Why is circumcision necessary?

Answer 1

It's not!
Absolutely not less then 20% of the worlds men are circumcised leaving the vast majority healthy and intact. In the country's where circumcisions are the norm the instance of infant death STDs and problems relating to sex are the greatest

Answer 2

It isn't. No major medical schools in the developed world see circumcision as being of any benefit to man. on the contrary it is a harmful practice. The practice was originally begun for religious and cultural reasons. It was introduced into the English speaking world during the Victorian era by doctors who at the time said it would discourage boys from masturbating, practice they claimed led to any number of disease from syphilis to insanity. It became a part of the culture. The united states is the slowest to give it up as a result of a powerful marketing influence by the doctors that carry out the operations and those that repair serious damage done during these procedures. Only about 20% of the worlds men are circumcised and most of these for religious reasons. Circumcision is in fact nothing short of male genital mutilation.

Go to the related link below and get a better expert overview of this procedure

(The Case Against Circumcision By Paul M. Fleiss, MD )

Circumcision may be advised or required medically because of Phimosis, the foreskin being too tight to move across the glans, thus causing inflammation, Balanitis or Balanoposthitis. Before the age of 5 it is normal not to be able to retract the foreskin and to try and force it can cause permanent damage.

If Phimosis causes ballooning of the foreskin during the flow of urination or it interferes with normal erection of the penis then circumcision may be advised.

Check the related link below for the facts.

Any further discussion to the Discussion Board please.

Answer 3

Circumcision is necessary for Jews, and is recommended by some for others too.

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.

For Jews, circumcision is done by someone specially trained, both religiously and medically. The Hebrew title is Mohel. Civil law, as well as Torah-law, permits a mohel to function only after full qualification; and it is a fact that 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."
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.