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"Increasing access to high quality medical male circumcision services has been one of our most profound contributions to preventing the spread of HIV," said Kelly Curran, a study co-author from Jhpiego. "This study reminds us that those efforts can contribute to positive health outcomes for others well beyond our immediate beneficiaries."

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The researchers said: “The study confirmed men’s long-term satisfaction with the outcome of their voluntary medical male circumcision.

“It improved sexual pleasure and function for most men and significantly decreased coital injuries.”

Of the 362 circumcised men taking part, 98 per cent reported being happy with their op. Most, 95 per cent, told researchers their female partners were satisfied after the procedure.

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A systematic review of male infant circumcision, published in the World Journal of Clinical Pediatrics, has found the benefits of the procedure exceed the associated risks by 200 to one.

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In my daily work as a pediatric surgeon, parents often ask me what I would do if the patient in clinic was my child. To be fair, most of the situations that trigger such inquiries involve serious conditions and complex surgeries. And even though circumcision is a straightforward surgical procedure, the decision to have it done can often be a thorny dilemma, complicated by societal and cultural norms or religious beliefs.

All of these considerations aside, the science is clear: Circumcision is a matter of good medicine and smart prevention. It reduces the risk of certain infections and can have important implications for a newborn boy’s lifelong health. This is why, when asked, I tell families that if I had a son, I would have him circumcised.

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Because the complication rate of circumcision is lower when performed early, while the risks of an open surgery on babies is extremely high. The risk of circumcision on babies was high before circumcision clamps were invented, too. That's why it was traditionally performed at teenage. Nowadays circumcision is just a MINOR surgery.

Besides, compared to the removal of tonsils and appendix, circumcision is beneficial even without medical indication just by its hygienic and sexual benefits.

If it’s okay to circumcise baby boys so they don’t have to when they’re older if they get an infection or whatever, why not also take the tonsils and appendix out of all babies? 

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It's rather like comparing the injection of vaccine with the injection of poison and saying vaccine is fine since it's beneficial even though both are injections.

Justifying male genital mutilation [circumcision] by comparing it to female genital mutilation is like comparing two murders and saying one is fine because it wasn’t as brutal.

Severity doesn’t fucking matter, it’s still a barbaric, disgusting practice. 

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Am I the only one who gets angry when people try to equate circumcision to female genital mutilation, especially as a “gotcha”? There are so many reasons these two things can’t really be compared. First, biological reasons: People who believe fgm and circumcision are equivalent fail to acknowledge medical and anatomical realities. Removing the foreskin is in no way analogous to clitoridectomy. An analogous procedure would be cutting off the entire tip of the penis. While I’m not sure if I’d circumcise my (entirely hypothetical) son, circumcision is a safe procedure, recommended by the CDC even and proven to reduce the risk of cervical cancer in female partners; and it doesn’t impair men’s ability to have an orgasm, the way fgm does to women. 

Also, there’s the issue of age. The vast majority of boys who are circumcised are newborn babies and (most likely) don’t feel as much pain as they would later in life, and they’re too young to be traumatized. Fgm, on the other hand, is often part of coming-of-age rituals that take place around puberty, so the situations themselves are very different. Frankly it’s both sad and rage-inducing that there are people out there who like to derail anti-fgm activism by talking trying to make circumcision an issue on the same level.

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Dr. Kellogg and Circumcision

Intactivists successfully propagated the hoax that circumcision was introduced as anti masturbation measure by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. With this argument, they try to make people believe that circumcision was introduced to “disable” people. While he promoted it to prevent masturbation, it was not really accepted among medical experts for this cause. Even in Europe circumcision against masturbation was discussed and declared ineffective. Instead, chastity-belts were used on chronic mastubators by Christians.

The real reasons were the medical findings of  Dr. Lewis A. Sayre, acknowledged by Dr P.C. Remondino and Dr I.N. Love of St Louis.

From http://www.circlist.com/rites/USA.html:

Lewis Albert Sayre (left), 1820-1900, of Bellvue Hospital, New York, was primarily an orthopaedic surgeon, and is regarded as the founder of the discipline in the US. He found that often what presented as orthopaedic problems, particularly in infants, were secondary symptoms caused by phimosis and balanitis. The infant would contort its limbs to minimise the pain from the infected member. He first published on this in 1870, but his best known paper appeared in 1888: "On the deleterious effects of a narrow prepuce and preputial adhesions". In it he quoted many examples sent to him by other doctors (many of these subsequently quoted more or less verbatim by Remondino). But there are several problems with calling him the father of modern American neonatal circumcision.  First of all, like many other 19th century physicians, he only advocated the operation when there was an obvious problem. Secondly, his preferred operation on infants was a simple dorsal slit, without removing any tissue unless it was necessary. He only recommended full circumcision for boys of 10 or over and adults. In the subsequent discussion, Dr I.N. Love of St Louis took the dissenting view that a radical circumcision was the best course to take. "It is all very well to instruct the mother or the nurse to keep the parts within the prepuce clean but they cannot or they will not do it.  Complete and proper removal of the covering to the glans takes away all the cause of disturbance." Sayre had commented that some infant circumcisions were cosmetically unsatisfactory, and Love replied "An improper performance of a surgical procedure is no argument against the operation, but rather against the operator" - an argument just as relevant now as then. It is Dr. Love who has the strongest case to be regarded as the father of modern American routine circumcision.

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And what did nature intend with it? Fast and efficient reproduction!

The nerves in the foreskin mainly trigger the orgasm as early as possible because nature doesn't care about the pleasure of the participants. The pleasure is just there to get males to head towards orgasm as fast as possible.

Men circumcised as adults often report reaching a way higher level of pleasure before orgasm because the main pleasure-inducing nerves are not affected. So by circumcision the penis gets optimized for pleasure instead of fast efficient copulation. This is desirable since sex is mostly performed for pleasure and not for reproduction.

So yes, just wanting to orgasm as fast as possible without a high pleasure-buildup is probably the strongest cause against circumcision.

If uncircumcised penises are so dirty and prone to infection then why did evolution see fit to keep it for thousands of years?

Ohhh, right, because it’s actually healthy and an important part of the male body.