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Intact America Calls for Further Research into the Long-Term Physical, Sexual, and Psychological Harm Caused by Neonatal Circumcision

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Blog, Press Releases
March 22, 2017

Do Men Experience Life-Long Trauma from Being Circumcised as Infants? Yes, According to a New Study Indicating That Circumcision Results in Physical and Emotional Harm

Many Respondents Thought They Were the Only Ones with Such ‘Defects’

Tarrytown, NY—March 22, 2017

Today, Intact America Executive Director Georganne Chapin hailed the results of the first comprehensive study, co-authored by a board-certified urologist and a human rights activist, that demonstrates the long-term adverse physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological outcomes experienced by men who were circumcised as baby boys.

The University of Texas IRB-approved study, which surveyed 1,008 men, was published last month in The International Journal of Human Rights. Titled “Long-Term Adverse Outcomes from Neonatal Circumcision Reported in a Survey of 1,008 Men: an Overview of Health and Human Rights Implications,” the article was written by Tim Hammond and Adrienne Carmack, MD. Mr. Hammond created the Global Survey of Circumcision Harm, upon which the article is based. Dr. Carmack is a board-certified urologist and member of the Intact America Board of Health Professionals.

Ms. Chapin, in citing the significance of the study, called for more in-depth research to further explore the life-long harm caused by male infant circumcision, as expressed by circumcised men in the self-reported survey. She urged the public to read the study with an open mind, and consider that “circumcision is performed on baby boys who cannot consent to a procedure that not even the American Academy of Pediatrics says is medically necessary.”

Intact America is the largest national advocacy group working to end involuntary circumcision in America. According to Ms. Chapin, the American public has not been willing to listen to what many men have been saying for decades – that circumcising baby boys negatively affects their future sexual and emotional health as adults. “We have always known that babies feel excruciating pain when their foreskins are forcibly removed,” she said. “This study shows that the men they become will bear the physical, emotional, and sexual pain for the rest of their lives,” Ms. Chapin said.

The 44-question survey asked men to describe physical abnormalities and sexual consequences that the researchers deemed to be the result of having been circumcised as infants. The survey covered other possible consequences, including the possible effect of circumcision on self-esteem.

Physical Abnormalities
The survey included photographs so respondents could correctly identify evidence of damage associated with circumcision.

Sexual Health
According to study co-author Dr. Carmack, circumcision can affect sexual health because the foreskin is the most sensitive tissue on the penis and supplies natural lubrication during intercourse, among other sexual functions. The respondents reported numerous sexual issues.

About Intact America
Intact America is the largest national advocacy group working to end involuntary circumcision in America, and to ensure a healthy sexual future for all people. Intact America is based in Tarrytown, New York. For more information, visit Intact America at www.intactamerica.org, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

Related Posts

Marilyn

Marilyn Fayre Milos, multiple award winner for her humanitarian work to end routine infant circumcision in the United States and advocating for the rights of infants and children to genital autonomy, has written a warm and compelling memoir of her path to becoming “the founding mother of the intactivist movement.” Needing to support her family as a single mother in the early sixties, Milos taught banjo—having learned to play from Jerry Garcia (later of The Grateful Dead)—and worked as an assistant to comedian and social critic Lenny Bruce, typing out the content of his shows and transcribing court proceedings of his trials for obscenity. After Lenny’s death, she found her voice as an activist as part of the counterculture revolution, living in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco during the 1967 Summer of Love, and honed her organizational skills by creating an alternative education open classroom (still operating) in Marin County. 

After witnessing the pain and trauma of the circumcision of a newborn baby boy when she was a nursing student at Marin College, Milos learned everything she could about why infants were subjected to such brutal surgery. The more she read and discovered, the more convinced she became that circumcision had no medical benefits. As a nurse on the obstetrical unit at Marin General Hospital, she committed to making sure parents understood what circumcision entailed before signing a consent form. Considered an agitator and forced to resign in 1985, she co-founded NOCIRC (National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers) and began organizing international symposia on circumcision, genital autonomy, and human rights. Milos edited and published the proceedings from the above-mentioned symposia and has written numerous articles in her quest to end circumcision and protect children’s bodily integrity. She currently serves on the board of directors of Intact America.

Georganne

Georganne Chapin is a healthcare expert, attorney, social justice advocate, and founding executive director of Intact America, the nation’s most influential organization opposing the U.S. medical industry’s penchant for surgically altering the genitals of male children (“circumcision”). Under her leadership, Intact America has definitively documented tactics used by U.S. doctors and healthcare facilities to pathologize the male foreskin, pressure parents into circumcising their sons, and forcibly retract the foreskins of intact boys, creating potentially lifelong, iatrogenic harm. 

Chapin holds a BA in Anthropology from Barnard College, and a Master’s degree in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University. For 25 years, she served as president and chief executive officer of Hudson Health Plan, a nonprofit Medicaid insurer in New York’s Hudson Valley. Mid-career, she enrolled in an evening law program, where she explored the legal and ethical issues underlying routine male circumcision, a subject that had interested her since witnessing the aftermath of the surgery conducted on her younger brother. She received her Juris Doctor degree from Pace University School of Law in 2003, and was subsequently admitted to the New York Bar. As an adjunct professor, she taught Bioethics and Medicaid and Disability Law at Pace, and Bioethics in Dominican College’s doctoral program for advanced practice nurses.

In 2004, Chapin founded the nonprofit Hudson Center for Health Equity and Quality, a company that designs software and provides consulting services designed to reduce administrative complexities, streamline and integrate data collection and reporting, and enhance access to care for those in need. In 2008, she co-founded Intact America.

Chapin has published many articles and op-ed essays, and has been interviewed on local, national and international television, radio and podcasts about ways the U.S. healthcare system prioritizes profits over people’s basic needs. She cites routine (nontherapeutic) infant circumcision as a prime example of a practice that wastes money and harms boys and the men they will become. This Penis Business: A Memoir is her first book.