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[[Category:History]]
→Myth: protection against penile cancer: Wikify.
This was before the days of evidence-based medicine, when doctors relied on medical ''opinion'', instead of scientific evidence. Wolbarst collected the ''opinions'' of several physicians and published those opinions as evidence for his argument that circumcision prevented diseases. Wolbarst argued that non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision prevented numerous diseases including venereal disease (now known as sexually transmitted disease).
Wolbarst's article appeared on the eve of World War I. It apparently influenced American military commanders to order [[adult circumcision | circumcision]] of military personnel under their command to prevent venereal diseases and improve military readiness.<ref name="hill2002">{{REFweb
|url=http://purewatergazette.net/circumcision.htm
|title=The Rise and Fall of Neonatal Circumcision: The Irrational Abuse Of Helpless Children
|format=
|quote=
}}</ref> No statistics exist to document how many men were ]]circumcised ]] because of Wolbarst's article.
The adoption of circumcision as a prophylactic [[amputation]] by American military services falsely stigmatized the [[foreskin]] as being unhealthy. [[Robert S. Van Howe|Van Howe]] (1999) has exhaustively shown that circumcision does not protect against STDs.<ref name="vanhowe1999">{{REFjournal
}}</ref>
Wolbarst (1932) put forward his claim that [[circumcision]] would prevent [[penile cancer]] in the British jounal, ''The Lancet''.<ref name="Wolbarst 1932">{{REFjournal |last=Wolbarst |init=AL |author-link=Abraham L. Wolbarst |title=Circumcision and penile cancer |journal=Lancet |volume=1 |issue=5655 |date=1932-01-16 |pages=150-153Wolbarst1932}}</ref> Wolbarst wrote an article that was published in ''The Lancet'' in 1932, implicating human male smegma as carcinogenic.<ref name="Wolbarst 1932"/> Wolbarst's myth was based entirely on unverifiable anecdotes, ethnocentric stereotypes, a faulty understanding of human anatomy and physiology, a misunderstanding of the distinction between association and cause, and an unbridled missionary zeal, and it had absolutely no basis in valid scientific and epidemiological research.<ref name="Fleiss 1996">{{REFjournal
|last=Fleiss
|init=PM
Wolbarst was directly responsible for its proliferation. All subsequent repetions of this myth are directly traceable to Wolbarst's article, though Wolbarst himself advocated universal neonatal circumcision principally as a preventive for epilepsy, paralysis, and [[masturbation]]. Circumcision advocates such as Wolbarst do not seem to have promoted this myth because they have a genuine interest in reducing penile cancer; they used it instead as a scare tactic in the promotion of neonatal circumcision.<ref name="Fleiss 1996"/> Wolbarst's false claims were not disproved until 1979.
Boczko & Stanley (1979) collected numerous cases of cancer in [[circumcised ]] men.<ref name="boczko1979">{{REFjournal
|last=Boczko
|first=Stanley
|date=1975
|accessdate=
}}</ref> Maden ''et al'' (1993) reported [[penile cancer ]] among a fifth of elderly patients from rural areas who had been [[circumcised ]] neonatally and had been born at a time when the rate of neonatal [[circumcision ]] was about 20% in rural populations.<ref>{{REFjournal
|last=Maden
|init=C
|volume=85
|pages=19-24
}}</ref> Their study also shows that the rate of [[penile cancer ]] among men circumcised neonatally has risen in the [[United States ]] relative to the rise in the rate of neonatal [[circumcision]].
Although Wolbarst's falsehoods were disproved decades ago, they had entered into the American psyche where they continue to exert influence that they do not deserve.<ref name="hill2000">{{REFjournal
{{SEEALSO}}
* [[Alleged reasons for circumcision]]
* [[Bias]]
* [[Circumcised doctors]]
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[[Category:Physician]]
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[[Category:History]]
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