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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.
Wolbarst's article appeared on the eve of World War I. It apparently influenced American military commanders to order 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
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|last=Hill
|first=George
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|date=2002-11-04
|accessdate=2020-03-30
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}}</ref> No statistics exist to document how many men were circumcised because of Wolbarst's article.
He was solely responsible for the invention of the myth that [[circumcision]] rendered males immune to [[penile cancer]].<ref name="wolbarst1932">Wolbarst, AL. Circumcision and penile cancer. ''Lancet'' 1932; 150-3.</ref> Wolbarst wrote an article that was published in ''The Lancet'' in 1932, implicating human male smegma as carcinogenic.<ref name="wolbarst1932"/> 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="fleiss1996">Fleiss PM, Hodges F. [http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/cancer/fleiss/ Neonatal circumcision does not protect against cancer]. ''BMJ'' 1996;312(7033):779-80.</ref>
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="fleiss1996" />
Epidemiological studies disproved Wolbarst's myth myths long ago. In North America the rate of penile cancer has been estimated to be 1 in 100,000<ref>Cutler SJ, Young JL Jr. ''Third national cancer survey: incidence data''. Bethesda, Md. US Dept of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, 1975</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>Maden C, Sherman KJ, Beckman AM, Hislop TG, Teh CZ, Ashley RL, ''et al''. History of circumcision, medical conditions, and sexual activity and risk of penile cancer. ''JNCI'' 1993;85:19-24</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.
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