PZ has a post about circumcision where he goes through the arguments in favor of the procedure based upon a video. (I haven’t watched the video nor will I because from what I gather it’s just a hack piece which does not focus on circumcision as performed by medical professionals in a medical setting.) Two of the arguments he quotes are apparently from a single guy and should just be boiled down to one: ’cause religion says to do it. Another one appeals to tradition, which is also a bogus argument, but then PZ has this last one:
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!
PZ is wrong. The evidence has not suddenly vanished that circumcision prevents the transmission of HIV in high risk groups. Furthermore, it is blatantly invalid to dismiss this evidence because it may be used by pro-circumcision organizations, whatever those are.
If PZ wants to argue that circumcision holds little to no health benefits in places like the United States and other low risk nations for certain diseases, he can do that and be perfectly accurate. But if he wants to argue that circumcision has zero benefits in all circumstances, then he is in denial of the preliminary evidence.
Nothing But Science 