Circumcision is a perverse practice — long a cruel procedure in search of a justification for doing it. Now comes a hideous plan called Operation Abraham that would export mass circumcisions from Israel to the U.S., presumably with the blessing of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention based in Atlanta.
Friday’s Forward, the national Jewish newspaper, carries a story called “Operation Coming to America?” Not if caring, thoughtful people stop such brutal madness. “Our doctors had circumcised over 80,000 men (in Israel) in a very short time,” boasted Dr. Inon Schenker, who represents the Israeli doctors plotting to rip foreskins from American males on the pretext they’ll be safe from HIV/AIDS. He thinks he and his doctors can save thousands of lives by helping prevent heterosexual transmissions of the disease. How much of this is simply these Jews wanting simply more millions of males to look sexually like them to try to reduce the stigma and objection to circumcision?
These misguided medical people would try to convince men to get in line for assembly-line circumcisions and lose the most sensitive, protective structure of their penises on some guarantee they’ll be innoculated from HIV/AIDS. Why not step up the real ways to avoid AIDS — condoms, appropriate and safe sexual behavior and personal hygiene. These doctors think they can take advantage of America’s sheer ignorance and myths about the foreskin — such mindless notions like the foreskin is needless and disposable, notions like they make it hard to stay clean, notions like women prefer that folding skin gone (talk about shallowness) or notions and nonsense that it should be amputated earlier than later.
Expect a huge outcry if the CDC really give serious consideration to Operation Abraham in what ever secularized name it might take if offered as a procedure in this country. The literature is full of research that has discredited the African mass circumcisions. Some trials were halted early because they could not show the results that were sought. Fortunately, circumcision rates in the U.S. have been falling dramatically in recent decades through education, social justice efforts, common sense and recognition that circumcision is simply culturally driven cosmetic surgery typically visited on the helpless and tied down — infants.
Intact adult males should not fall for this tripe. Circumcision means less penis, removal of a missing part, the loss of about 15 square inches of nerve- and blood-rich tissue that has many roles.
The CDC must not be caught up in the screwy “medicine” that allowed circumcision to get started in the U.S. in large numbers in the late 1800s — ideas that an exposed penis glans was somehow good. Circumcision has no value. We know Jews working hard to get Judaism to move forward in dropping one more of the harsh requirements of the Hebrew Bible that could not continue as the human race moved forward in a more caring way. One can readily see that HIV/AIDS fighters are going after the wrong thing to stem the disease. It’s not the foreskin, a normal, natural structure God put on males and all male mammals. We don’t pull teeth to prevent tooth decay or remove tonsils in the event they might have problems. We don’t encourage women to get masectomies to prevent breast cancer later.
An Aug. 29 New York Times article by Roni Caryn Rabin (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/weekinreview/30rabin.html?_r=3) does an excellent job at pointing out the sordid historical scenario of the relentless effort of circumcisionists to gain traction for a repulsive procedure.
Circumcision is a tribal barbaric practice allowed to continue because thinking parents don’t recognize it for what it is: a violation of the human rights of their son, a violation of their genital integrity, a violation of every person’s sovereignty of his own body. It should be a decision each male is allowed to decide as an adult — and a tiny percentage of males allowed to choose as adults choose it.
Why aren’t more media outlets talking about the connection between Operation Abraham and the CDC “medical” recommendation? I couldn’t agree more that this amounts to an attempt by people who get circumcised, as part of a religious rite, to inflict their practice on everyone to avoid stigmatization. The article from the Jewish press about bringing Operation Abraham to America shows the nature of a concerted effort by Jewish cultural and religious leaders. The New York times was the only other news outlet that said anything about Operation Abraham, and they hid it in the body of their story. I think too many people are afraid of being called Anti-Semitic if they point out the nature of this movement. Two of my boys are intact thanks to a European doctor who told us it was unnecessary. My oldest and I are circumcised. The younger boys, now 16, are star athletes and the shower is a place where their intact status creates a lot of envy, since the more macho kids (athletes of different ethnicities) tend to be intact.
I think it’s important to realize that it is the CDC that is behind this mass circumcision hysteria, not Operation Abraham. While it may be true that there is a conflict of interest there, they are not the ones behind this whole concept.
Many Jewish people are opposed to circumcision, so the anti-Semitic claim is ridiculous. There are many great books, sites, and movies created by Jewish people about this topic, and why they feel it is not appropriate to continue.
See Jewsagainstcircumcision.org
Jewishcircumcision.org
“Cut: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision” a film by Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx89xECfHG4
It’s true, Caroline. Many of the leaders in the pro-intact movement are of Jewish heritage.
Among others, I can list Dr. Dean Edell; Norm Cohen, head of NOCIRC of Michigan; Lawrence Hoffman, professor of liturgy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York; Paul M. Fleiss, MD; and Dr. Ronald Goldman, author of Questioning Cicumcision: A Jewish Perspective.
Irrespective of that fact, it is interesting to note that Abram (the putatively regarded “Abraham”) was probably not circumcised at all, but lived and died intact, both his name and life experience having been altered long after the fact, by Jewish priests, when Genesis 17 was slipped into the Biblical narrative in place of Genesis 15 during the Captivity.
Were he alive today, Abram would, no doubt, be shocked to learn that his name continues to be used as a justification to mutilate the genitals of infant boys, worldwide.
Marilyn Milos, executive director of the National Organization of Circumcision Information and Resources Center, wrote Schenker after his talk:
Dear Dr. Inon Schenker,
Your presentation at the recent CDC Conference in Atlanta has been brought to my attention by concerned individuals. The slide of the intact male, whose body was painted to depict an elephant, the man’s intact penis portrayed as the elephant’s trunk, with a caption requesting circumcision, was not only in poor taste, it was offensive, especially to the majority of males in the world who are intact, i.e., not circumcised. Just the name of your campaign, Operation Abraham, depicts a cultural and religious bias towards circumcision for non-medical reasons. Will it be Abraham who is blamed when the “circumcision-to-prevent-AIDS” agenda doesn’t work? The agenda is a deadly distraction that will suck needed resources from programs that will. Circumcision may slow down transmission to males but it won’t prevent it, and we already know it puts women more at risk. I’m sure the goal is not to protect one gender while endangering the other. The spread of AIDS has been curbed successfully in Thailand, Senegal, and Eastern Uganda because those governments took an aggressive approach with educational programs teaching the dangers of HIV/AIDS, the importance of safe sex and condom use (100% condoms, 100% of the time), and distribution of free condoms. Condoms are 98% effective and 95 times more cost-effective than circumcision, without the risks, harms, and lifelong consequences inherent in the amputative surgery. Why is it that you are helping to promote circumcision instead of a strategy that has been proven effective? Your responsibility as a doctor is to “First, do no harm.” With documented complications and deaths from circumcision, we know it causes harm. After years of suffering in silence and humiliation because of what was done to them, circumcised men have been stepping forward for the past three decades to tell their often tragic stories. They’re not happy; there are too many of them to ignore; and, they deserve to be heard. Their voices are uniting to protect the next generation from the harm that was done to them because, in truth, you cannot alter form without altering function, and there is nowhere that this is more true than with circumcision. Sadly, men who are circumcised now believe they are protected from AIDS and, with the decreased sensitivity following the loss from circumcision of the 20,000-70,000 specialized, erogenous nerve endings that encircle the opening of the foreskin, men do not want to reduce sensitivity further by wearing a condom. We can already see why and how this circumcision agenda is not going to work. It is time now for ethical physicians to put their scalpels down, respect the rights of the child, and allow the man he will become to make this very personal decision for himself. The majority of intact males in the world do not opt for circumcision. They know the benefits of having an intact organ and prefer to keep it. If your religious affiliation takes preference over your oath to “First, do no harm,” you should remove yourself from involvement with this crucial human rights issue. Circumcision is only allowed because it has been practiced for millennia. When we look at the practice through the legal, ethical, and human rights lens of the 21st century, we see there is no place for this anachronistic blood ritual in civilized society. I hope you will re-evaluate your part in a program that won’t work and may very well cause more harm that it will prevent. I hope, too, that you will write an apology to intact males, and to the CDC who hosted you, for your inappropriate, distasteful, and insensitive presentation.
Very truly yours,
Marilyn Fayre Milos, RN, Executive Director
National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centerswww.nocirc.org http://www.IntactAmerica.org
From today’s Harretz Israel News Daily — in case there’s any doubt about the connection between Operation Abraham and the CDC recommendation —
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Last update - 17:55 13/09/2009
Can mass male circumcision stop the spread of AIDS?
By Gal Beckerman
Tags: Operation Abraham, AIDS
In late August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gathered hundreds of scientists and public health professionals in Atlanta for its biannual conference to discuss the issue of HIV prevention. One presentation, delivered by an Israeli doctor, managed to catch more media attention than any other, and to trigger the ire of a group of impassioned activists.
Dr. Inon Schenker’s proposition came in the form of a controversial question: Why not bring mass adult male circumcision to the Hispanic and African-American communities of America?
Schenker represents Operation Abraham, a group of Israeli doctors who gained expertise in circumcision by performing the procedure thousands of times, quickly and safely, on Russian-Jewish men who were raised outside Jewish tradition and immigrated to Israel in the 1990s.
Once evidence from clinical trials in Africa proved that circumcision could cut down heterosexual HIV transmission by as much as 65%, the Israeli doctors took their knowledge and innovative technique to Swaziland in southern Africa, where they began a pilot program last year. Now, Schenker thinks, America’s at-risk populations should be next.
On a recent afternoon, Schenker, a ruddy-faced and gregarious man, fresh from his presentation at the conference, sat down in a midtown Manhattan Starbucks and discussed the idea behind his project. He said he sees himself as a “matchmaker.”
“What clicked for me was bringing together the necessity of HIV/AIDS prevention with an Israeli expertise that is unprecedented. Our doctors had circumcised over 80,000 men [in Israel] in a very short time.”
Schenker’s American proposal came after the CDC announced last year that it was planning to fund a demonstration project in two community clinics that would, according to the CDC, “offer further insight into the feasibility and uptake of male circumcision among adult high-risk heterosexual males.”
“When this information reached us in Jerusalem, we said, hey, America has decided to move into adult male circumcision. Bravo,” Schenker said. ?Could we support this effort in any way?”
I think it’s important not to get sidetracked by the religious aspect. About 97% of circumcision in the US already is gentile/infidel/secular.
I think a bigger concern in the US is how they plan to target African Americans and Hispanics. While it’s true that both groups are are at high risk of HIV, contrary to clear statements from the CDC they are NOT both less likely to be circumcised. Mor et al. in a study of 60,000 US men, found the Black circumcision rate overtook the white rate in about 1965. Clearly circumcision didn’t protect African-American men, and socio-economic factors are more important. Circumcision will be a dangerous distraction from the real causes of HIV/AIDS.
Schenker’s “elephant man” slide mentioned by Marilyn Milos, while grossly offensive to all intact men everywhere, is only the tip of the iceberg of the steady drizzle of anti-intact, anti-foreskin propaganda pervading US media. (See http://www.circumstitions.com/tv-thatthing.html) If public funds are used to target minorities with more of this propaganda, it will make a toxic brew.
In Europe, almost no-one circumcises unless they’re Muslim or Jewish, and they have significantly lower rates than the USA of almost all STI’s including HIV.
Even in Africa, there are six countries where men are more likely to be HIV+ if they’ve been circumcised: Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, and Swaziland. Eg in Malawi, the HIV rate is 13.2% among circumcised men, but only 9.5% among intact men. In Rwanda, the HIV rate is 3.5% among circumcised men, but only 2.1% among intact men. If circumcision really worked against AIDS, this just wouldn’t happen. We now have people calling circumcision a “vaccine” or “invisible condom”, and viewing circumcision as an alternative to condoms.
The one study into male-to-female transmission showed a 50% higher rate in the group where the men had been circumcised btw.
ABC (Abstinence, Being faithful, Condoms) is the way forward. Promoting genital surgery will cost lives, not save them.
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