Interesting thing to note here, we took my son in for a postop visit with his pediatrician. The pediatrician not only recommended we get him circumcised at earliest convenience (which means when he's going into surgery for something else) but also derided any statistic that called its efficacy into doubt. His line was that in the many years he's been a pediatrician (and he was one when I was a young boy, though my family used a different doctor so he's been in practice at least 25 years, if not more) the incidence of problem was incredibly rare, but the number of kids with phimosis or other issues relating to the foreskin was not. He actually called the scientists in charge of some of the latest work bought and called not circumcising medical negligence. I'm simply adding this to the discussion. My own opinion has been stated, my son has already started to have issues with his necessitating its removal. I'm just mentioning what a doctor in private practice for at least a quarter of a century had to say about his experience in his private practice. I am not this doctor, I'm not sure I share his opinion, I just wanted to share with you all what my son's doctor told us while at an appointment.
This to me is the most stupid argument in favour of circumcision. First of all it's extremely arrogant of such doctors to suppose that they have 1-upped mother nature. Secondly, it's like advocating we take out every baby's appendix at birth, just in case something goes wrong with it later on down the line.
"Mother nature" is the result of hundreds of millions of years worth of evolution during most of which we looked almost nothing like the bipedal, big brained creatures we are today. We have A LOT of baggage from back then since evolution doesn't curtail traits until another mutation emerges giving those individuals a higher chance of reproducing. There are multiple ways that your analogy fails, I will just look at the death rate. According to Patient.co.uk, about 10% of the population will develop Appendicitis and about 5% of those people will die during their Appendicectomy. This means that about 0.5% of the population will die from this if you don't provide the operation in advance. The same source gives a mortality rate of ~1% for preemptive procedures before the condition has fully progressed. Ignoring the additional costs, the massively invasive nature of the procedure and just looking at the death rate, this would double the effective number of deaths due to our appendixes.
To be precise. (or pedantic, take your pick), evolution does not select out a given trait until it starts to become a disadvantage to survival and reproduction. So if millions of years of evolution didn't get rid of the foreskin, why should we, unless in specific cases it conveys a clear medical disadvantage? The death rate due to complications of male baby circumcision is 0.009%, or 1.3% of all neonatal deaths. Now how many babies die because they didn't have a circumcision? Relatively mild medical complications occur at a rate of 1.5%, and severe complications at a rate of 0.2%. Keep in mind that such complications can lead to life-long sexual dysfunction, disfigurement and associated psychological problems. How many babies do experience medical complications as a result of not having been circumcised?
