YWB BILLBOARD IS UP!

Botched circumcision sparks protests in Multan 11/1/2017

https://tribune.com.pk/story/1546215/1-botched-circumcision-sparks-protests-multan/

WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cutting-young-girls-isnt-religious-freedom-1503617269

Boys and girls alike

https://aeon.co/essays/are-male-and-female-circumcision-morally-equivalent

Circumcision Permanently Alters the Brain

http://www.circumcision.org/brain.htm

Circumcision Permanently Alters the Brain

The surgery subjected the infant to significant trauma.

Two of my physics professors at Queen's University (Dr. Stewart & Dr. McKee) in Kingston, Ontario, Canada were the original developers of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) for medical applications. They and a number of other Queen's physicists also worked on improving the accuracy of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for observing metabolic activity within the human body.
As a graduate student working in the Dept. of Epidemiology in 1998, I was approached by a group of nurses who were attempting to organize a protest against male infant circumcision in Kingston General Hospital. They said that their observations indicated that babies undergoing the procedure were subjected to significant and inhumane levels of pain that subsequently adversely affected their behaviors. They said that they needed some scientific support for their position. It was my idea to use fMRI and/or PET scanning to directly observe the effects of circumcision on the infant brain.
The operator of the MRI machine in the hospital was a friend of mine, and he agreed to allow us to use the machine for research after normal operational hours. We also found a nurse who was under intense pressure by her husband to have her newborn son circumcised, and she was willing to have her son to be the subject of the study. Her goal was to provide scientific information that would eventually be used to ban male infant circumcision. Since no permission of the ethics committee was required to perform any routine male infant circumcision, we did not feel it was necessary to seek any permission to carry out this study.
We tightly strapped an infant to a traditional plastic "circumstraint" using Velcro restraints. We also completely immobilized the infant's head using standard surgical tape. The apparatus was then introduced into the MRI chamber. The infant's head was in the chamber while the lower part of the infant's body was accessible to the doctor performing the circumcision. Since no metal objects could be used because of the high magnetic fields, the doctor  used a plastic bell with a sterilized obsidian bade to cut the foreskin. No anesthetic was used.
The baby was kept in the machine for several minutes to generate baseline data of the normal metabolic activity in the brain. This was used to compare to the data gathered during and after the surgery. Analysis of the MRI data indicated that the surgery subjected the infant to significant trauma. The greatest changes occurred in the limbic system concentrating in the amygdala and in the frontal and temporal lobes.A neurologist who saw the results postulated that the data indicated that circumcision affected most intensely the portions of the victim's brain associated with reasoning, perception and emotions. Follow up tests on the infant one day, one week and one month after the surgery indicated that the child's brain never returned to its baseline configuration. In other words, the evidence generated by this research indicated that the brain of the circumcised infant was permanently changed by the surgery.Our problems began when we attempted to publish our findings in the open medical literature. All of the participants in the research including myself were called before the hospital discipline committee and were severely reprimanded. We were told that while male circumcision was legal under all circumstances in Canada, according to their dubious interpretation of the ethical regulations, any attempt to study the adverse effects of circumcision was prohibited. Not only could we not publish the results of our research, but we also had to destroy all of our results. If we refused to comply, we were all threatened with immediate dismissal and legal action.
I would encourage anyone with access to fMRI and /or PET scanning machines to repeat our research as described above, confirm our results, and then publish the results in the open literature. 

Paul D. Tinari, Ph.D.
Director
Pacific Institute for Advanced Study

Foreskin facecream endorsed by Oprah

Does Female Genital Mutilation Have Health Benefits? The Problem with Medicalizing Morality

http://quillette.com/2017/08/15/female-genital-mutilation-health-benefits-problem-medicalizing-morality/

COLORADO MOM wants Taxpayers to foot the bill for genital cutting

http://www.denverpost.com/2011/06/22/medicaid-will-stop-covering-circumcisions-in-colorado/

"CIRCUMCISION IS A SCAR ON THE SOUL"

"CIRCUMCISION IS A SCAR ON THE SOUL" The conclusion of researchers at the Department of Psychology and Philosophy, Universiteit Gent, Belgium. Both are members of the UZGent Medical Ethics Committee. Their article was published in De Standaard, a Belgian newspaper, on July 4, 2017. Google translation.
http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20170703_02955289

HLN/CNN Intactivism makes it to MSM (main stream media)! Baby dimple controversy

Video: https://www.facebook.com/HLN/videos/1508492265863502/

News article: http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/07/05/this-mother-protests-circumcision-so-she-says-she-pierced-her-babys-cheek-instead/?utm_content=buffer5445a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Why do such young and healthy American men need so much Viagra?

The Phony Phimosis Diagnosis

http://www.drmomma.org/2010/01/phony-phimosis-diagnosis.html?m=1

AAP policy on circumcising unhealthy infants

DR. STEPHEN R. GLICKEN CUT OFF SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF BABY'S PENIS DURING CIRCUMCISION

*** February 24, 2017 Times Leader REPORTS DR. STEPHEN R. GLICKEN CUT OFF SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF BABY'S PENIS DURING CIRCUMCISION ***



http://timesleader.com/news/637695/suit-doctor-cut-off-significant-portion-of-newborns-penis

Circumcision: Identity, Gender And Power

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miriam-pollack/circumcision-identity-gen_b_1132896.html

Female Circumcision Is Becoming More Popular in Malaysia

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/female-circumcision-is-becoming-more-popular-in-malaysia

Female Circumcision Is Becoming More Popular in Malaysia

MK

MARTA KASZTELAN

 

Feb 20 2015, 10:50am

In a recent study, 93 percent of Malaysian Muslim women admitted to being circumcised. We took a look at what's driving this painful boom.

I meet 19-year-old Syahiera Atika at the mall. She spends most Sundays prowling Kuala Lumpur's mega malls like other women her age, but as she eagerly points out she's also different. Syahiera is a modern incarnation of Malay culture: She happily embraces Western-style capitalism, while at the same time strictly following the local interpretation of Islam. And as she proudly informs me, that also means she's circumcised.

19 year-old Syahiera Atika (center), poses with her friends in front of a Kuala Lumpur mall

"I'm circumcised because it is required by Islam," she says. The Malay word she uses is wajib, meaning any religious duty commanded by Allah. Syahiera is aware of how female circumcision is perceived in the West, but rejects any notion that it's inhumane. "I don't think the way we do it here is harmful," she says. "It protects young girls from premarital sex as it is supposed to lower their sex drive. But I am not sure it always works." She giggles at this thought.

Female circumcision, as you may know, involves surgically removing part or all of a woman's clitoris, which is classified as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) by the World Health Organization. FGM has no medical benefits whatsoever, and a WHO fact sheet says that it "reflects deep-rooted inequality between the sexes, and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women." In 2012 the United Nations General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution calling it a "human rights violation" and urged nations to ban the practice.

A mother and daughter stand in the waiting room at the private Global Ikhwan clinic. Women from all over the region visit the Islamic clinic where FGM is performed regularly

Regardless of how cruel FGM is, the majority of Muslim women in Malaysia are, like Syahiera, circumcised. A 2012 study conducted by Dr. Maznah Dahlui, an associate professor at the University of Malaya's Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, found that 93 percent of Muslim women surveyed had been circumcised. Dahlui also discovered that the procedure is increasingly performed by trained medical professionals in private clinics, instead of by traditional circumcision practitioners called Ma Bidans.

Dahlui insists Malaysia's version of female circumcision is less invasive than some types practiced around the world—she says it involves a needle prick to the clitoral hood and is performed on girls between the ages of one and six. However, as I discovered, more invasive procedures are also widespread. 

Obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Mighilia of the Global Ikhwan private clinic located in Rawang, north of Kuala Lumpur, admitted that she performs a more drastic version with a needle or scissors. "I just take a needle and slit off the top of the clitoris, but it is very little," she said. "Just one millimeter." 

Dr. Mighilia demonstrates how she performs female circumcisions with scissors

Genital mutilation isn't banned in Malaysia, although public hospitals are prevented from performing the surgery. In 2009 the Fatwa Committee of Malaysia's National Council of Islamic Religious Affairs ruled that female circumcision was obligatory for all Muslim women, unless it was harmful.

That's not to say, however, that all Malaysians support it. Syarifatul Adibah, who is the Senior Programme Officer at Sisters in Islam, a local women's rights group, insists that sunat (Malaysian for circumcision) isn't once mentioned in the Quran. Instead she points to its popularity as stemming from an increasingly conservative interpretation of Islam.

"Previously it was a cultural practice, but now, because of Islamization, people just relate everything to Islam," she said. "And when you link something to religion, people here follow it blindly." 

According to Adibah, FGM became more socially acceptable in 2012, when the Ministry of Health announced it was developing guidelines to reclassify the procedure as medical. To her, this misleads people into thinking mutilation is medically sound. "If you come up with the guidelines and you medicalize it this means you're OK with it, despite it having no medical benefit," she said. (The Ministry of Health did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

Not that the "medicalization" of female genital mutilation is unique to Malaysia—the practice was recently identified as a new "disturbing trend" by the UNFPA, UNICEF, the International Confederation of Midwives, and the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics.

But some Malaysians believe that international organizations like those shouldn't be telling them how to live. "The problem with the West is that it's just so judgmental," said Abdul Khan Rashid, a professor at Penang Medical College. "Who the hell are you to tell us what to practice and what not to practice? A lot of women now do it in private clinics in safe conditions, but if you're going to make it illegal, the practice will just go underground." 

Dr. Ariza Mohamed is a prominent member of the Islamic Medical Association of Malaysia, which condones "Holistic ,edicine based on Islam"

Malaysian medical practitioners also defend the practice by passing judgment onto other countries. "We are very much against what is going on in other countries like Sudan," said Dr. Ariza Mohamed, an obstetrician and gynecologist at KPJ Ampang Puteri Specialist Hospital in Kuala Lumpur. "That is very different from what we practice in Malaysia," she added. "And there is a big difference between circumcision and female genital mutilation."

Photos by Thomas Cristofoletti

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James Williams

http://circumcisionmovie.com/

Denmark’s 29,000 Doctors Declare Circumcision of Healthy Boys an “Ethically Unacceptable” Procedure Offering no Meaningful Health Benefits

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/denmarks-29000-doctors-declare-circumcision-of-healthy_us_58753ec1e4b08052400ee6b3?timestamp=1484242698606&utm_content=bufferb16bf&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

"MY SON'S PENIS WAS NOT THERE." A Memphis mom found out that circumcision is never routine.

https://www.facebook.com/caroleanne.masque/videos/555999991264207/?pnref=story

Study Links Circumcision to Personality Trait Disorder:

http://intactnews.org/node/131/1316710012/study-links-circumcision-personality-trait-disorder