Need links to studies please

[calngavinsmom]

For someone on another board. She doesn't want to circ, her doc supports her but of course her dh has been fed stories about how all these guys "needed" circs later in life. Dose anyone have links to actual studies that I could forward that refute this? I tried CIRP.org already but my frustrated preggo brain can't seem to research properly right now.

TIA,
Tara

[My2Matthews]

If his issue is the "inevitable circumcision," how about this link?

http://www.cirp.org/library/statistics/bollinger2003/

It states that 99.3% of circumcisions in the U.S. are neonatal, meaning that only 0.7% are being performed on children and adults. And out of those 0.7%, some are done for cosmetic reasons, and some were more than likely wrongly prescribed, so that leaves only a very small margin that actually "had to be" done.

If you feel this would be helpful information, feel free to copy and paste. I hope it helps!

[Frankly Speaking]

There is something somewhere that shows a circumcision rate of 1/18,000 or 6/100,000 in one of the Scandanavian countries. That probably shows close to the true incidence of "necessary" circumcisions. I'll see if I can find it for you if you think it will work.



Frank

[Frankly Speaking]

I wasn't able to find a link but I do have a quote:

From Edward Wallerstein's "Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy" . Pg 128


"First of all, for a man who was not circumcised as an infant the chances of
him having to get circumcised as a adult are extremely rare. In fact it's
only 6 in 100,000. (0.006%)

Health officials of each Scandinavian country were queried about adult
circumcision.. None of the health officials could provide precise data,
because the numbers were so small that they weren't worth compiling. Each
official stressed that foreskin problems were present but said they were
largely treated medically-surgical solutions were extremely rare.

"in Oslo, Norway, over a 26-year period in which 20,000 male babies were
cared for, 3 circumcisions were performed-a frequency rate of 0.02%.

In Denmark. 1968 children up to the age of 17 were examined over a period
of several years. In this group, 3 circumcisions were performed-a frequency
of 0.15%. In this study, in retrospect, the physicians believed that all
three operations might have been avoided. Both of these studies related to
the infrequency of circumcision and puberty, they did not deal with the
issue in adulthood."


I hope that gives you the information you needed. I know of no other information of the incidence of medically necessary circumcision in adulthood. I do know that there are a very few circumcisions that are performed on older men who are diabetic where the condition has caused phimosis. This is very rare but I have no statistics. Most problems with the foreskin are either so insignificant or so rare that detailed records are not kept.



Frank

[Quirky]

I wonder if arguing by analogy would be effective for her, to help frame it in "female" terms.....a woman is far, far, far more likely to get breast cancer than a man is to get penile cancer or otherwise have problems with his foreskin that require surgery. Should we excise all baby girls' breast tissue at birth to avoid the possibility - however remote - that they might get breast cancer at some point down the line? Heck, should we excise baby boys' breast tissue - they're more likely to get breast cancer than penile cancer!

I think making this type of analogy - i.e., cut a healthy body part off NOW to avoid a POTENTIAL problem down the road - might get through to her.

Also, even our own blockhead AAP says that there is no medical indication for routine infant circumcision - in other words, having looked at all the evidence of all potential problems "prevented" by circumcision, they've found NO EVIDENCE that prophylactic circumcision prevents disease (not cancer, not STDs, nothing).

[calngavinsmom]

Thank-you everyone, very helpful!

Tara