Herpes risk from ancient form of circumcision

http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2004/08/04/eline/links/20040804elin013.html

Herpes risk from ancient form of circumcision

Last Updated: 2004-08-04 14:45:54 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Eight infants developed genital herpes following an ancient Jewish ritual of circumcision, highlighting the dangers associated with this procedure, researchers report.

All of the infants underwent a form of circumcision in which the circumciser, or mohel, takes wine in his mouth and sucks the blood from the newly created wound, then spits the blood and wine mixture into a receptacle. The circumciser repeats this procedure, known as metzitzah, until the bleeding stops.

Currently, only a minority of mohels practice metzitzah, with most now opting for a suction device to remove blood from the wound, according to the report in the journal Pediatrics.

The eight infants developed genital herpes between 4 and 11 days after the procedure. Of four mohels who performed the circumcisions and agreed to be tested, all carried antibodies to herpes simplex virus type 1, indicating they were infected.

more...

http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2004/08/04/eline/links/20040804elin013.html


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Why in the 21st century we are still mutilating babies is beyond me. If I were a father, I would not even contemplate such a barbaric and unneccessary act upon my beautiful child.

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I mean I understand the cleanliness thing but I have been told that it's not a huge factor and doesn't make it very much harder to keep that area clean then if you weren't circumcised.

Mine is spotless!

As a female I will confess that only cut male organs interest me. I'm unable to handle the uncut members.

No sand, no cotton lint, no covenant with Abraham and ohhh... the sensations. Wholeness has it's advantages.

Hey, bub. Nothing gets implanted. Your using false advertising! Unless someone's got a pump, or takes them happy pills, it's all natural, etiher way.

That's all.

Hmm. Perhaps this was an individual hygiene issue. I'm trying to figure out why there would be a taste difference, and I can't come up with a biological reason.

Besides, as a female, it appears that your safer...

"Male Circumcision, Penile Human Papillomavirus Infection, and Cervical Cancer in Female Partners" --
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/346/15/1105

With that and my own taste for cleancut members it's a win win.

in order to accomodate your very provincial tastes?

Wow.

By the way, your reasoning is one of the arguments used by many African men to justify female genital mutilation: women who have been "circumcised" look and smell nicer. This is why I've always thought it was a bit hypocritical for Americans to get so exercised about FGM while ignoring the fact that the U.S. is the genital mutilation capital of the world.

What the hell is wrong with us? And how did we get mixed up in the debate about circumcision?

Dang. Why's everybody always picking on me?

:)

:spank:

is the same as the common cold sore in an uncommon place. It's not nearly as serious as type 2 and it goes into hibernation for long periods of time (sometimes for life).

It's still better to not have it, though.

"In one infant, the herpes virus spread to the brain, causing long-term brain damage"

Babies that young don't have strong immune systems.

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a cold sore could put the baby in danger. I don't think many people think of that.

I wouldn't let anyone kiss my baby (if I had one) on the lips OR the penis, would you?

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now I find out that in addition to that form of child abuse it involves oral contact of an adult with the glans penis of an infant.


I am hoping this ain't true.

So there is no contact lips-to-penis, but the wine is spat down and the blood/wine mixture sucked up and then spat into a wine glass. I don't know what they do with the wine/blood/virus cocktail, but I hope they don't drink it.

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type of abuse.? These rituals are disgusting.

who a few moments earlier had slapped me. Yes, I'm still mad. :)

Actually a lot of people thought it was about cleanliness. A waxy glandular secretion can collect on the glans of uncircumsized males and looks dirty...

Recent medical studies argue that circumsized males have no fewer infections.

Visit http://www.nocirc.org for the facts, not the disinformation you just posted.

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http://www.foreskin.org/smegma.htm

These pictures ain't bullshit, and that stuff on the glans penis ain't cheese either.

I am not saying there aren't various reasons that have been proposed, I certainly claim no knowledge to the religious benefits assumed to obtain from circumcision.

I actually asked my mother why she had this done to me, and she said it was to help me be healthy. And from the above identified site we have the following reference to medical concerns about uncircumsized penis from within a decade of my birth and subsequent circumcision...

<Snipped...>

Not only is smegma not harmful, it is actually beneficial, serving as a protective coating and lubricant for the glans." ("The Circumcision Decision," by Edward Wallerstein, Pennypress, Inc., 1980)


"This process of rationalization has culminated in the supposed relationship between the husband's foreskin and cancer of the genitals--one of the greatest hoaxes in the history of medicine. The theory is that the uncircumcised penis, because it may generate a waxy substance called smegma, can produce cancer of the penis and cancer of the cervix (neck of the womb) ... Further evidence that circumcision is not linked with cancer comes from tests of human smegma. In 1942, the National Cancer Institute conducted careful experiments and found that smegma had no carcinogenic effect whatsoever. This test was duplicated in 1963 on a more extensive scale by Dr. D. G. Reddy and others, with the same conclusions. Negative results have also been obtained in a number of other experiments (Circumcision in Infancy, Charles Weiss, M.D., Clinical Pediatrics, 1964)." ("The Unkindest Cut of All," by John M. Foley, MD, Fact, July 1966)

<Snipped>

And it occurs in your own mouth and your wife's vagina as well as any other mucous membrane.

I don't think anyone sane would propose cutting of your lips and your wife's labia to be rid of this naturally occurring and vital process.

"Smegma is probably the most misunderstood, most unjustifiably maligned substance in nature. Smegma is clean, not dirty, and is beneficial and necessary. It moisturizes the glans and keeps it smooth, soft, and supple. Its antibacterial and antiviral properties keep the penis clean and healthy. All mammals produce smegma. Thomas J. Ritter, MD underscored its importance when he commented, 'The animal kingdom would probably cease to exist without smegma.'" ("Where Is My Foreskin? The Case Against Circumcision," by Paul M. Fleiss, MD, Mothering, Winter 1997)

for this is not warranted. But I don't think I EVER said that it was.

Yet again in your haste to press your personal mission-quest-jihad- crusade-thing you are leaping to the conclusion that I am somehow promoting circumcision. You are 100 percent wrong.

Moreover you have gone and made it personal by assuming that I have a wife.

Well I don't.

Anymore.

My wife and one of my daughters for that matter are dead, leave my memories of her and her vagina out of this.

We all know how well that worked!

Thanks a lot mom and dad... and you arent even Jewish.

I don't know how that happened, but I also don't know how you'd know that circumcision is what makes the end of your dick "numb"?

Very interesting.

If he hadn't slapped you, would you have felt better about the whole thing?

I never knew what cut me...

Actually, while I think circumcision is unecessary from any medical point of view, I know it has cultural value.

When I was young...ok the 50's, boys who weren't circumsized were often the laughed at while showering in public baths and locker rooms.

Curiously my father wasn't circumsized but all 4 of his sons were. He died before I asked him about that. And as much as I can remember it didn't come up during those "hang it high and shake it dry" discussions and demonstrations about male urination that I have an unclear recollection of...what I remember of those trainings is they occurred sometime while my height had my shoulders a little above his knees.

A little Red Dwarf humour.

Please, let's get rid of rituals that hurt. Faith is admirable, but allowing hurtful rituals is crazy.

Someone please explain to me the difference between a pedophile orally working on young children and a religious ceremony in which a similar act is performed (repeatedly). Seems like being a mohel would be a perfect job for a closet pedophile...

JB

I think it would be an apostasy.


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http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/fourth/goodman.html

CHALLENGING CIRCUMCISION: A JEWISH PERSPECTIVE
Dr Jenny Goodman
Presented at the Fourth International Symposium on Sexual Mutilations,
University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, August 9-11, 1996.

Dear Friends,

I am writing to you from London, England, since it is very unlikely I will be able to be with you in person. It is now June, and I am joyfully expecting my first baby at the end of this month. I do not know the sex of the baby, and I believe I may be one of the first Jewish women of my generation who does not need to whisper the silent prayer, "Please God, let it be a girl." I am calm and comfortable in the knowledge that no-one will ever take a knife to this baby's flesh in the name of religion, and that my child will be every bit as Jewish as I am, or as Jewish as s/he chooses to be, with no mutilating mark upon the body. I am confident that my people have such an abundance of life-enhancing, life-affirming and mind-opening traditions, that our identity and sense of cultural self-heed will happily survive our outgrowing of circumcision, a cruel relic which has always felt to me like an aberration at the heart of my religion.

What can I say, I wonder, to all of you gathered in Lausanne, who already agree with me that circumcision of healthy, non-consenting infants is an abuse of human rights? I am used to arguing here with those who take circumcision for granted, who believe it is healthy, harmless, hygienic and divinely commanded. With those who believe it is a "little snip: that does not hurt, leaves no trace in the memory, causes no scars in the soul of mother or child. With those Jews and Muslims who really believe that their cultural identity, their sense of belonging, will crumble if they stop cutting pieces off their babies' bodies.

Perhaps I shall share with you a little of what I have learnt through public and private debate with such people. I talk about the facts: the intense pain, the risks of haemorrhage, infection and severe mutilation. I explain that, contrary to popular, opinion there are no medical benefits, and considerable complications, and that the best form of hygiene is simply to wash.

more...

http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/fourth/goodman.html

..._healthy, harmless, hygienic_ and divinely commanded.

the author of the letter cites hygiene (!)

What did I say in my earlier post that you so quickly labeled as BS? "many people believe it is about cleanliness"...

I think I named one of the reasons your cited author thought was common.

Sorry you didn't bother to read it.

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which it clearly was and indeed may still be. I said nothing to promote the idea that smegma, or prepucial tissue is bad. Rather I was reporting history, in the mid 1900's there was wide belief that it was disease carrying and thus unclean.

Your assumption that I didn't read the article doesn't follow from my comments. Rather it seems to emerge from something within you, a need to debunk something that far over reaches the limits of what I wrote.

You thought I posted BULLSHIT about your post when I meant it to be about the reasons supporting circumcision that you posted, not the entire post where you agreed they were bad science, if I may paraphrase.

My bad. I'll try to be clearer in future.

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Your intial response to my posting was to call it disinformation.

I am not sure how I could misunderstand that. Go back and reread what you wrote. Isn't it terribly clear?

It was a misunderstanding. My fault. Not clear. My bad.

"The common curse of mankind, - folly
and ignorance" (Thanks, Willy!)

i guess it is OK with a baby as long as you have a mouthful of wine...

personally if someone filleted the end of my dick, i would want it fellatio'd with ICE !!! :wtf:

Funny, thats right on top of my secret super hero cave...

I've been to a half dozen briss' in my life and never, EVER, have I seen a moil do that!

Ugh. :puke:

I'm pretty sure that's standard stuff, but I could be wrong. I've even seen it referred to on broadcast TV, so it can't be that unusual.


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although I'm virtually positive that my circumcision didn't involve anything REMOTELY similar to fellatio.

For those who claim to have lost feeling in their glans: well, that's gotta suck. I can't say the same.

And, yeah, when I have a son, he'll be circumcised too. Without the wine, of course...

Same here, though I'm not sure about what we'll do, if we have a son. Anyway, it's just good to see something besides the rants on this page.

Salud!