2007-11-12 Time - Making The Cut

[cloud7]

ok article, but was just one page and a mile high view of the "pro's" and cons of circumcision. was buried in the back of the magazine, also ends with the very lame locker room statement. Unfortunately the restoration article was not included

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...680141,00.html

Expectant parents have loads of decisions to make, from whether to find out the baby's gender beforehand to planning the birth. But recently some have taken up another debate, over a cut that used to be nearly as routine in the U.S. as that of the umbilical cord: circumcision. When Jessica Davis learned she was having a boy, she and her husband assumed that the baby's foreskin would be removed. But when asked why by her obstetrician, who is originally from South Africa, where circumcision is rare, Davis, 28, a college administrator, did research and decided that the risks trumped the benefits. She left her son Aiden, now 20 months, intact--though she says her spouse remains leery of the decision: "He's kind of like, 'Well, I work just fine.'"

On Davis' side are the small but vocal, and growing, forces against circumcision, so-called intactivists: young parents who don't want to alter their perfect babies, men who feel their circumcisions left them psychically scarred and sexually disadvantaged ("I always felt something was missing, not functioning properly," says David Wilson, whose Stop Infant Circumcision Society marches on Washington annually) and even some medical professionals who consider the procedure genital mutilation.

And at least in some parts of the country, opinion is shifting in their favor. According to the National Health and Social Life Survey, the total proportion of U.S.-born males who were circumcised peaked in 1965 at about 85%, dropping to 77% in 1971, the last year of the study. The National Hospital Discharge Survey, which began tallying newborn circumcisions in 1979, shows a downward trend, from 65% that year to 57% in 2005. Much of the decline is attributed to immigration from Latin America and Asia, where the procedure is rare. Additionally, in more than a dozen states, Medicaid no longer covers the surgery routinely, leaving many poor children without the option. But intactivism is also gaining traction among educated, middle-class whites. As University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox observes, "It's these new parents that are unwilling to let kids suffer."

But circumcision partisans say a foreskin causes suffering too. Intact boys are at greater risk for kidney infection as infants, and for penile cancer, foreskin disorders, HIV and other STDs like human papillomavirus later in life, leaving female partners more likely to get cervical cancer. The cost of prevention, proponents say, is the brief trauma of the procedure. Says Edgar Schoen, former pediatrics chief at Kaiser Permanente, who led the 1989 American Association of Pediatrics circumcision task force, which came out neutral on cutting: "A newborn baby is programmed for stress and recovers quickly." Opponents, on the other hand, say foreskin-related afflictions are rare, condoms block STDs, and circumcision has its risks. Michelle Richardson, of Fort Worth, Texas, says her 5-year-old has two genital disorders due to his botched circumcision.

The debate has even extended to the religious practice of Jews. Instead of opting for a bris, the rite in which a boy's foreskin is removed at 8 days old, Theo Margaritov's family welcomed him in April with a brit shalom, a cut-free ceremony. "That's the way God made him," says his mom Deborah, 33, a raw-foods cooking teacher in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Still, religion and health aren't the only concerns parents weigh when making the decision to cut or not to cut; tradition is also a factor. Liz Arnaiz, 30, a Brooklyn architect whose son Lucas was circumcised when he was born last November, says her husband is circumcised, so it made sense for the boy to be like his dad. Besides, she adds, "to imagine your kid in the locker room the odd man out is tough."

[admin]

>> Unfortunately the restoration article was not included <<

The reporter tells me a restoration sidebar will appear shortly at the web site only - no print.

-Ron

[z726]

Well, better the website than nothing. Will it be on a page that gets a lot of traffic?

The article may have had its bad points, but who could look at that picture of the crying baby at the top and not cringe after reading the topic? I see a lot of these articles that have a general anti-circ attitude, though to appear "neutral" the authors always somehow manage to throw it a few bonehead pro-circ statements. I just hope the readers find these statements boneheaded as well.

[Joseph]

UH!

Yeah, circumcision is covered, but same old shit.

SO-called intactivists? Gratuitous blow if you asked me.

Who "considers" circumcision genital mutilation? Watch them limit them to a small group of physicians.

But the voice of one lone Edgar Schoen speaks for all of medicine.

And watch them blame the circumcision rate decrease on immigrants. It's all the Mexican's fault. Everyone else is still circumcising. Hrm...

Same lame ol' excuses are given, unquestioned.

PENILE CANCER??? AHEM??? CERVICAL CANCER???

http://www.fathermag.com/health/circ/acs/

Yep, HIV is in there. Those studies don't hold any water, and already, HIV is permanently on the excuse list.

Human papilloma virus? Did they NOT just come up with two vaccines for it?

What are the foreskin disorders?

Let's just let parents beat and shake their crying babies because they won't shut up, Dr. Schoen. After all. "A newborn baby is programmed for stress and recovers quickly." You make me sick.

On the other hand, it says what anti-circumcisionists/pro-intactivists are saying. Goodness they even decided to include the Jewish intactivist parents as well.

Yeah and "tradition?" Yeah. That's the epitome of "modern medicine."

Always mainstream media has to do this. Circumcision information needs to be "fair and balanced," even if it's balanced with utter bullshit.

Let's have a "fair and balanced" article on female mutilation.

Let's hear them talk about how female circumcision is this "time-honered tradition of rite of passage in the Mali tribe of Africa."

GRrrrrr.

RrrrRrAAAAArrrrr....

[Joseph]

This article comes in on November 2nd.

You think this has anything to do with the looming court battle in Oregon happening on the 6th, 4 days later?

http://www.cirp.org/news/newyorksun2007-09-18/