Bron, Willow - I think that one of the reasons why circumcision always spawns a thread here is that so much misinformation abounds, such as some of the content of tonight's Sunday Night segment.

For a start, there was some very creative interpretation of statistics going on. The circumcision proponents state that they believe circumcisions should be "mandatory" (I cringe whenever I hear that word applied to anything to do with parenting) because it reduces the risk of a male carrying human papillomavirus, it reduces the spread of HIV, it reduces the risk of penile cancer, and it reduces the risks of UTI. When you combine all of those factors together, you get the "100-fold increase in benefits" of circumcision, although I note that they have not actually provided any links to this research they are discussing to back up that statement.

The problem with this approach is that you can't simply lump all of these problems together because they are very different.

Take, for instance, human papillomavirus and HIV. Both of these viruses spread more readily in men that are uncircumcised, because they infect the tissues of the foreskin. So it is certainly true that circumcision reduces the likelihood of men becoming infected with these viruses. The problem is, there is another way of preventing the spread of these viruses that is much less riskier, and costs the public health system a great deal less, and has the added benefit of also being an effective way of reducing the spread of a whole raft of other diseases that have nothing to do with foreskins whatsoever - the promotion of safe sex, using a condom.

So, taking HPV and HIV out of the equation, you are left with the decreased risk of penile cancer and the decreased risk of urinary tract infection. Examining penile cancer, it is a disease with an extremely low rate of occurrence - in the vicinity of 1 in 100,000 men in developed countries might expect to get it. Some studies have shown that circumcision decreases the risk of contracting penile cancer, but as yet we don't know what causes cancer of the penis. Until we have a more concrete idea of what actually causes penile cancer, it seems premature to suggest mandatory circumcision to ward off penile cancer. And given that one theory is that one of the risk factors in the development of cancer of the penis is HPV, once more, we get back to the realisation that a more cost-effective and less risky way of preventing penile cancer may be to promote safe sex.

Finally, we get to the risk of UTI. There have been numerous studies performed into the contribution of circumcision towards the likelihood of developing urinary tract infections in boys, with varying results. At the moment, it is true that the balance of the research is tipping towards a small increase in the likelihood of getting UTIs in uncircumcised boys, but once more, it comes down to risks versus benefits - given that the risks of urinary tract infection are minimal, and that only a small reduction in the number of boys who will get UTI can be expected to result from large scale circumcision, most paediatricians and childrens health workers agree that the benefits simply don't outweigh the risks.

So, to summarise, when you separate out the risks and benefits of circumcision compared to the reduction in HIV and HPV infection rates, penile cancer and UTI, and you consider other realistic interventions that also reduce the risk of these conditions without needing to mandate surgical intervention for newborn babies, the claims made in tonight's program simply don't add up. It's a classic case of trying to conflate a number of studies that simply shouldn't be combined.

And, as is becoming common practice with this farce of a current affairs program, we also had to put up with the usual rhetoric. The presenters constantly refer to the procedure as "having a snip". It is really not that simple. It is the careful and methodical separation and scraping away of the foreskin (which at that age is adhered to the glans of the penis), the clamping of the foreskin, and then using either scalpel or a shield and band, cutting away the foreskin, or cutting the blood supply off to the tissue and letting it die and peel away of it's own accord. It is classed as minor surgery, but it is surgery nonetheless. They repeatedly suggested that circumcision was "saving lives", and later on suggested that of children who remain uncircumcised, "many will die" - but in all honestly, I have yet to see a child die of a UTI, or a grown man die of genital warts, and relying on circumcision to protect against HIV is utterly foolish. And penile cancer is so rare that it is quite hard to even gather together a large enough population to do valid research in any case.

The doctor who operated the circumcision clinic announced proudly that they had not had any cases of "major bleeding", "systemic infection", and they they'd never "lost a penis". Thank God! Having said that, none of those are really risk factors of circumcision. The risk factors of circumcision are pain, damage to the penis that limits sexual function later in life, or infection of the penis itself, and these remain not uncommon adverse effects of circumcision (realistic studies suggest that between 2% and 10% of baby boys will experience one of these complications following circumcision). I also note that despite the doctor saying that the procedure was "relatively pain free", the baby they showed during the procedure still cried several times throughout.

At the end of the day, there are far safer, more cost effective ways of preventing HIV and HPV spread amongst males than circumsision; the risk of penile cancer is so vanishingly low that any reduction in risk can't possibly outweigh the risks associated with circumcision; and in their absence, the prevention of UTI alone simply is not worth the risks associated with circumcision.

For what it's worth, I think we're all entitled to our opinions here, and I think we can all keep it civil. Bron, Willow: I don't think that Leasha's statements are inflammatory at all; I think it's a valid point of view and it's one that, to a certain extent, I share. The foreskin is designed to protect the penis, and it has the distinction of being the only part of the body that we will remove from an otherwise healthy baby in order to protect it from conditions later in life. And Brontide, while rarely women will request and be granted access to a double mastectomy to protect against breast cancer, this intervention is reserved for women with a strong family history of breast cancer, usually bilateral. That same distinction is not made when we talk about mandating circumcision.

We're not judging your decison, although it isn't one that we agree with; I respect that some of you have chosen to circumcise for religious reasons, or because you agree with some of the views put forward in this program, and that is your right. We are simply explaining the reasoning behind our decison. I believe that every parent of a baby boy has a right to choose whether or not to circumcise, but I feel that the decision needs to be made for the right reasons, without misinformation or misunderstanding. And tonight's segment was very much full of misinformation. More to the point, tonight's segment was not about whether circumcision was right or wrong; it was about something much more serious than that. It was about proponents of the practice attempting to misrepresent the results of research in order to mandate a medical procedure whose benefits are questionable.