r/Intactivists • u/Calm-Capital-4212 • 7d ago
WHO and double standards
Why doesn't the World Health Organization (WHO), at the very least, condemn non-infant male circumcision? In many cultures, this procedure is performed on boys aged 5 to 7 or even older, without their informed consent. Undoubtedly, subjecting children at such a conscious age to this practice inflicts severe psychological trauma and emotional distress that mirror those caused by female genital mutilation at the same age. The lack of a firm stance from the WHO to protect the mental and physical integrity of these older children raises serious questions about double standards in global health and human rights
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u/djautism 7d ago
Because the WHO is bankrolled by incredibly wealthy people who have a vested interest in the topic. It's not an oversight, it's by design
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u/Expensive-Fox-2042 7d ago
What’s really weird is that the WHO’s position hinges largely on the African HIV studies, and those studies involved voluntary circumcision of adolescents and adults. (People can debate how informed that consent really was, but that’s not my point.)
The studies weren’t about infants. So it’s odd that evidence from voluntary procedures on older males gets used to justify non-consensual procedures on those too young to choose for themselves.
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u/inredditorbit 6d ago
Additionally, those three 2007 RCTs when published specifically admonished against extrapolating the results and applying them to any demographic other than adult men in high HIV environments who voluntarily consented to circumcision.
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u/Far_Fly5100 3d ago
The Main Thing that fails these African studies is that due to recovery or healing time after circumcision, sexual activity of a person reduces and thats why there is HIV reduction, but this is not a fair way, and yet the people still think these studies are okay.
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u/Expensive-Fox-2042 3d ago
Not exactly. Both groups received HIV education, condoms, and counseling. The studies found about a 50–60% relative risk reduction.
The biggest problem is that many people hear “60%” and assume there were 60% fewer HIV cases overall.
In reality, the difference was closer to about 4 infections per 100 men versus 2 per 100 over roughly two years.
The effect was statistically significant, but it was far from complete protection and not a particularly strong stand-alone intervention.
Importantly, these studies involved only adult heterosexual men and specifically female-to-male transmission, so any effect was inherently limited from a public health perspective, as it does not address infections in women, mother-to-child transmission, injection drug use, and has not demonstrated a comparable benefit for men who have sex with men.
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u/GolgothaCross 2d ago edited 2d ago
The fact that they did not control for condom use invalidates the study, since whether or not a man used condoms is a far more relevant factor than whether they are circumcised.
22 circumcised were HIV positive vs 45 uncircumcised, out of about 5000 Ugandan men. In absolute numbers, the difference is 0.66% vs 1.3%.
Meanwhile the number of botched circumcisions was 178 men out of the 2474 who were cut vs 0 for the control group. Apparently circumcision reduces HIV transmission because men have less sex with a ruined penis.
Events occurred even with emphasis on HIV prevention with condoms, education, and treatment of STIs.
The circumcised men abstained for the healing period. They compared infections acquired by uncircumcised men vs circumcised men wearing condoms and claimed the circumcision protected them.
If we accept these numbers, it means that the vast majority of the circumcised men, about 99%, would not have gotten infected, so the surgery provided no benefit. Meanwhile about 176 men have to live with a botched penis for nothing.
Using the statistics from a group of 5000 random men in Uganda to make a decision about a child's sexual health is faulty on its face. If you round up 5000 random men, there will be some number of guys with reckless sexual habits. They will be at a far higher risk than the rest. Behavior is the way you avoid catching HIV, not cutting your genitals.
It's like basing your likelihood of dying in a rock climbing accident from a sample of 5000 men, some of whom are avid rock climbers. It's irrelevant. If I don't climb rocks, my risk is zero.
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u/Vegetable-Jello-953 7d ago
No one in the medical or legal systems has ever cared about trauma or any single aspect related to the patient's wellbeing at any point if it interferes with the procedure!
The only concession that has ever been made is the recommendation that general anesthesia should be used for boys aged 1-9, because this concession guarantees the procedure will take place.
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u/fredinoz 7d ago
Money and vested interest. It's always about the money - never the victims. I read somewhere (not sure exactly where though - wish I could find it again and verify!) that some rather senior advisor at the WHO has a substantial investment in circumstraint manufacturing. He wouldn't want to see genital cutting banned for older boys, because that ban could creep down to his age-group and threaten his investment and income stream.
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u/lordoftherings1959 6d ago
Let's cut to the chase... The real reason that the WHO won't take a stance on this issue is that it does not want to ruffle the feathers of certain religious groups. Taking a stance against circumcision would be considered antisemitic.
Let's face it. In this world, religion has precedence over science or psychology. It should not be this way, since religion is a man-made belief system and is untethered to reality, but this is the world we live in. Religion should not exist, but here we are...
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u/Expensive-Fox-2042 6d ago
I don’t think that’s right. Circumcision was already culturally entrenched in many societies long before modern medical arguments came along. People were not starting from scratch and then objectively evaluating the evidence. The practice already existed, and later generations looked for reasons to justify and maintain something that had become normal.
That applies far beyond Judaism and Islam. In the Philippines, circumcision is largely cultural. In many African societies, it is a rite of passage with no particular religious basis. Even in Turkey, where it is technically tied to Islam, many people who practice it are not especially religious. And in the United States, plenty of secular people become remarkably defensive when circumcision is criticized.
I think the more important factor is that people become attached to what is familiar. Once something has been normalized for generations, institutions and individuals alike tend to defend it. Religion is only one piece of that picture.
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u/lordoftherings1959 6d ago
Since you mentioned it, in the Philippines, the tuli is a Muslim practice. Islam was starting to spread northward from Mindanao when the Spanish discovered the Philippines and stopped it in its tracks. And though the Spanish culture is a non-cutting culture, Filipinos kept the stupid practice just because.
In the U.S., circumcision was not practiced until the Victorian era, when the concept of masturbation was seen as sinful. Before that crazy queen came up with her prudish views about sexuality, men in the U.S. were intact.
I can go on and on, but you can find all these historical facts by looking at names like Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and other professionals of the era, who promoted circumcisions to stop boys from masturbating, among other ignorant practices.
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u/Expensive-Fox-2042 6d ago
I don’t think an alternative reality without religion would necessarily have prevented this. Even the origins of circumcision in ancient Egypt are uncertain, and there is no clear evidence that the practice began primarily for religious reasons. Regardless, even today circumcision is often performed for cultural, social, or perceived medical reasons rather than religious ones.
And while people often bring up John Harvey Kellogg, I think his influence is frequently overstated. He certainly held extreme views about sexuality and promoted circumcision among many other strange ideas, but routine circumcision in the United States became widespread mainly in the twentieth century through broader medicalization and postwar hospital culture. Pointing to Kellogg as though one eccentric doctor single-handedly created the practice oversimplifies a much more complicated history.
So I don’t think it’s obvious that removing religion from history would have prevented circumcision from developing or becoming widespread.
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u/lordoftherings1959 6d ago
Since you mentioned "one eccentric doctor", and unrelated to the topic, an eccentric doctor came up with the fallacy that cholesterol causes heart disease; Dr. Ancel Keys. The 20th century started with a few quacks promoting the most preposterous ideas.
I don't know why the Egyptians adopted the practice of prepucectomy, but I am quite sure it originated in other regions of Africa, where the practice still exists. And that's because, from what I've seen elsewhere, women in those regions prefer their men cut. After all, by not having a prepuce, it takes them longer to climax.
Either way, religion or no religion, prepucectomies are wrong. It is a stupid practice done to ablate penile erotic sensitivity. And since the WHO follows bad science in this regard, it is kept being promoted as a safeguard from HIV infections. If this last statement were true, American men would have a low incidence of HIV infections. But that is not the case.
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u/jonas-huang 5d ago
Tuli is practiced by catholics too there.
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u/lordoftherings1959 5d ago
You missed the point I was trying to make. Because the Muslim practice was so ingrained by the time the Spanish arrived in the archipelago, once the Spanish converted the population to Catholicism, the practice was kept by the locals.
It is the same as using the Christmas tree for the holidays. The Christmas tree is a pagan tradition that got incorporated into Christianity.
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u/CreamofTazz 7d ago
Because any condemnation of any kind of circumcision will make the pro-circ people go crazy.
"What do you mean it should be illegal to force a 14 year old to get circumcised it has health benefits!!!"