Science probably doesn’t support your views on abortion

I’ve recently found myself in an incredibly frustrating abortion debate where the other person got a whole host of basic facts wrong while claiming the mantle of science. Even though I agree with him on major conclusions, I’ve never been one to abide by science being misused in any way. I want to set a few basic facts straight in this post.

First, I think it’s important that I make my position clear on abortion. I found my opponent absolutely refused to do this, and I think the reason was because it’s much more difficult to argue in the positive than it is to argue in the negative. That is, it’s harder to defend one’s own position than it is to attack someone else’s position. So my position is this:

I believe abortion is an issue of choice for the mother up through every moment we can confidently say an embryo or fetus is not deserving of moral protection. However, the moment we are able to say a fetus is deserving of moral protection, the issue is one of life versus choice (medical issues notwithstanding). As one might imagine, this is an incredibly unpopular position because it upsets both major sides of the debate. But it’s the only position that makes sense to me. Its sole flaw is that pregnancy is a process of development, so we can’t point to one individual moment where a fetus suddenly deserves protection. But we can logic out the fact that, yes, there is clearly a point where this developing bundle of cells deserves protection. Let me expand on that briefly before delving into the abuse of science that brought me here.

If we are to agree that a newborn is deserving of moral protection, then we can work backwards to ask ourselves some questions. That is, if a baby deserves protection the moment it has fully emerged from its mother and the umbilical cord has been cut, then we have a mutually agreeable starting point for discussion. Working backwards, we can first ask ourselves if that newborn is deserving of moral protection prior to the cord being cut. I’ve heard some extremists say no, but most people are rational enough to see that a connecting tube doesn’t determine the baby’s worth. Next we can ask ourselves if there is a theoretical situation where it would be okay to kill a healthy baby (who isn’t a threat to the health of the mother) while it’s still being birthed. Again, I think most rational people are going to see that it is a baby. Next, let’s back up to 1 minute prior to the mother’s water breaking. Or 5 minutes. Or an hour. Or a day. At each of these points, yes, that’s still a baby and there’s no significant moral distinction to be made; its physical location says nothing of what it is. Now back up a week. A month. Two months. 9 months. At some point, we really are just talking about cells. And so choice becomes the overwhelming issue. But where does choice give way to life? We can’t pick an exact moment anymore than we can say when adulthood begins, but we can choose a reasonable point. Just as we say adulthood starts at 18 for practical reasons, we can say a fetus deserves protection at the second trimester. Or maybe a month before. Or a month after. Whatever makes the most sense is where that number is found. (For me, that number is 5 months based on issues of viability.)

Now I want to address two key issues of science abuse I saw from my opponent. The first has to do with fertilization, and the second has to do with the definition of life itself.

Fertilization is the short process by which a sperm penetrates an egg so that their DNA can bond together. This isn’t a controversial idea on any level or from any side of any debate. Here’s a video that lays out the process in more detail:

I bring this up because my opponent – who is pro-choice, by the way – argued that fertilization is a 2 week process. It isn’t. He’s wrong. Objectively. There’s simply no way around this. To claim fertilization takes 2 weeks is to be wrong, and to hold on to that claim in the face of tremendous evidence otherwise is to be embarrassed without knowing it.

I also bring this up to address what is perhaps the most fundamental part of the pro-life argument: Life begins at conception. The title of the video (which is the first result in YouTube) couldn’t be more on point here: Fertilization and conception are the same thing. This is important to understand. The pro-life side argues that life begins at conception because they believe that the moment new genetic material is created marks the start of a unique human life. There are issues of twinning that can occur, and I think that undermines their argument to a significant degree, but for the overwhelming number of births, their origin can be traced back to the moment when 23 chromosomes from one sperm and 23 chromosomes from one egg combined.

I believe my opponent was trying to stretch the idea of fertilization into 2 weeks because, to him, that allowed for a host of issues to occur where the fertilized egg would be miscarried. But this is entirely a non-issue for the pro-life side. The ultimate viability of a fertilized egg doesn’t change anything about the merging of two sets of chromosomes. At most, this is an issue for religious people to address in terms of why their god allows so many humans to die before so much as developing beyond a tiny bundle of cells. But we aren’t talking about why gods allow people to die.

I also believe my opponent was discussing this idea of viability because he had a questionable definition of “life”. In his own words:

Showing one example of non-viable life after fertilization defeats the notion of life at conception, because it’s wrong to call dead things life.

Of course, this is nonsense. It’s also dodgy. Throughout my debate, I tried to see if “life” was being used as a substitute for “personhood”. Unfortunately, I was met with the same stonewalling I got when I asked for my opponent to argue in the positive regarding his own position; he simply ignored the repeated question.

Without defining our terms, there can be no hope of rational discussion, so I will give definitions here.

If “life” is to refer to living things, then viability is a non-issue. The cell is the simplest unit of life, and if there’s anything anyone should be able to agree on it’s that fertilization forms cells that divide. That is life. It’s life just as much as plants or bacteria or dolphins are life – even with a lack of viability. Cells that fail to develop are living until they aren’t. A fertilized egg that fails to move through the Fallopian tubes or to implant in the uterus is absolutely, without any shred of doubt, unarguably life so long as the individual cells within it are living.

If “life” is to refer to “personhood” – and I think it is – then we’ve moved from science to philosophy. There is no objective definition of “personhood”, and it certainly isn’t true that viability is the crux by which we must define the term.

Conclusion

I consider myself to be pro-choice for the first 5 or so months of a pregnancy because it makes sense to me that choice is the basic issue at hand. Through that point, I’m not convinced there’s a reasonable argument for a right to life for the fetus. That is, a fetus doesn’t meet my definition of personhood to that point. After that point, however, I fail to see how we aren’t talking about a person. Certainly, there is no moral difference in what a baby is 1 day after birth versus 1 day before birth…or 2 days…or a week…or a month…and so on. And that tells me the issue isn’t one of choice. At least, insofar as choice is an issue at all, it is entirely trumped by the fetus’ inherent claim to life.

I repeat my position because it is informed by science, but it isn’t science itself. That is, science doesn’t tell us when personhood begins. It can’t. That’s a philosophical concept – and it’s not even guaranteed that a given philosophy is going to value personhood over choice. But science can tell us what fertilization is. It can tell us what life is. It can tell us what viability is. These are all important issues in the abortion debate that only science can resolve. And we can use science’s resolutions to inform our views on what level of life matters, or when viability becomes significant enough to draw our personal concern. What we can’t reasonably do is use science to make up definitions of fertilization or life (or maybe “personhood”…who knows).

Science moves on bodies of evidence

I’ve long made the point that science moves on bodies of evidence, not individual studies. If you don’t have repeatable data, then you don’t have much of anything. This is why the media is frequently so bad when it comes to reporting on recent studies; they report (or at least imply) individual study results as conclusions that are being made by the scientific community at-large. The truth is usually more like, one group of researchers found some interesting results.

And with that in mind, I turn to one of my favorite topics in science, circumcision. My numerous posts are easily searchable, so I won’t bother to link them, but for those who are unfamiliar with my stance, let me be clear: I am hugely in favor of circumcision because the science is in – circumcision saves lives. Furthermore, there is a very clear body of evidence that circumcision does not decrease sensitivity or sensation. In fact, a recent study found just the opposite:

Of 454 circumcised men, 362 (80%) returned for a follow-up visit 6 to 24 months after VMMC (voluntary medical male circumcision). Almost all (98%) were satisfied with the outcome of their VMMC; most (95%) reported that their female partners were satisfied with their circumcision. Two thirds (67%) reported enjoying sex more after VMMC and most were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied (94%) with sexual intercourse after VMMC. Sexual function improved and reported sex-induced coital injuries decreased significantly in most men after VMMC.

For someone like me who is greatly in favor of circumcision, this is great news. While it is only a survey study rather than a research study, it still provides evidence that circumcision is even better than the scientific community thought. However, that’s just not how science moves. Find me another several dozen studies like this using a variety of methods, and if they show a trend that confirms the results here, then I’ll start believing it. But as things stand now? I can’t make the leap. There is a standing body of evidence that says circumcision doesn’t affect sensitivity or sensation one way or the other; for every study that reports positive results, there’s one that reports negative results (and more often, studies report mixed or push results).

Round-Up is not in plant DNA

I wrote the following in response to someone on social media who said Round-Up gets into the DNA of GM crops. Several other people in the same thread made the same claim. I know a great number of people out there believe a whole host of things about genetically modified organisms for one reason or another. In most cases, the people don’t have a basic background in the issues at hand. That would be fine if the topic stayed on safety – we can all read the summaries of scientific papers – but time and time again, people insist on making outlandish claims that betray an ignorance of biology. Here’s what I wrote:

DNA is composed of four nucleotides: guanine, cytosine, adenine, and thymine (plus a few things to help glue it all together). These are the molecules that compose that double-helix structure we all know so well. Guanine (G) and cytosine (C) bond while adenine (A) and thymine (T) bond. Each strand of the double helix has some given order of these letters (GAACATTAC) that goes on for some time. The corresponding strand has the matching letters (CTTGTAATG). These are called base pairs. Every three base pairs correspond to an amino acid. TGG, for example, corresponds to the familiar tryptophan we find in our turkey every Thanksgiving.

That’s a crash course in what DNA is. Next, it’s necessary to understand what a gene is (on a biological level). Knowing that DNA is composed of nucleotides that form an amino acid every three base pairs, we can understand what a gene is. Those base pairs continue to form a double helix structure between start and stop codons. These are specific sequences of 3 base pairs which indicate where a gene begins and ends:

AUG GAC TGA AAA GCG TAG

The start codon is AUG and the stop codon is TAG here. All the letters in between code for amino acids. (Those letters tend to get into the hundreds or thousands.) These amino acids are folded into a specific 3D shape that catalyzes reactions. If there is some sort of error anywhere along the line, the 3D shape won’t form correctly and thus won’t work. That’s what Round-Up does to most plants. If you spray it on some weeds in the cracks of your driveway, you’ve inhibited the synthesis of necessary amino acids plants use. Without those amino acids, the ultimate 3D structure is mal-formed, if it forms at all.

I’ve bored you with all this because I want to be clear: Round-Up is not present in the DNA of GMOs. GMOs are able to synthesize the aforementioned amino acids via a naturally occurring gene that has been inserted into them.

In other words, the active ingredient in Round-Up is glyphosate. This is not a nucleotide and it does not attach to or compose DNA. It attaches to a specific enzyme (which is produced by DNA) and inhibits a pathway that is only found in plants. (That is, a given enzyme is needed to catalyze a given process, but it is inhibited from doing so. It’s similar to a key being needed to open a door, but someone has stuffed the keyhole with other junk. You aren’t opening that door.) As a result, a number of necessary amino acids cannot be synthesized, causing the plant to die. GM crops have a slightly different enzyme, however. Recall that enzymes form specific 3D shapes. The enzyme in GM crops form a different shape than the enzyme in other crops. That means the glyphosate cannot attach, and thus it cannot inhibit the synthesis of those amino acids.

At no point is Round-Up a part of anything’s DNA. It couldn’t be. The double helix structure works with nucleotides. That’s just what DNA is. Glyphosate is a synthesized molecule which interrupts the enzymatic process of plants. Those interrupted enzymes are products of genes and they also contribute to the production of amino acids which are necessary for the replication of more genes.

Why circumcision is a very good thing

I’ve written numerous posts about circumcision and its benefits, but I want to write one more big one. My goal here is to gather together all the relevant information to the debate in one place. Certain myths need to be dispelled in some places while the details of arguments need to be laid out with ridiculous clarity; the anti-circumcision crowd is as stubborn as young Earth creationists. As such, this post isn’t so much directed towards the entrenched anti-circumcision folk as it is towards the people on the fence. Perhaps there are a few people out there who have simply bought into easy arguments, and so their commitment to their position can be swayed. I would equate these people with the occasional church patron that grows up learning the Universe is 6,000 years old, only to later shed that false belief when engaged on the matter. I hope I’m able to adequately mount a defense of circumcision and change the minds of any such people who end up reading this post.

There are several topics that should be addressed when discussing circumcision. Safety, efficacy, and ethics are the broad categories, and each one contains its share of details. Let’s start with safety.

Safety:

As with any surgery, complications are possible. The most common complication due to circumcision is minor bleeding, which can be fixed with a little bit of gauze. Infections occasionally happen, but they’re rare. Circumcision should always be done under sterile conditions to maintain this rarity. (That means the Rabbis and other non-medical professionals out there who do these things need to be stopped.)

Pain and Trauma:

A favorite of the anti-circumcision crowd is to find awful looking restraining devices doctors use to keep infants steady. Aside from the fact that those devices aren’t the iron maidens people make them out to be, circumcision needn’t be painful in the least. Any search will find a mix of estimates for how frequently anesthesia is used during circumcisions, but it is certainly used a majority of the time, and its use is always increasing. Any parent worried about the pain their baby may feel can simply request anesthesia be used. This 100% addresses any pain argument the anti-circumcision crowd wants to raise. Indeed, it also addresses any trauma argument they wish to raise, but it isn’t necessary for that purpose. Trauma is something which has lasting physical or psychological damage. Since no infant can possibly remember being circumcised, there’s no way any amount of pain could be traumatic here. Moreover, the pain of being squeezed through a vaginal canal just days earlier is clearly much more significant than any minor medical procedure.

Nerve Ending Hypothesis:

There is a popular hypothesis that because the foreskin has 10,000 to 20,000 nerve endings, any removal of it must affect sensitivity. It makes sense and it’s worth investigating. Unfortunately, it’s that investigation aspect that many in the anti-circumcision crowd don’t like; for many, the hypothesis is conclusive. Occasionally, though, they may point to a study or two they incidentally find – so long as it supports their beliefs, of course. These studies (which are usually actually just subjective surveys) sometimes indicate decreased sensitivity in circumcised men. Other times, they show just the opposite. (The anti-circumcision crowd ignores those.) Mostly, though, they show statistically insignificant differences. Moreover, the better studies and meta-analyses out there show the same wash. Since science operates on bodies of evidence rather than individual studies – if you can’t repeat your data, it’s bullshit – the correct conclusion here is that not only is there no body of evidence that circumcision decreases sensitivity, but there is actually an active body of evidence which shows it has no effect.

Efficacy:

This is where the majority of this debate centers. It isn’t enough to look at all the evidence and conclude that circumcision is low-risk, painless, non-traumatic, and inconsequential in sexual sensitivity and performance. That’s all great, but none of that adds up to a reason to circumcise someone, much less to implement it as a public health policy. What we need is data which show circumcision offers some sort of benefit. You’ll never guess what we’ve had for the better part of a decade.

Three randomized control studies were undertaken and completed between 2005 and 2007. These studies looked at the effect of circumcision on HIV transmission rates from women to men during heterosexual intercourse. (Prior to these studies there was a body of observational studies which indicated a likely link between circumcision and HIV, but it wasn’t nearly concrete enough to enact any type of policy.) These studies concluded that circumcision significantly reduces HIV transmission in the aforementioned context; one study went so far as to compare the reduction to what would be achieved by “a vaccine of high efficacy”. Between the studies, the relative risk reduction was 60%.

Relative versus Absolute

For some time I had an anti-circumcision troll around here. He enjoyed raising the issue of relative risk versus absolute risk. I’m not sure he understood the difference, though. Whereas the relative risk reduction for circumcised males was found to be 60%, the absolute risk reduction is between 1.3% and 1.8%. Choosing the latter of these numbers is a good way to muddle the discussion. Here’s what these numbers mean.

Relative risk reduction is how much a given treatment, behavior, or characteristic reduces a given risk in one group versus another. This is the number that matters most of the time in lay terms. Absolute risk reduction, on the other hand, looks at an entire population and takes into account its susceptibility to some given condition. For instance, most people aren’t going to get the flu. It doesn’t matter whether a person has the vaccine or not. Odds are low that he or she will catch anything. That’s why anti-vaccine quacks love to use absolute numbers. The flu vaccine is generally somewhere near 60% effective, but absolute numbers are closer to 1.5%. That isn’t an argument against getting vaccinated, though.

Problems with the Studies

The three aforementioned studies were robust and have been largely accepted by the scientific community. The WHO, UNAIDS, the CDC, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and a dozen and a half African health ministries have all embraced their results. Of course, that isn’t going to stop the anti-circumcision crowd from coming up with something to question. Most commonly, the issues raised are non-issues. For instance, I’ve frequently seen the point raised that condoms are more effective. This is like when a creationist tries to argue against evolution by talking about the Big Bang. It just isn’t on topic. Other issues include the region where the studies took place, the early termination of the studies, and control and intervention groups being treated differently. Let’s start with where these studies took place.

It should first be noted that, as I mentioned earlier, there is a large body of observational studies on the effectiveness of circumcision in HIV transmission reduction. This body is global; what it indicated panned out in these trials. Second, Africa is massive. Uganda and Kenya are neighbors, but South Africa isn’t even close. These places have commonalities, but they are also significantly different in a host of aspects, including culturally. Repeated results across a wide swath of area cannot be simply dismissed out of hand: the limited region of each individual study could be a confounding factor, but when taken as a whole, the studies necessarily reduce any potential confounding factor due to regional affect.

Each study was halted early on ethical grounds. The results were so overwhelming, the monitoring boards for each study had no choice but to put an end to the trials and recommend that all the uncircumcised men be circumcised. Regardless, the studies still all lasted between about a year and a half and two years. Potential bias as a result of these abrupt endings were taken into account. From the Kenya study:

Because the Data and Safety Monitoring Board recommended to stop the trial after the intermediate analysis, it was not possible to follow all the participants as initially planned, and, as a consequence, only those participants recruited at the beginning had a full follow-up. This potential bias was taken into account by adjusting the analysis for the recruitment period; such an adjustment cannot fully account for the confounding effect associated with partial follow-up. When restricting the analysis to those participants who had a full follow-up, the intervention had an effect that was similar in size and significance, suggesting that this potential bias had a negligible impact.

Another common complaint is that a large number of participant follow-ups were lost due to the early terminations. The effect was likely negligible since the numbers actually weren’t that significant for these type of studies, plus many of the follow-ups were actually lost for reasons unrelated to HIV infection (such as moving from the area). Knowing this is one of the benefits of having actually read the studies rather than agenda-driven websites.

Finally, I frequently come across Internet comments that declare the control and intervention group were treated differently. The claim is that the intervention (circumcised) group was given education, condoms, and counseling over and above what the control group was given. This is simply a lie. I’m not sure of its origin, but I’ve seen it enough that I feel it deserves to be killed. The groups were given and/or offered consistent treatment. The only reason to say otherwise is for the same reason Lyndon Johnson told one of his aides to spread the story that one of his opponents fornicated with pigs. He knew it wasn’t true, but if he could make the other guy deny it, he would be giving it credence by simply addressing it. As usual, I’m willing to forgo the public perception in favor of assuming a literate readership.

How It Works

The evidence is in when it comes to circumcision, but how it works is still up for question. One hypothesis says that the foreskin offers a relatively damp environment that is friendly to various pathogens. Another hypothesis says that Langerhans cells are a target of HIV, causing them to act as a vector. Since the relatively thin foreskin has these cells, that means there is an increased surface area and number of these cells where HIV can attach.

Other Benefits

Circumcision has been found to have a host of other health benefits (.pdf). UTI’s are decreased among newborns, penile cancers are reduced, general infections are reduced, and HPV is 30% less prevalent. One study from 1954 to 1997 that looked at cases of invasive penile cancer found that 87 out of 89 (98%) of the men were uncircumcised. Other studies have found a 30% decrease in contracting herpes.

Developed World Efficacy

The CDC has recently come out as endorsing circumcision has a healthy decision for parents to make. It’s a one time cost for a procedure with a low incidence rate of what are only minor complications anyway. The child feels no pain, there is no trauma, sensation isn’t affected at sexual maturation, and a host of diseases are reduced. If the CDC didn’t stop short of recommending circumcision as a health policy for political reasons, then they only did it because STD’s are not an epidemic in the United States. But, then, neither is the flu.

Condoms and Hygiene

The anti-circumcision crusader may get to this point and say, “Fine, even if everything to this point is true, it’s still undeniable that condoms, education, and basic hygiene can best take care of the major health issues raised here where Africa is concerned.” And that’s fair enough. Condoms are 97-99% effective at preventing sexual transmitted diseases. Retracting the foreskin and washing with soap and water will prevent most (maybe even all) infection. But this is a poor understanding of reality.

Let’s start with condom use. Even with wide spread education campaigns, millions of Americans have unprotected sex with untested partners every single day. STD’s are still transmitted here and teen pregnancy (and other unintended pregnancies) still exist. It strikes me as near-racist to assume that we can throw education and condoms at people in Africa and get great results. They aren’t monkeys we first worlders get to train. People in Africa will largely behave how people around the globe behave. Some will use condoms. Some won’t. Some will be willing but unable. Sometimes people run out of condoms and want to have sex. Sometimes they will have sex where they don’t happen to keep their condoms. Sometimes they want to take a risk because it feels better. The “they” here is global.

It’s obviously true that condoms and education are key components in the fight against HIV. However, we should never limit ourselves to one option simply because it may be the most effective option. This fight isn’t a zero sum game; we can – and should – use every tool available. Doing so will literally save lives.

As for hygiene, even with rigorous cleaning practices, infections can still happen. I have a friend who got circumcised in his early 20’s for this exact reason. He showered every day and was specific about his cleaning regimen, but he still had issues. That won’t be the case for everyone, but it will certainly be the case for many. It’s far easier to entirely prevent this issue after birth than to force men to see doctors later in life for something that needn’t be an issue.

Ethics

The anti-circumcision crowd has lost on the scientific front. Circumcision protects against HIV and other STD’s. It reduces penile cancers and other infections. It doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t alter sensitivity. Aside from the minor risks of surgery (which exist largely by virtue of what surgery is in the first place), it literally has zero physiological drawbacks. That leaves the anti-circumcision folks with limited recourse in the debate. Enter the ethical argument.

There is effectively only one ethical argument against circumcision. It isn’t a good one, but it does have a basis in established ethical theory. However, before I address that argument, I want to address a common philosophical argument I hear. It isn’t technically about ethics, but we’re in the same ballpark. It’s the argument that says removing the foreskin in order to protect against disease is like removing a foot to prevent foot cancer or gout. Eventually, the argument usually ends with the suggestion of death in order to prevent all disease. Even without the especially absurd end, this is nothing more than an argumentum ad absurdum. Removing a piece of skin which has no discernible function and the loss of which has no negative consequence is not the same as removing a significant body part or altering the body in a way which affects quality of life negatively.

The primary ethical argument against circumcision – the argument from bodily autonomy – is slightly better. This argument says that it is wrong to permanently alter a person’s body without their consent for non-medically necessary reasons. That means a haircut is fine, or even a piercing (though there may be other objections to the latter). Indeed, any life-saving procedure is allowed under this argument. Like with most ethical arguments, there will be examples that raise gray areas (and those will generally come down to personal judgement calls more than anything), but there are certain things that are black and white. Tattooing one’s infant wouldn’t be allowed, for example. The child necessarily cannot consent and the procedure is absolutely not medically necessary, so there is not justification for it.

With circumcision, it is true that the procedure is not medically necessary. All the benefits laid out above are still very much true, but that doesn’t make the procedure necessary. A person who doesn’t get circumcised can live a perfectly happy life, free from all sexually transmitted diseases and infections. Indeed, billions have done and are currently doing it. Furthermore, it cannot be reversed. Once that foreskin is gone, it’s gone. Some people will say it can be returned, but it will simply be extra skin, at best.

Now let’s make a comparison.

Vaccines are some of the greatest achievements of science. Everyone should get at least the basic vaccines we expect people in the 21st century to have. And for those who live in certain areas or travel to certain areas, a number of other vaccines are recommended. For instance, I have a vaccine for yellow fever because I visited Tanzania about 5 years ago. If I visit any similarly at-risk location 5 years from now, I’ll get a booster shot first. All that said: vaccines are not medically necessary. Again, they’re fantastic and everyone should get them. Public policy should dictate all students must get them. These are things which save lives. But, again, they are not medically necessary. Even when polio was a significant public health concern, very few people actually died from the disease. Only a small minority of the population ever contracted it, and of that small minority, only a minority became sick at all. It was great when a vaccine became widely available. Lives were saved. But being unvaccinated did not put someone at active risk of sickness or death; being unvaccinated was a passive risk. This exactly mirrors the issue with circumcision. Furthermore, vaccines cause permanent change to the body via the addition of anti-bodies. This again mirrors the permanent change of circumcision.

The first counter to this comparison is generally to note that anti-bodies aren’t a visible change whereas removal of the foreskin is. The argument from bodily autonomy makes no such exception. The argument doesn’t say it’s wrong to permanently alter a person’s body without their consent unless you totally can’t see it. That would entirely gut the argument, making it into nothing more than a cosmetic argument. Something so superficial doesn’t pass any sort of ethical muster in my book. Besides, I’m not so sure the anti-circumcision crowd should be making a cosmetic argument anyway.

The second counter to the circumcision-vaccine comparison is to note that whereas vaccines add something to the body, circumcision actually removes something. I suppose that’s true, but I don’t see where such a distinction would matter within the argument from bodily autonomy. We can no more rid ourselves of anti-bodies than we can rejuvenate foreskin.

Before I reach the end of this post, I want to quickly recap the argument from bodily autonomy. The argument says it’s wrong to permanently alter a child’s body without his consent unless it’s for a medically necessary procedure. Neither circumcision nor vaccines are medically necessary. Both are highly effective and both save lives. Without either, we would have fewer people in the world, that’s for sure. However, neither one is required to live a long, happy, and healthy life. This, of course, is not an argument against either one. This is an argument against this incantation of the argument from bodily autonomy. That isn’t to say bodily autonomy isn’t important. It is. But it isn’t an argument that works under the auspices of libertarian ethics as applied to global health issues. That is, bodily autonomy is important because it is the best way to protect the individual and populations at-large; it isn’t important in and of itself/because it maintains liberty. (Dead people don’t have liberty.) Or to put it another way, bodily autonomy only works under a utilitarian framework.

Conclusion

This one is simple. Circumcision is a safe procedure that needn’t cause pain, doesn’t cause trauma (indeed, it can’t cause psychological trauma by definition), and it doesn’t affect sexual sensitivity, satisfaction, or performance. Furthermore, it reduces female-to-male HIV transmission, invasive penile cancers, UTI’s, STD’s, and general infections. Along with education and condom use, circumcision is a phenomenal tool in the fight against HIV; circumcision literally saves lives. The World Health Organization, UNAIDS, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a dozen and a half African health ministries, the CDC, and the AAP all support it as good health practice. The science and the ethics are in: Excepting for the minor (and rare) risks inherent with surgery by virtue of what it is, there are literally zero drawbacks to circumcision; when performed under sterile conditions and by medical professionals, circumcision increases the odds a boy will have a disease and infection free life.

Circumcision: The evidence still isn’t vanishing

Increasingly, circumcision is becoming a health policy in places where it is needed most. WHO, UNAIDS, and especially The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are some of the groups are the forefront of this fight against deadly diseases and infections. More recently we’ve seen American groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics come out in favor of circumcision. This is in large part due to three extremely strong studies that came out in 2006, but those were really just the final straw. Evidence has been building for the effectiveness of circumcision in fighting disease and infection since the late 70’s, and more specifically it has been building against fighting HIV since the late 80’s. The evidence is in: Circumcision helps protect against infections, penile cancer, and STD’s, including HIV. It’s an extremely important tool that should be promoted around the world. And so, as the debate quickly pivots from whether or not circumcision is effective to figuring out why it is so damn effective, more organizations are coming out in favor of it in ever stronger terms:

U.S. health officials on Tuesday released a draft of long-awaited federal guidelines on circumcision, saying medical evidence supports the procedure and health insurers should pay for it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines stop short of telling parents to have their newborn sons circumcised. That is a personal decision that may involve religious or cultural preferences, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin.

But “the scientific evidence is clear that the benefits outweigh the risks,” added Mermin, who oversees the agency’s programs on HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

I went into the circumcision debate many years ago without a dog in the fight. I was neither passionately against the practice nor fervently in favor of it; my general indifference parted greatly with what any Google search will show. However, as I began to hear more and more about the topic, and as I began to study global health issues more and more (especially during the time I was studying and volunteering my time in Haiti), I found my position slowly shifting. But it was indeed a very slow shift. With degrees in both biology and philosophy it was easy to be torn. The evidence had clearly tilted – at the least – in favor of circumcision, but what about the ethical arguments against it? I would need to resolve those concerns before I would support circumcision as a health policy. And that I did. The sole argument the anti-circumcision crowd has against circumcision is that it violates bodily autonomy. But so do other things which many in that crowd clearly support. Namely, vaccines can and do permanently change a person’s body for life without their consent. Looking at circumcision and vaccines, then, under the isolation of the argument from bodily autonomy, what’s the difference? They both change the body forever and neither is done with consent when done to infants/toddlers. The only responses I ever get to this is that vaccines are more effective or that the changes aren’t visible. Pshaw. They aren’t always more effective, and even where they are, so what? The argument from bodily autonomy doesn’t get to be put on the shelf when it’s convenient to ignore. The effectiveness of a procedure is irrelevant; all that matters is the necessity of the procedure. Vaccines and circumcision are both necessary to a healthier world, but neither is an absolute necessity to survival. Yes, more people will die without either, but that’s immaterial. And as for the changes being internal, I guess I wasn’t aware how aesthetics-focused the anti-circumcision crowd was.

I went on a bit of a rant there, but I hope it was effective. The ethical argument – singular, not plural – is weak. Yet the biological argument is strong. And as I learned more, it became quite clear that it was stronger than I initially thought. I freely admit that by the time I became involved in this debate (likely 2009, and as early as 2010 on NBS) I should have done all the proper research; I could have easily found myself where I am right now rather than going through a slow shift.

One of the things which always kept me tilted towards being pro-circumcision was the dogmatic attitude of the anti-circumcision crowd. It didn’t matter what evidence was presented to them, their ethical stance trumped everything. That would be fine, of course, since it would be a valid basis for opposition (even if I or anyone else disagrees with it). Unfortunately, this crowd has a habit of attacking perfectly valid science. PZ Myers did this back in 2011 when he said the following:

The health benefits. Total bullshit. As one of the speakers in the movie explains, there have been progressive excuses: from it prevents masturbation to it prevents cancer to it prevents AIDS. The benefits all vanish with further studies and are all promoted by pro-circumcision organizations. It doesn’t even make sense: let’s not pretend people have been hacking at penises for millennia because there was a clinical study. Hey, let’s chop off our pinkie toes and then go looking for medical correlations!

Emphasis mine. Clearly, whereas the organizations promoting circumcision as a health policy or recommendation have had a history of different positions on the matter, it’s ridiculous to say they’re inherently pro-circumcision. Moreover, the irony meter here is off the charts. The anti-circumcision crowd is incredibly vocal, despite being a scientific minority. Indeed, whereas the pro-circumcision groups came to their conclusions only after being presented with evidence, the anti-circumcision groups are composed entirely of people who oppose the practice on ethics first; they cherry-pick the science after the fact.

But that isn’t the important point here. As the title of this post says, the evidence of the benefits is not vanishing. It’s not vanishing with further studies. It’s not vanishing with time. It’s not vanishing at all. All we’ve been seeing is 1) more and more groups coming out in favor of the practice and 2) research focused on why it’s so effective. (Of course, all this criticism is coming from a guy who once had a debate with Jerry Coyne where he said that no evidence could ever convince him of the existence of God. While I share his lack of theistic belief, I don’t share his position here. I can’t imagine a more anti-scientific thing to say than that there is no possible evidence that could convince me of something. I could be convinced unicorns exist. I greatly doubt that will happen, but it’s possible; denying these possibilities when speaking in abstract terms is doltish.)

Anyway.

[The new guidelines] are likely to draw intense opposition from anti-circumcision advocacy groups, said Dr. Douglas Diekema, a Seattle physician who worked on a circumcision policy statement issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2012.

“This is a passionate issue for them and they feel strongly that circumcision is wrong,” said Diekema, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington.

Indeed, the head of one group did argue against the CDC’s conclusions on Tuesday, saying they minimize potential complications from the procedure.

The guidelines “are part of a long historical American cultural and medical bias to attempt to defend this traumatic genital surgery,” said, Ronald Goldman, executive director of the Circumcision Resource Center.

Notice the name of the anti-circumcision group in that quote: Circumcision Resource Center. Hmm, what other group of people try desperately to sound legitimate despite everything they hold dear? Perhaps it’s the people who run sites and groups like Evolution News and the Discovery Institute and the Geoscience Research Institute – creationist groups. Honestly, I’m not sure who should be insulted more by this association.

True facts about the octopus

This guy’s videos are always as informing as they are entertaining.

Circumcision as a public health policy

At this point it has been established that circumcision reduces female-to-male HIV transmission rates by around 60%. Like it or not, the science is in. Now the question has shifted to being about why it reduces transmission, as well as how we can best introduce circumcision has a public health policy. On the first point, the general answer is that the foreskin is a relatively large surface area subject to tearing and softer (non-keratinized) skin. On the second point, though, I wasn’t aware of any actual policies in place to save the lives of men and women in regions particularly vulnerable to the spread of HIV. As it turns out, multiple sub-Saharan countries have undertaken measures to dramatically increase circumcision rates – though much work is still required:

Zambia is still 75 per cent short of its target of two million circumcisions by 2015. So is Uganda, having completed 1.5 million towards its 4.1 million target. Kenya has achieved its target in numbers – but not among the “right” men.

The donors who are pouring cash into male circumcision following the landmark 2006 study which showed that it reduced the risk of HIV infection by 60 per cent, have neglected a crucial factor – the attitude of women.

A man who gets circumcised is often viewed as a man who is looking to sleep around as much as possible. And, indeed, this has become something of a problem, as HIV rates in some areas have remained steady. This may also be due to men not waiting the necessary 6 week healing period – 40% of newly circumcised men had sex while still healing, actually resulting in an increase in their likelihood of contracting HIV. Furthermore, we may be seeing the problem of moral hazards at play. This is where risk is reduced for one thing or another, so people are less cautious in return. Some examples are playground materials and car safety. In playgrounds, children are often getting hurt as much if not more than in previous years because they’re playing on soft wood chips or rubber, leading them to believe they can fall harder and get hurt less. With cars, safety has greatly increased and deaths have fallen, but accidents remain steady or on the rise. People with seat belts are willing to speed more than those without them.

But the real problem in these sub-Saharan nations is a lack of education and peer support:

Carol Musimami, one of 30 “technical advisers” who counsel the men, said: “You will see the older ones come after dark. They don’t want to be with the youth. We are targeting the 25 to 35-year-olds –they are the ones with the money, they buy the women, they are exposing themselves [to infection]. But they are hard to get. They don’t want others to know,” she says.

Leadership is key. In Kenya, the circumcision programme in Nyanza province in the west – one of the three centres in the landmark 2006 trial that proved its effectiveness – was faltering when Raila Odinga, the Prime Minister and a member of the non-circumcising Luo tribe, responded to protests from tribal elders fearing the loss of their identity by declaring: “We don’t lead with our foreskins, we lead with other faculties. This is a medical issue.”

The speech, in 2008, proved a pivotal moment and more than 500,000 Luos have since been circumcised.

This is a major issue in global health. Science can find all sorts of answers to major problems, but that doesn’t mean it’s all just a matter of policy implementation after that. For instance, Jimmy Carter and WHO launched a campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease in 20 African nations in the 1980’s. The primary approach to this was to make sure people had clean drinking water. With funding, wells were built and larvacide was added. However, one of the biggest pushes was to get people to drink clean water was to give them simple cloth filters. Unfortunately, this came with two problems. One was simply logistical: the filters clogged. The other was that the cloth material was too aesthetically pleasing, so people would often use them as decorative items. When the Carter Center, Precision Fabrics, and DuPont worked together to distribute plain nylon cloth filters (and education), the problem quickly shrank. There were 3.5 million cases of Guinea worm disease in 1986. As of 2005, the number had dropped to 11,000. This underlines the need for cultural understanding in addition to the simple cold science of the matter. Greater peer interaction and promotion of circumcision may be the key in getting places like Zambia to that 2 million goal.

At any rate, I’m very pleased to hear about these ongoing efforts to spread circumcision in developing nations in order to curb the spread of HIV. This is a triumph of common sense, global health initiatives, science, and basic humanity.

Cell type, HIV transmission, and circumcision

This is taken from a paper I did in a capstone course for my undergrad studies. I happened to come across it recently and I thought it would be interesting to post here.

Cell type matters in HIV infection. Transmission is higher amongst homosexual men who engage in rectal intercourse where the cells there are different as compared to cells on the genitals. Thin columnar epithelium that lines the rectum is assumed to facilitate the transmission of HIV; thick stratified squamous epithelium lines the vaginal and oral mucosa and appears to transfer protective properties against HIV acquisition. Video image analysis has shown that the latter is nine to twelve times thicker than the former [2]. In addition, intercourse causes more severe trauma to the former, thus allowing viruses better access not only beyond the mucosa, but, for the rectum, a richer bed of blood vessels.

Keratinized cells are a known protector against HIV. Like the body surface of a scorpion, they prevent attachment and entry of foreign agents. In both circumcised and uncircumcised men a keratinized, stratified squamous epithelium covers the penile shaft and outer surface of the foreskin. This acts as a protective barrier against HIV. However, the inner mucosal surface of the foreskin is not keratinized [1]. Furthermore, this surface is rich with Langerhans’ cells, cells which have been associated with higher rates of HIV infection due to their expression of CD4 glycoprotein which bind directly to gpl20 on the surface of HIV [2]. Since the foreskin is pulled back during intercourse, the surface area containing Langerhans’ cells is increased, thus giving HIV more opportunities to infect a host.

Observational studies back up the hypothesis that circumcised men are less susceptible to HIV infection. A 1989 study found uncircumcised men to be over 8 times more likely to be infected versus circumcised men [3]. A 1996 Ugandan study compared HIV infection between religious groups. Once abstinence, alcohol consumption, and number of sexual partners were accounted for, it was found that the likely reason Muslim men had lower rates of HIV infection versus other religious groups was due to higher rates of circumcision [4]. A 1999 study found that circumcision amongst rural Ugandans provided significant protection against HIV infection, but only if it occurred prior to the age of 20 [5].

Another 1999 study looked interviewed close to 200 uncircumcised men and close to 200 circumcised men. Amongst non-Muslims, circumcised men were found to have a greater risk profile than uncircumcised men. That is, those who were circumcised engaged in riskier behavior and had more partners on average. However, particular sex practices and hygienic behaviors were not notably different, and so they did not account for the higher risk of HIV infection amongst uncircumcised men [6].

~~~

The paper continues with a discussion germane to the requirements for the particular assignment, so I won’t reproduce any more here. However, it should be noted that the science on the matter does continue into more recent years, resulting in most major health organizations (WHO, UNAIDS, etc) supporting male circumcision in developing nations as one valuable method in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Citations:

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127372/?tool=pubmed

2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383923/pdf/immunology00069-0131.pdf

3. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673689905898
4. Kiwanuka, Noah; Gray R., Sewankambo N.K., Serwadda D., Wawer M., Li C. (7–12 July 1996). “International Conference AIDS.”. Religion, behaviours, and circumcision as determinants of HIV dynamics in rural Uganda. Vancouver, British Columbia. Retrieved 2008-09-25

5. Kelly R, Kiwanuka N, Wawer MJ, et al (February 1999). “Age of male circumcision and risk of prevalent HIV infection in rural Uganda”. AIDS 13 (3): 399–405.

6. Bailey RC, Neema S, Othieno R (November 1999). “Sexual behaviors and other HIV risk factors in circumcised and uncircumcised men in Uganda”. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 22 (3): 294–301.

Those poor devils

Tasmanian devils are notoriously nasty, even to each other. They have teeth and aren’t afraid to use them. As a result, they tend to bite and nip at the faces of their brethren. And unfortunately, this has resulted in the spread of a contagious form of cancer that has wiped out 70% of the population.

But there is good news. Researchers have discovered that the reason the tumors are able to spread so efficiently (escaping immune system detection) is that its cells lack major histocompatibility complex molecules, or MHC molecules. The Tasmanian devil’s immune system can’t ‘see’ what’s coming. This, of course, isn’t unique amongst cancer cells, but what is a little different is that these MHC molecules aren’t simply broken via mutation. They are actually turned off due to regulation. This means they are intact and can be turned back on. (It also means that, in conjunction with the contagious factor, it wouldn’t be inappropriate to consider this cancer a separate organism, however parasitic.)

There is hope for the Tasmanian devil, albeit far down the road. Until then, quarantine and luck are the only viable solutions for saving this animal from extinction.

Do those pills really work?

I opened my email this morning to find that I was the lucky recipient of not one but seven spam emails from ‘Sammy in Tucson’ advising me that in a mere “fiive” days I could grow 2-5 inches. Of course, I immediately marked the emails as spam and carried on with my day. But then I got to thinking: Surely someone believes these scams, paying out a bunch of money for something they’ll never get (whether it be an actual product or the results they desire). Perhaps a science-based post is in order.

(Let me take a moment to note that I will be using terms such as “member”. I want to avoid this post simply being something that shows up in someone’s late-night personal-time searches.)

So first thing’s first: size. The average male member is usually measured between 5.1 and 5.7 inches when erect, depending upon the study. When men are self-measuring and/or reporting, the studies tend to have higher numbers, sometimes closing in on the 6.5 inch mark. In the research I’ve done for this post, I haven’t seen anything with a range that goes below 5 inches. However, I believe it is reasonable to suspect an average that does dip below that point: in all these studies, men can be asked to volunteer on a random basis, but that doesn’t mean the sample is truly random. It may be that men with larger members will volunteer more frequently and/or men with smaller members shy away from adding to the statistics. Though this may be one view to counter that speculation:

For those interested, the extremes range from over 13 inches to well under 1 inch, with anything under 3 inches being deemed a micromember (remember, “member” is a substitute word here). Also, here’s a non-scientific site designed to visualize comparisons, NSFW.

So now the question is, whether 4 inches, 6 inches, 13 inches, or whatever, do the pills from Sammy in Tucson really work? The short answer: no. The longer answer is, there really isn’t a good biological reason why they would work. Let me explain.

The male member is composed of different types of erectile tissue, the most relevant of which is corpus cavernosum. It’s a sponge-like region that fills with the majority of blood that brings a member from flaccid to erect. There isn’t a good reason why one should expect a chemical substance to be so specific as to target this type of tissue over other types. Hell, we have enough trouble keeping cancer treatments specific to the out-of-control cells that form tumors and kill people every day. What makes anyone rightly think that we’ve perfected a treatment that can target tissue and cells that will cause a male member to permanently increase in size?

Now, if that isn’t enough for you, consider this. Pretty much all the pills one sees on infomercials at 4 in the morning will have some sort of label indicating that the FDA hasn’t reviewed them. Moreover, there’s never any independent research that shows efficacy. And besides all that, take note of how these companies use phrases like “that certain part of a man” or talk about how their product will “increase confidence and performance”. They aren’t trying to avoid showing up in the wrong types of searches. It’s likely they’re just playing some technical legal dance.

So, no, you and/or your partner will not see an increase in member size thanks to any pill. There’s no good biological reason to think these products make a difference, and even if there was, there’s no data to back up such a hypothesis.