There may be medical benefits in third world countries where access to sanitation is limited, other than that you are saying human beings were designed wrong. As long as you do not roll around in sand, you should not have any problems.

I would suggest that the best that can be said of circumcision is that it is mostly harmless, and optional.

Circumcision is clearly optional. A very large number of people go uncircuncised, including every male in my extended family for at least three generations.

Being as optional and unnecessary as religion, proponents will promote with similar vigour, having no other means to compel.

I brand and tag my cattle, it does no long term harm, any volunteers?

Rusty

Circumcision is barbaric act based on the myth of backward middle-eastern religions. It should be banned in the 21st century.

The Australian publication, Journal of Law and Medicine, has just published a new critique of those three randomized clinical trials from Africa that have purported to find that male circumcision reduces female-to-male sexual transmission of HIV by 60 percent.

This critique finds numerous flaws in the execution of these studies and finds that the actual reduction in HIV transmission is about 1.3 percent, not the claimed 60 percent. The 1.3 percent is not considered to be clinically significant.

This is balanced by a 61 percent relative increase in male to female HIV transmission when the male partner is circumcised.

Given this, the three RCTs should not be used in the formulation of public health policy.

See: Boyle GJ, Hill G. Sub-Saharan African randomised clinical trials into male circumcision and HIV transmission: Methodological, ethical and legal concerns. J Law Med 2011;19:316-34.

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/december112011/circumcision-hiv-rg.php

Jon888
"those who have a bias against circumcision" You bet I do, and against cutting off babies' earlobes and little toes and inner labia unless and until they individually badly need it.

"500 studies"? Have you read them all? Or just taken Brian Morris's word for it? He's never seen a reason to circumcise he doesn't like, and half the time the studies he cites (and who but he has cited so many?) do not say what he claims. Like the study of 75,000 children of whom FIVE intact boys had recurrant UTIs, that he spun into "19% of boys". It would take hundreds of circumcisions to prevent one UTI - if they prevent any.

That is typical of the "benefits" of circumcision, so that the Royal Dutch Medical Association says "There is no convincing evidence that circumcision is useful or necessary in terms of prevention or hygiene."

And the RACP "believes that the frequency of diseases modifiable by circumcision, the level of protection offered by circumcision and the complication rates of circumcision do not warrant routine infant circumcision in Australia and New Zealand."

In the UK public hospitals do not perform male circumcision, people who approach the hospital to have their infant circumcised, on religous or ethnic traditional grounds are refused.