If you visit a doctor who says no to circumcision would a Jewish doctor or Muslim doctor say yes?

Answer 1

No. Circumcision is not a recommended medical practice since it has no known medical benefits and has a number of significant medical risks including prolonged bleeding, infection, severe pain, and surgical error that can result in damage to the penis. For these reasons most physicians, including Jewish and Muslim physicians, recommend against circumcision. Furthermore, no major medical association recommends routine circumcision.

Circumcision can have long lasting consequences. Circumcision removes a normal part of the penis that functions to protect the glans of the penis. Removal of the foreskin can cause decreased sensitivity of the penis and decreased pleasure during sexual intercourse.

In the United States, circumcision is far less common now than it once was. During the 1970s and 1980, around 80% of male infants were circumcised in the United States. A study conducted in the United States from 2005-2007 found that circumcision rates had fallen to below 40% in most of the United States. In the western United States, fewer than 25% of infant males were circumcised in 2005-2007.

Answer:

The origin of Jewish circumcision is in the Torah. God told Abraham "every male among you shall be circumcised" (Gen. 17) as part of the covenant between God and the Jewish people.

Since that time, virtually all Jews have observed the command of circumcision (Genesis ch.17) for close to four millennia, even in times of religious persecution under the Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, Soviets and others. Circumcision is the indelible sign of God's covenant with Abraham and is just as important as Yom Kippur in terms of the stringency which the Torah places upon it. And similar to Yom Kippur, it is one of the observances which are common to Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews alike.

While we do not keep God's commands because of physical benefits, it is still interesting to note that:

Circumcision has been known to offer virtually complete protection from penile cancer. According to a recent review article in the New England Journal of Medicine, none of the over 1,600 persons studied with this cancer had been circumcised in infancy. In the words of researchers Cochen and McCurdy, the incidence of penile cancer in the U.S. is "essentially zero" among circumcised men.

Also, research at Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore have shown that circumcised men are six to eight times less likely to become infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Researchers believe that protection is due to the removal of the foreskin, which contains cells that have HIV receptors which scientists suspect are the primary entry point for the HIV virus. (Reuters, March 25, 2004)

Several studies reported that circumcised boys were between 10-to-39 times less likely to develop urinary tract infections during infancy than uncircumcised boys. In addition, circumcision protects against bacterial, fungal, and parasitic infections and a variety of other conditions related to hygiene. The extremely low rate of Cervical cancer in Jewish women (9-to-22 times less than among non-Jewish women) is thought to be related to the practice of circumcision.

As a result of studies like these, a number of prestigious medical organizations such as the California Medical Association have recognized the benefits of circumcision.

As an operation, circumcision has an extremely small complication rate. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine (1990) reported a complication rate of 0.19 percent when circumcision is performed by a physician. When performed by a trained mohel, the rate falls to 0.13 percent or about 1 in 800. When a complication occurs, it is usually due to the bleeding, which is easily correctable. No other surgical procedure can boast such figures for complication-free operations.

One reason why there are so few complications involving bleeding may be that the major clotting agents, prothrombin and vitamin K, do not reach peak levels in the blood until the eighth day of life. Prothrombin levels are normal at birth, drop to very low levels in the next few days, and return to normal at the end of the first week. One study showed that by the eighth day, prothrombin levels reach 110 percent of normal. In the words of Dr. Armand J. Quick, author of several works on the control of bleeding, "It hardly seems accidental that the rite of circumcision was postponed until the eighth day by the Mosaic law."