ReviewFrontiers in pediatrics2015
Do the Benefits of Male Circumcision Outweigh the Risks? A Critique of the Proposed CDC Guidelines.
Review in Frontiers in pediatrics, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Critical evaluation of arguments opposing male circumcision: A systematic review.Journal of evidence-based medicine · 2019Pooled it
- Subcutaneous tissue-sparing dorsal slit with new marking technique: A novel circumcision method.Medicine · 2019Trial
- Ethics of Mathematical Modeling in Public Health: The Case of Medical Male Circumcision for HIV Prevention in Africa.Public health ethics · 2024Article
- Neonatal Male Circumcision: Clearly Beneficial for Public Health or an Ethical Dilemma? A Systematic Review.Cureus · 2024Review
- Comments by opponents on the British Medical Association's guidance on non-therapeutic male circumcision of children seem one-sided and may undermine public health.World journal of clinical pediatrics · 2023Article
- Shared decision-making for pediatric elective penile surgery.Canadian Urological Association journal = Journal de l'Association des urologues du Canada · 2022Article
- Proving a negative? Methodological, statistical, and psychometric flaws in Ullmann et al. (2017) PTSD study.Journal of clinical and translational research · 2018Article
- Commentary: Do the Benefits of Male Circumcision Outweigh the Risks? A Critique of the Proposed CDC Guidelines.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2015Article
- Social media representation of female genital cutting: A YouTube analysis.Women's health (London, England)Article
- Letters to the Editor.Paediatrics & child healthArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have announced a set of provisional guidelines concerning male circumcision, in which they suggest that the benefits of the surgery outweigh the risks. I offer a critique of the CDC position. Among other concerns, I suggest that the CDC relies more heavily than is warranted on studies from Sub-Saharan Africa that neither translate well to North American populations nor to circumcisions performed before an age of sexual debut; that it employs an inadequate conception of risk in its benefit vs. risk analysis; that it fails to consider the anatomy and functions of the penile prepuce (i.e., the part of the penis that is removed by circumcision); that it underestimates the adverse consequences associated with circumcision by focusing on short-term surgical complications rather than long-term harms; that it portrays both the risks and benefits of circumcision in a misleading manner, thereby undermining the possibility of obtaining informed consent; that it evinces a superficial and selective analysis of the literature on sexual outcomes associated with circumcision; and that it gives less attention than is desirable to ethical issues surrounding autonomy and bodily integrity. I conclude that circumcision before an age of consent is not an appropriate health-promotion strategy.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.