surgeons were always easily persuaded of the benefits of removing dispensable body parts. George Bernard Shaw satirised the practice in The Doctor's Dilemma, in which the surgeon, Cutler Walpole - commonly thought to be based on Sir William Arbuthnot Lane... - finds an inessential organ, the nuciform sac; this he gives out to be the seat of every kind of disease and earns social and pecuniary success by relieving his grateful patients of it. In the years before Shaw wrote the play surgeons had for instance been taking out healthy ovaries from untold thousands of women as a cure-all for undiagnosed conditions. This operation at the time had a mortality rate of some 20 per cent.

Circumcised males do not benefit from their circumcision but instead only suffer pain and permanent disfigurement of their genitalia.

- Thomas Bartman, MD, PHD
Division of Neonatology University of California, San Francisco
Pediatrics, Evanston, Jan 2001, Vol. 107:1, p 210

America's habituation to routine circumcision is not less aberrant viewed from a cost/benefit standpoint than it is looked at from a sociologic perspective.

Considering all the time, pain, and paper-work involved in routine circumcision in this country, it's no wonder the rest of the civilized world of medical care looks at us and just shakes it head. And, unlike the money our obstetrician colleagues waste on routine fetal monitoring, we can't even blame it on the lawyers.

- James A. Canfield, MD, FAAP
Amherst Pediatrics
ibid

...universal male circumcision makes no more sense than the other favorite operation of the 1950s - the ubiquitous tonsillectomy. ...[it is] counterintuitive and highly unlikely to meet reasonable cost- effectiveness criteria.

- John M. Goldenring, MD, MPH,FAAP
ibid.

- Samoan author Albert Wendt

A cultural malignancy - such as a tradition of slavery or abuse of women - can sometimes be made to evaporate in [a short] time, thanks to a few practical adjustments. Not all cultural features are so delicate. A culturally enforced habit may long outlive its usefulness, persisting thanks to sanctions imposed by the members of the culture, who may be oblivious to, or only dimly appreciate the original rationale of their habit-turned-tradition.

- Daniel Dennett
Freedom Evolves
p 182

Quite convincingly, circumcision gives the lie to the womb-dream of life in the beautiful state of innocent prehistory, the appealing idyll of living 'naturally,' unencumbered by man-made ritual. To be born is to lose all that. The heavy hand of human values falls upon you right at the start, marking your genitals as its own.

- Philip Roth, The Counterlife, 2005

[Assuming that circumcision is universal and inevitable]

Mutilating the baby instead of teaching each child the arts of good hygiene is bad practice, bad ethics, bad theology and a bad idea. I do not understand how any religious system could ever endorse that. Female circumcision - I prefer to call it "female genital mutilation" is still practiced in parts of Christian Africa. It too is said to have health benefits. I think not. Both of these practices represent control tactics and guilt laden castration rites born out of the superstition and ignorance of the past. I regard circumcision in both sexes as a barbaric act with no redeeming features. I find it almost laughable that the same religious voices that oppose the use of condoms would now support circumcision as a health practice..

It comes as no surprise to anyone who knows how much I love birth that I am a fan of the yoni (vagina). It is sacred to me - all of those beautiful folds, and powerful defenses - soft and strong. But some are surprised to learn that I love the penis, too.

Reading over the current debate. I found myself thinking about all of the penises I have come into contact over the years. I remember learning about intact men in my health classes in school. The teacher did not have a high opinion of them and talked at length about the smelly smegma. What a creepy image that was for me as a young woman!

I remember seeing my first intact man - when I was a student nurse. I expected some gross and smelly penis covered in cheesy goo (as described by my health teacher), but that was not the case. It was a little harder to do a sterile catheter on a flaccid penis with the foreskin trying to cover over the glans, but I managed, as unskilled as I was. And, it is probably here that I first began to appreciate the beauty of an intact penis. How protected - how, well, "right" it looked! I admit that I did not give it much thought over the years, but in my study of normal birth, I grew to realize that circumcision was yet another assault on normal functioning parts, and I think back on that first intact penis and smile at my pre-conceived notions. How silly it seems to think that the intact penis would be any more problematic, smelly or troublesome than my own wonderful yoni!

I think back over my few male lovers and their wonderful penises. Having seen photos of all of the scarring and skin changes due to surgery identified in a systematic fashion, I can see now how altered they all were. Those penises were also meant to have loving folds and powerful defenses, just like my beloved yoni, but the foreskin had been removed in a painful manner and left defenseless. Now that I am more penis-savvy, I can rapidly identify the structures that should have been there, and mysterious bits are not so mysterious (Like those puzzling little holes in the skin are actually suture marks - I have no doubt there were larger blood vessels meant to run in those spots). I don't know if intact men are better lovers. My lovers have been, good, and kind, and given me wonderful pleasure. I cannot fault the men, or their equipment. But I do feel sadness for their penises that no longer have their full and rich body function.

Now, I have my own little boy, who we decided to leave intact after a few small debates. And I appreciate the foreskin even more - that loving cocoon for his penis. So essential, so misunderstood. It protects him from beasties, it is a barrier for wet underwear chafe, and it gives him pleasure. The more I know my son's penis, the more I see how abnormal a circumcised penis really is. To compare them with the scar tissue, the suture marks, etc. of a circumcised boy - It really shocks me. Those dark, exposed glanses peeping out. They look unnatural, defenseless, stripped.

The penis is a beautiful part of any man, just as the yoni is a beautiful part of any woman. Let us leave them smooth, beautiful and intact, with all the protective, self-cleaning and pleasure-producing parts. It is not so much to do - it takes no effort to leave a penis or yoni alone, in all of its beauty, mystery and power.

... it is not circumcision that saves ...

Vet (after a silence): I'd have to report you to the ASPCA for cruelty.

The supporters of many forms of alternative medicine today claim it as a virtue that they are based on practices that have been in use for centuries, as if it was some sort of recommendation that they date back to medieval times or even earlier. A more accurate description might be that they are steeped in ancient superstition. It also seems somewhat perverse to treat medical practice as some kind of antique furniture whose value increases with age. Medicine in medieval times and the ancient world relied heavily on witchcraft, and even in modern times it has never managed to rid itself entirely of an element of magic and ritual.

The male prepuce has gone straight from being an inconsequential "flap of skin" to being a complex immunological organ, just in time to be infected by a virus that targets immune cells. Is this an indication of accelerated evolution, perhaps driven by medicine's century-long obsession with the purported pathologies of male genitals, or perhaps just a demonstration of medicine's capacity to deceive the public?

[The pediatrician of a friend of mine told her] the only thing she needs to take care of her son's foreskin is a ruler ... to smack anyone's hand who tries to touch it! Not bad for Peoria, Illinois.

Gabrielle Rhodes
December 26, 2007

Originally Posted by Saturos
To all who voted No [to a poll asking "Are you circumcised?"] how hard is it to keep your penis clean?

Pull back, soap soap soap, water, done. As easy as cleaning you toes, just without the bending over.

If you want to saw off the end of your penis, you're welcome. (laughter) You're not to do it to a child who hasn't asked for it. Same with the genitals of a little girl. If she thinks later on she'd be better off without them, let her take, or have taken to her, a sharp instrument. If it proves that it's good for AIDS - it might well be, I've heard that it's said to be good for cervical cancer - let it be decided by the grown-up. It is not right, it is not moral, it is in fact wicked, to submit children to the mutilation of their genitalia, or to anyone without consent. (applause. Hitchens bangs podium) Do you understand that this elementary point only needs to be made because of wickedness enjoined by religion. The rabbi here's a fairly humane guy. He wouldn't - if he didn't think God was involved - ever consider mutilating the genitals of a child, but because it's a covenant with God, anything can be done. (laughter), Now don't you see - you laugh, but you should be crying. (laughter) I said crying! (laughter) Okay, suit yourself. (laughter)

... [What] are the things we do not see today that people in thirty years' or forty years' time will look at you and say, 'How could you not have seen the importance of that? How could you be so ignorant? How could you be so unfair? How could you have been so cruel? And that is the challenge for thinking, conscientious people. And I think that's what you've got to focus on - what are the things your generation is not seeing that will be seen? And you have to contribute to the seeing of it."

Think of the ongoing pain also - how would you like to have someone soak ammonia into a raw wound on your genitals on a daily basis during the 10-30 days it will take to fully heal?

Also consider the issue of erection pain during healing which you've raised. You obviously don't realise that baby boys get erections too. Often the very first one will be the one that results when the doctor rubs antiseptic on the penis he's about to slice open. So the first erotic feelings will co-incide with the most pain he will likely ever feel in his life.

And you the proud daddy want to do this? I'd hate to see what you'd put him through if you weren't proud of him.....

...the popularity of modern American circumcision to a large extent the result of late 19th/early 20th century anti-masturbation quackery “spearheaded” by the co-inventor of the cornflake, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg

http://www.cirp.org/pages/whycirc.html

That is the best way to mock circumcision-pushers, in my opinion. It comes from the age of snake oil and miracle cures with cocaine in them. It’s hocus pocus carnival quackery that medical professionals should be mocked for continuing.

Almost every male in the US that's circumcised has what I call "beta genitalia". Basically, you're the first surgical experiment of some 27-year-old. Millions of American men look every day at ugly scars left by somebody who was basically faking it, or trying to do their first surgery. It's amazing.

- John Geisheker of Doctors Opposing Circumcision at Bonobo3D's YouTube (3'40")
July 25, 2009

In the circumcisions that I was part of in my OB/GYN round, one of the huge disclaimers is that the person performing it isn't responsible for how it looks cosmetically, years later, like they can't predict that, they don't know how it's going to turn out, they don't know how it's specifically going to heal...

- Bryan McColgan, "Becoming a Doctor": The Incomplete Circumcision
January 29, 2010

[And if s/he isn't, who is?]

The biblical injunction to circumcise speaks to a man about men. But circumcision is also a woman's issue, for on a subtle, but very potent level it is, like the akedah [Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac], about the primary disempowerment of the mother. At no other time is a woman so in touch with her most elemental and powerful mammalian instincts as after a birth, When, her culture tells her that in order for this male baby to be a man, to be part of the masculine community and bond with the male God, the men must cut her male baby on his most sensitive male organ, this mother is inevitably in conflict with her entire life-giving feminine biology. And if a woman is made to distrust her most basic instinct to protect her newborn child, what feelings can she ever trust?

- Miriam Pollack, from Jewish Women Speak Out
(ed. Kayla Weiner and Arinna Moon)

I left him to his singing, hurried home without a pause;
Never tell a man the truth about the one that he adores.

- "Armadillo" (about an armadillo singing a love-song to an army tank)
Michael Flanders and Donald Swann

- Barack Obama

"[T]he ritual nick suggested by some pediatricians is ... much less extensive than routine newborn male genital cutting."

Health educators must also be prepared to explain to parents from outside North America why male genital alteration is routinely practiced here but female genital alteration is routinely condemned.

- AAP FGC Policy, April 26, 2010, p 1092 (6 of 8) - May 27, 2010

... when a community opts to end genital cutting, it is generally because of a recognition that cutting not only endangers girls' physical well-being but runs counter to the universal right to stewardship of one's body.

- Female genital cutting: not even a 'nick' L A Times, May 29, 2010

after I pulled back my foreskin she said, "cool like a transformer". I really like her now.

- (401) on (MDT): My Drunk Texts
February 2010

There is a tendency for students, and indeed many clinicians, to treat the medical literature with undue respect. Major journals such as the 'Lancet' and the 'New England Journal of Medicine' are presumed to present new medical facts which are not to be disputed. Such a naive faith in the 'clinical gospels' is perhaps encouraged by the dogmatic style that many authors adopt, so that the uncertainties inherent in any research project often receive inadequate emphasis...

- "Clinical Trials: A Practical Approach" by Stuart J Pocock, Wiley, 1984

I find that this issue of parental rights versus children's rights has no clear rivals for triggering emotional responses in place of reasoned responses, and I suspect that this is one place where a genetic factor is playing a quite direct role. In mammals and birds who must take care for their offspring the instinct to protect one's young from all outside interference is universal and extremely potent; we will risk our lives unhesitatingly - unthinkingly - to fend off threats, real or imagined. It's like a reflex. And in this case, we can "feel in our bones" that parents do have the right to raise their child the way they see fit. Never make the mistake of wandering in between a mother bear and her cub, and nothing should come between parents and their children. That's the core of "family values". At the same time, we do have to admit that parents don't literally own their children (the way slaveowners once owned slaves), but are, rather, their stewards or guardians and ought to be held accountable by outsiders for their guardianship, which does imply that outsiders have a right to interfere - which sets off that adrenaline alarm again. When we find that what we feel in our bones is hard to defend in the court of reason, we get defensive and testy, and start looking around for something to hide behind. How about a sacred and (hence) unquestionable bond? Ah, that's the ticket!

There is an obvious (but seldom discussed) tension between the supposedly sacred principles involved at this point. On the one hand, many declare, there is the sacred and inviolable right to life. Every unborn child has a right to life and no prospective parent has the right to terminate a pregnancy (excpet maybe if the mother's life is itself in jeopardy). On the other hand, many of the same people declare that, once born, the child loses its right not to be indoctrinated or brainwashed or othersiwe psychologically abused by those prents, who have the right to raise the child with any upbringing they choose, short of physical torture. Let us spread the value of freedom throughout the world - but not to chlldren, apparently. No child has a right to freedom from indoctrination. [Or permanent bodily modification.] Shouldn't we change that? What, and let outsiders have a say in how I raise my kids? (Now do you feel the adrenaline rush?)

- Daniel Dennett, "Breaking the Spell" pp325-6

Religion forces nice people to do unkind things, and also makes intelligent people say stupid things. Handed a small baby for the first time, is it your first reaction to think, beautiful, almost perfect, now please hand me the sharp stone for its genitalia that I may do the work of the Lord?

Christopher Hitchens debating Tony Blair November 26, 2010

You're not 'just' circumcising a baby.
You're circumcising the man he's destined to become.
You're circumcising someone else's lover, husband, and father.

Bryan Intactivist on Facebook

Just like, what was the person thinking when he cut down the last tree on Easter Island ?
What was going on in the brain of the first person who thought skinnin' the penis on a baby boy was a good idea?

Protodan on Mother Jones April 13, 2011

The internet has made it possible for North American women who have bit into both flavours of apples, to blog about it anonymously. And nowadays, women under 40 are typically less prudish than their male peers. The result is damning: a lot of women have concluded that the long sleeve on the short arm makes for a more comfortable ride. I have noticed that circ advocates pass over this fact in silence.

RD on Should I circumcise? April 29, 2011

As to the benefits of circumcision just ask a grownup male who did it in his adulthood (usually for religious reasons) and how that affected their sex life. One man described it as "... like switching from a Cadillac to [a] Yugo".

Peter Gray in the Wall Street Journal May 25, 2011

Infant circumcision is voodoo medicine. It ascribes all specious manner of divine favor, spiritual cleanliness and disease prevention to a 10-minute, irreversible genital wounding of a healthy child. Only perversion of meaning could equate this with civilization, progress, holiness or treatment.

It is unconscionable that any country's medical profession would be complicit in promoting or even tolerating this imaginary prophylaxis. Penile circumcision of healthy boys should be roundly condemned by all caring and thinking people, and outlawed to the extent of female genital cutting.

Medicine's guiding principles include better understanding the human body; looking for advantages before disadvantages of normal body parts; and minimizing cutting into, and especially off of, the body, particularly the bodies of non-consenting, helpless minors. Ultimately, respecting the patient. Nontherapeutic circumcision defiantly violates all of these principles.

- M N, December 26, 2011

The foreskin is a normal, healthy part of human anatomy. It has developmental, protective and sexual functions.

Except in rare cases of medical exigency, every male - like every female - has a fundamental right to know, understand and value his complete sexual organs.

More than any part of our bodies, our sexual organs have evolved to confer enjoyment, health, function and reproductive advantage.

The assault on the penis needs to be called out for what it is: an unhealthy fixation on body modification.

Throughout history, more men have been satisfied with their natural state than with their non-intact state. This has never been more true than today, in the age of information.

The proper objective is not to seek and enumerate problems; any unhappy person can do this. It's to more fully appreciate the beauty of what we have.

- M N, March 2, 2012

[Paul] Krassner went to Hebrew school, he said, “but only to please my parents.” Even there, he played the trickster, questioning the rabbi who instructed his class that circumcision was a covenant with God. “I challenged him, saying if circumcision wasn’t voluntary, it wasn’t a covenant,” Krassner recalled. “He agreed, and said: ‘Okay, it’s not a covenant anymore. It’s an obligation.’”

The Jewish Daily Forward March 31, 2012

Only a fool would leave the enjoyment of rainbows to the opticians. Or give the science of optics the last word on the matter.

- Edward Abbey , 2012

"We know, for instance, that the choice to undergo a risky medical procedure will be heavily influenced by whether its possible outcomes are framed in terms of survival rates or mortality rates. We know, in fact, that this framing effect is no less pronounced among doctors than among patients. Given this knowledge, physicians have a moral obligation to handle medical statistics in ways that minimize unconscious bias. Otherwise, they cannot help but inavertently manipulate both their patients and one another, guaranteeing that some of the most important decisions in life will be unprincipled."

Sam Harris, "The Moral Landscape" Random House 2010

...relying strictly on numbers to predict health outcomes is tricky. "The more we move away from actual disease, he harder it is to predict what will happen to a particular patient," [Markus] Seibel, [University of Sydney,] says.

"Cracks in the Bone Test" by Deborah Franklin, Scientific American, August 2012

... babies are capable of objection. It was the objection of the baby as he pulled at his restraints in 1979 that first alerted me to something being wrong with circumcision. The baby made the same sounds I would as he tugged and tried to pull his arms out of the Velcro straps. Many babies have bruised arms and legs after circumcision from their frantic tugging against the restraints. As he went from being distressed to being panicked, I asked my nursing instructor if I could comfort him. She said, "Wait til the doctor gets here." That was my second clue to something being wrong--after all, I was in school to become a nurse, a caregiver, and was being told not to help the frightened two-day-old baby. When the doctor came in and I asked, he said, "Yes, go stick your finger in the baby's mouth." As I did, the baby sucked hard and quieted down as I stroked his little head and spoke softly to him. However, the scream he let out when the first hemostat was ratcheted to his foreskin could not be quieted and only intensified when the second hemostat crushed another part of his foreskin. Those screams continued to intensify throughout the procedure until, when the entire foreskin was finally crushed against the Plastibell, the baby could no longer scream. He choked on his own voice and then screamed without sound...

Years later, when someone asked, "Why you?", I said, because I heard the screams. He said, "Do you know how many millions of people have heard those screams? Why you?" I said, "The question is, 'Why not them?'!" It was because, when I saw how the baby reacted, when I heard the sounds he made, I knew what I would have to be enduring to make those same sounds. Babies do object but people don't hear them or recognize the pain and agony he is enduring. So, the next question is, what happens to us that we are incapable of having the compassion and empathy that would bring an end to this NOW?!