Mr Circumcision

What follows is an imaginary interview with a real person. It never happened. Nonetheless it is based on a true story.

Q 
Welcome Mr Circumcision! How many infant circumcisions have you performed?

A 
Well over 20,000. My clinic performs more circs than anywhere else in Australia. Parents
from all Australia take their boys to me.

Q
Why don't parents take their boys to local doctors?

A
Many doctors in Australia refuse to do them. They don't understand the tremendous benefits of circumcising.

Q
What are the benefits of circumcising?

A
Its made me a multi-millionaire. I have made more than $10 million dollars over the years from it.
There are other benefits.

Q
Which are?

A 
I get tremendous satisfaction from having circumcised so many boys.

Q
I have heard you are in a small group calling themselves the Circumcision Foundation of Australia, designed to promote circumcision and raise circumcision fees. They include entrepreneurs and enthusiasts. They state there are no conflicts of interests. Yet you derive a substantial income from circumcising.

A
There is absolutely no conflict of interests. Being in this group and making money goes
together very nicely.

Q
It says on your website that you have the "Order of Australia,"  Did you get that for doing medical
research or for circumcising?

A
I got the Order for catching the World's largest Black Marlin.

Q
Why don't you mention that?

A
What? When so many people presume its related to me circumcising?

Q
You have been fined and reprimanded for performing hundreds of unnecessary tongue-ties while
performing circumcisions.

A
The amount I was fined was less than what I can make in a day circumcising. It was a slap on the wrist, I know how to play the system. After I was caught, statistics show I was still doing many unnecessary tongue-ties.

Under 6 months old, it is done without pain-killer. You should see their little faces
screw up while I cut the bottom of the tongue with a pair of scissors..

Q
What did you tell the parents?

A
I look at them in the face and say your son needs a tongue-tie, when I know full well they don't need one.

Q
You have said on your website that rates are much are much higher than actually are.

A
I do this by presenting the rate for living males. Readers may well think this is the current infant rate.
The higher people think the rate is, the more people will do it.

Q
Why don't you like parents present in the room?

A
Really bad advertising.
Imagine if one told their friends it was a bad experience.
When they are present, I am on my best behavior.

Q
What method do you use?

A
A very modern method. The Plastibell method.

Q
But this was invented in the USA in 1950?

A
That is very modern by my standards. On my website I have said that penile cancer is caused by
smegma, a long disproved theory from the 1930s.

Q
Don't women have smegma too, and more of it than men.?

A
I'm not going to let people know that.

Q
You have also said that circumcision totally protects from penile cancer.
But you don't say its extremely rare and one of the rarest cancers.

A
The more common penile cancer is believed to be the more circumcisions I will get to do.

Q
Older studies failed to correct for age properly. A recent shows that circumcised men are at a higher risk
than men with a normal foreskin.

A
I'm not interested in any studies that show circumcision in a bad light.

Q
You have said circumcision prevents AIDS,  in violation of advertising guidelines.
The official view is the African studies are not relevant to Australia.
The number of men catching HIV from women within Australia is absolutely tiny.

A
The African studies are the best thing that happened for circumcision enthusiasts
since the flawed Wiswell UTI studies.

Q
You have told journalists that the Plastibell method does not involve any cutting and its painless.

A
It actually involves as much cutting as other methods. It is as painful as when locals are used for
other things. And when it wears off...  Do you know how much business I have made, by journalists
who don't bother checking what I say?

Q
You say you use the EMLA cream.

A
Thats right.

Q
But when circumcising on TV, you used a penile block with an injection.

A
The EMLA cream by itself is the least effective pain-killer. If I had not used
the penile block on TV,  the kid would have been screaming.

Q
You get the parents to put the cream on.

A
That way they get to feel part of it. They become accessories.
It is harder for them to "have regrets" later.

Q
You claim you have an exceptionally low rate of complications.

A
If I thought I would be believed, I would say on my website I have never had
a complication.

Q
Yet one woman stated there were complications with both her sons and they were both in a lot of pain.
There has been an unsubstantiated claim that another doctor repairs one of your botch jobs a week.

A
Do you really think an entrepreneur and enthusiast such as myself would include accurate complication
rates on my website which advertises my business. In any case, I don't even know what they are.

Q
There have been a number of complaint about you to the Queensland Medical board.
What has happened with those?

A
Absolutely nothing. The Queensland Medical board don't even mention the unnecessary
tongue ties. I've been in this game a long time and know what I can get away with. I know
how to manipulate the system.

Q
You have spoken to the media many times.

A
Its fantastic advertising. They never check what I say.

Q
Sometimes you have advertised your website in baby forums, breaching user agreements.

A
I'm not worried about that. They pull in quite a few customers, before my posts get pulled off.

Q
Some parents say you are charming and have a great bedside manner.

A
Do you think they would let him touch their son's penis, without them being present, if I wasn't charming?

Q
Some people say you are a BS artist and a crap-merchant. Why would they say that?

A
I have no idea.

What is Intactivism?

What is Intactivism? Intactivism is the words intact and activism combined.

All children are born with intact bodies, including their genitals. Boys and girls are born with a foreskin.

Intactivism is activism aimed at protecting infants and young children from having parts of their bodies cut off, i..e its aimed at keeping their bodies intact.

In practice, depending on the culture, genitals of children are often considered fair game.

Intactivism is about freedom and the basic right to a full body. I once saw a documentary about adults
hanging from the ceiling by meat hooks. In my opinion possibly foolish, but who cares? They are adults, they can do what they like with their bodies. Doing similar violence to a child is a different kettle of fish.

I see Intactivism as a very positive thing. I am mostly interested in the reduction of infant male circumcision
in the USA. This is the only country, about from Israel, in which anywhere near half of infant boys are circumcised.

I became interested in Intactivism after attending a talk in the year 2001 on childbirth. The speaker said that scientists were stabbing infants with needles to see what any mother could tel you, if they could feel pain. He then said there are 80,000,000 men walking around in the USA who were tortured at birth. This puzzled me at first, but given anaestetic was never used in the good old days, having one's genitals flayed would be excruciatingly painful.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope to keep future posts interesting.