[ExI] Circumcision

[Anders]

IMHO the strongest arguments are not objective research, but vanilla 
medical ethics. Permanently surgically altering a child without its 
consent nor a medical need, and in a bodily region of great significance 
to many, obviously requires extremely strong and uncontroversial ethical 
reasons. Safety and some very weakly supported medical benefits would 
not be enough to support it.

It is interesting to compare to female circumcision, a practice that is 
intensely decried in the West to such an extent that in many places it 
is a criminal offense to aid it, even when the intervention is 
microscopic (there are forms that are way less invasive than male 
circumcision). Here the cultural and religious reasons given in support 
of it are regarded as too weak to allow the practice, and indeed 
right-thinking people should work to reduce the support for such 
reasons. Yet when the similarity to male circumcision is brought about, 
people typically rally about cultural and religious reasons and think 
they are solid enough to justify it.

 From an ethics perspective this is obviously stupid: gender does not 
matter, and few if any ethicists are willing to say that one cultural 
system provides valid reasons but the other doesn't. Yet people who are 
normally amenable to reasoned ethical arguments are often surprisingly 
unwilling to let go of an imaginary distinction: there is a huge tribal 
affiliation aspect here, making people willing to defend what would 
normally be undefensible.

My colleague Brian Earp has written extensively on the topic; see the 
posts at Practical Ethics such as

http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2014/02/female-genital-mutilation-and-male-circumcision-time-to-confront-the-double-standard/
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2013/03/male-circumcision-and-the-enhancement-debate-harm-reduction-not-prohibition-2/
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/08/the-aap-report-on-circumcision-bad-science-bad-ethics-bad-medicine/
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/10/religious-vs-secular-ethics-and-a-note-about-respect/
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/01/georgia-mother-arrested-for-allowing-10-year-old-to-get-a-tattoo/
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2010/05/a-nick-for-nick-but-nix-to-nicks-for-nickie/
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/?s=circumcision&search=Search

for a bunch of arguments and analysis. I think the important part here 
is that this links in to some degree to the enhancement debate - this is 
all about how culture, ethics and bodies intersect.


On 2016-06-13 07:50, Keith Henson wrote:
> My daughter and son in law decided to circumcise my grandson.  I had
> no idea this was still being done, my error in not keeping up with
> this frankly disgusting subject.
>
> It was also presented to me after it happened in the worst way
> possible.  I won't say a lot more except I have a 420 card which helps
> a lot with back spasms, but makes a person particularly sensitive to
> emotionally upsetting news.
>
> I would not bring this up here at all, but I am committed to reducing
> the incident of this unnecessary "medical" and  in my opinion barbaric
> procedure of cutting off a most sensitive part of a male's anatomy.
> It was done to me as a baby and as I have gotten older, it has caused
> me increasingly serious problems.  It has (at least for the time
> being) destroyed my relation to daughter, son in law, and new grandson
>
> One of the "justifications" for them doing it, is that my daughter
> could not find arguments on the net against circumcision that met her
> standards for objective research.  She figured that the men who had it
> done to them and later thought it was a bad idea were some of the
> small number where the circumcision had been botched.
>
> There are certainly some who fit that classification,
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
>
> We have some people here who are good at designing research studies.
> I would like to figure out a scientifically valid study.  The rate of
> circumcisions has fallen to slightly under 80% in the US and (from
> hearsay) is around 50% in California.  That should be enough to
> recruit a significant number of men who were and were not circumcised.
> I want valid data that can stand peer review and am willing to spend
> thousands of dollars to get it and put it on the net.
>
> I would be interested in data of how list members feel about what was
> or was not done to them, but it's more important to get a good study
> design that will produce data that would stand up to peer review.
>
> Advice on a study or pointers to people who could design a study or
> vet the methodology would be highly appreciated.
>
> Keith
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat

-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University