MEDICAL FRAUD and the criminal assault of boys
sexual pleasure !Circumcision destroys
Everyman # 28 had an article about male circumcision that described some things that astonished me. I decided not to form any conclusions until I checked other sources. Well, I ‘ve checked now, and I am furious! The following is a letter to the editor I wrote for a local newspaper. You are welcome to print in in "Everyman" if you wish.
The July/August 1998 issue of Men’s Health magazine has an article about male circumcision that shocked me. The article quotes many doctors who want the practice banned immediately. I now agree with these doctors completely. Titled “Did Circumcision Ruin Your Sex Life?”, the article reports that men who have been circumcised as adults typically complain that the operation sharply reduced the pleasure they experienced during sex. One such man is quoted as saying, “My penis has lost 90% of its sensitivity.” Another who was circumcised at 26 complained, “I had ample sexual experience, and was happy as an intact male. After my circumcision, the pleasure was utterly gone. On a scale of 10, an uncircumcised penis experiences pleasure of at least 11 or 12; the circumcised penis is lucky to get a 3. If men who were circumcised at birth knew the loss of pleasure they would experience, they would storm the hospitals and not permit their sons to undergo this.”
I must confess that, until I read this article, I naively believed that the operation was done to me as a means to improve my sex life. The truth seems to be the opposite! As the article clearly describes, circumcision originally gained widespread acceptance in Britain and the United States as a means to reduce the pleasure males feeling during masturbation and sex!
This Men’s Health article seems to be well-researched and objective. After carefully reading it several times I agree with Dr. Craig Shoemaker who suggests that male circumcision as routinely practiced in North American is a form of “criminal assault.” Seattle physician George Denniston says that male circumcision “violates all seven principles of the American Medical Association’s code of ethics. By definition, it’s not even surgery. Surgery is removal of diseased tissue, or a repair of some kind.” A nurse who has formed an organization aimed at making the practice illegal says, “The doctors are in denial, the hospitals are in denial, so the parents are intentionally, illegally uninformed. Circumcision is the worst fraud in the American medical history.
After reading the article I became so angry that I phoned Baton Rouge Hospital (where I was circumcised as a newborn 41 years ago and bitterly complained. I told the worker who spoke with me that I would never have approved of this operation as an informed adult, and that after reading the article in Men’s Health I fully agree with doctors who say it is a form of child abuse.
Circumcision doesn’t even reduce venereal disease. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded, “We found no evidence of a prophylactic role for circumcision, and a slight tendency in the opposite direction.”
If it were possible, I would pay as much as $5, 000 to reverse the effects of the operation. I sincerely believe that doctors circumcising males any younger than three years past puberty, or any males who are not told about the tragic loss of pleasure the operation causes, should be arrested and charged with criminal assault.
Jefferson Opal / Baton Rouge , LA
Reprinted from “Everyman; A Men’s Journal” Sept./Oct 1998