This post was mentioned on Twitter by Circinfo: Guy tells story of his adult circumcision, why he is for infant circ & refutes intactivist lies “The Fallen Foreskin” http://is.gd/aIAPQ…

They may not remember, but how long does it take them to forget? Taddio et al. found circumcised babies reacted differently to the pain of vaccination, months later.

Your anecdote about your boyfriend is hardly overwhelming statistical evidence for anything. Many men now – more thanks to the Internet – bitterly resent that the most sensitive part was cut off without any consideration for what they might want as men.

I avoid the “natural” argument for the reasons you mention. But that doesn’t mean that the foreskin isn’t useful and valuable, and wouldn’t have evolved away if it had been harmful. (It differs from the appendix in this regard. Apparently the appendix is genetically linked to the rest of the intestine, and can’t be naturally missing without severe abnormality elsewhere. Aposthia – no foreskin – is a natural variant that would have become the norm long ago if it had been at all advantageous.)

As for the HIV studies, a study has just come out (Bassler et al., JAMA. 2010;303(12):1180-1187) showing that stopping a trial early makes it more likely to seem to show a benefit, even if there is none. All three of the African trials on which the claims for circumcision are based were stopped early. This is especially so where events are few (less than 500). The total number of events (men becoming HIV+) in the three trials was 201 (65, 69 and 67).

Over here on this side of the pond, there’s a TV drama (House; M.D.) regarding the behavior of a rather-acerbic physician. He made a comment about vaccinations which mirrored my mother’s (the ICU nurse) attitude:

“Don’t think they work? The antibodies in ‘yummy mummy’ only protect the kid for six months, which is why these companies think they can gouge you. They think that you’ll spend whatever they ask to keep your kid alive. Want to change things? Prove them wrong. A few hundred parents like you decide they’d rather let their kid die then cough up 40 bucks for a vaccination, believe me, prices will drop *really* fast.”

Ever since we were able to fashion a crutch from a stick, humanity has been making things to interfere with the natural order of dying. Wheelchairs; contact-lenses; cosmetics – they all ‘interfere’ with nature.

Nature is a cold-hearted bitch, with little regard for us humans.

To my mind, screwing with nature – including vaccinating against everything from allergies to smallpox – is a damn good thing.

Funny how somebody wrote “what kind of mother would assume that their child would have hygiene problems!” lol That’s just really funny. “Even” in Western countries, men don’t know how to wash themselves properly… just like the many women who think that it’s a good idea to always wash their vaginas with soap (which causes infection.) Most people don’t know what to do with their own bodies, so it’s safe to assume that there are quite a few cases of bad/not adequate hygiene, in both the East and the West, thus, infections galore. People don’t necessarily go around spreading the news that they have them though.