Child Circumcision: An Elephant in the Hospital
Visit Ryan’s site here: www.notjustskin.org This video is also available here vimeo.com What is infant circumcision? Why is the practice common in US hospitals and not in other countries? What does it remove and how does that affect the child? Does scientific data suggest that circumcision has benefits? What are the potential complications? How does it affect sexuality? Is it a medical procedure or a social surgery? If it’s unnecessary surgery, what about contemporary bioethics principles? Through both a review of scientific literature and a discussion of the human cost of the procedure, this presentation explores these questions from the perspectives of the child, the adult survivor, the parent, and the practitioner. Ryan McAllister, PhD, is a parent, a biophysicist, an Assistant Professor of Physics and Oncology at Georgetown University, and also a volunteer who supports parents and families. Over the last 10 years he has been studying the medicalization of childbirth in US hospitals. The slides, supplementary material, references and a copy of the video can be downloaded here: physics.georgetown.edu NOTE: This presentation includes some graphic slides necessary to present the procedure and anatomy being discussed. Today, most Americans think of circumcision as natural procedure for male babies. Neonatal circumcision is the most common operation carried out in the US today. Nationally, rates are as high as 60%, down from a peak of 75% in the 1970s. But when compared to …
Video Rating: 4 / 5
@donellexrachelle “Why is it the research tissue goes for $350-550 a vial but yet the parent has to pay like in most cases hundreds for this procedure?”
Well, you see, it would be unethical to buy a child’s body part from a parent. We’re so concerned about medical ethics that we instead pay a guy in a white coat to cut erogenous tissue from a child, and then let him sell it on the side to the highest bidder. Maybe when that child grows up, he can buy a new one, forcibly taken from someone else.
Here is a quote by a well-known pro-circ doctor: “I have some good friends who are obstetricians outside the military, and they look at a foreskin and almost see a $125 price tag on it. Each one is that much money. Heck, if you do 10 a week, that’s over $1,000 a week, and they don’t take that much time.”
- Dr.Thomas Wiswell
quoted in the Boston Globe
June 22, 1987
@donellexrachelle Are you asking a for-profit healthcare industry to not profit as much as they possibly can? It’s nice to think that our doctors really care about us, but lets be realistic about what motivates many of them to do this medically-unnecessary surgery.
It is a shame this comment thread has been hijacked by trolls, this is a very serious issue.
Shame that when Ryan has exposed the fallacy of the claims about so called hygiene and health benefits there are still people stating this in the comments as if it is irrefutable fact.
Have they even watched the vid?
Im really confused.. Why is it the research tissue goes for $350-550 a vial but yet the parent has to pay like in most cases hundreds for this procedure? That makes no sense at all!!!
I’ve always been against circumcision of either sex, but I learned a lot from this video. I was deeply disturbed by the video of the circumcision itself, though, and nearly stopped watching because I was going to be ill. There’s some very important information for people who may have a baby boy in the future and want them to be intact. I hope many more people watch this.
@psandbergnz Who cut off your mother’s testicles? Women have testicles too right?
@psandbergnz My god… I hope you get HIV with your foreskin.. We need more dumb people to die off.
@MacHead31, male and female foreskin are homologous structures, as you imply. The male foreskin has a much more dynamic function in sex, which is why circumcising the male foreskin is more detrimental to sex than circumcising the female foreskin.
Search for the term Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC): PEPFAR is a program lobbied for by the chairwoman of Dorchadashu, who profits directly from the sale of each circumcision kit.
The White House is now promoting circumcision, please do a search for a press release on December 1, 2011 or directly to The White House webpage and register your protest. I’d put the link here, but its getting blocked.
hope this is working.
i wonder who promoted circumcision in the usa so it became so widespread by now. i read up on it a little and it seems like christians in the usa saw it as some horrible thing in the 19th century and in the early 20th century it was alright all of a sudden. so alot of lobbying in some way must have been done in between by someone. i wonder who that was and for what reason. falsely claiming a benefit to sell more circumcisions for the sake of MONIES seems like the most likely thing in this case.
Tremendously informative lecture. The pictures and video were almost too much for a nurturing mom to watch. I cried through the video. So grateful that I researched and my husband listened to me so that when our second child was born and we found out he was a boy we knew what we would NOT do to him. Thankfully, neither my ob or our pediatrician performed circumcisions anyway. Hearing them make that statement was definitely confirmation from the professionals we had hired.
@tropicreyn I can agree it is cleaner. If you are lazy that is. because it’s “SO” hard to pull back the skin and clean with water right?
It is better looking. hang on, let me pull back the skin. Oh hey mine looks like the rest of all dicks in the world.
And uncircumcised male is basically masturbating inside his partner……Oh god this has to be the stupidest thing to say.
you are just basically saying you are too lazy to pull back some skin.
@godtieruser Until you can demonstrate the foreskin protects the glans your argument doesn’t hold up.
@godtieruser prepuce =/= male foreskin
“no one is making the argument that they are the same.”
The guy in this video is saying that. He said females have a foreskin and they don’t. Its called a clitoral hood, not a foreskin; end of discussion.
@MacHead31 Try googling “clitoral prepuce”. Both men and women have a prepuce (foreskin) for the same reason; it is intended to surround and protect the clitoral glans (which men and women both have as well). The nuts and bolts are obviously different — no one is making the argument that they are the same.
Women have a foreskin in the same way females have a penis and testicles. This guy needs to go open up a book. Homologous structures are not the same structures and if that is the case. I can say my arm is a whale fin because they are both homologous.
Great video. Was there a Q+A afterwards. I’m interested to know how many people changed their opinion as the result of his lecture.
Is religion a social procedure to indoctrinate a kid? Should we stop all religions? Circumcision is such a small problem in this world… can we use the manpower to do better things? Like putting an end to religions?
@tropicreyn That’s not me in the picture and I’m not 40 years old, but keep going.
@tropicreyn I think I’d also be out to prove something too if my genitalia were amputated as an infant. No hard feelings, but I think it’s time for you to go outside or something.
@RockoMyler What is funny is a 40 year old man dresssed as Spiderman!
@godtieruser To bad your parents could afford the $400! Pretty sad, if you can’t afford a kid you shouldn’t have one!