David Atkinson, president and CEO of Bloodstained Men, holds a sign during Friday’s demonstration by the nonprofit group in Wilkes-Barre Township to raise awareness about what they say are the dangers of male circumcision.
                                 Roger DuPuis | Times Leader

David Atkinson, president and CEO of Bloodstained Men, holds a sign during Friday’s demonstration by the nonprofit group in Wilkes-Barre Township to raise awareness about what they say are the dangers of male circumcision.

Roger DuPuis | Times Leader

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<p>Members of The Bloodstained Men & Their Friends cross Mundy Street in Wilkes-Barre Township Friday afternoon with signs highlighting their concerns about male circumcision.</p>
                                 <p>Roger DuPuis | Times Leader</p>

Members of The Bloodstained Men & Their Friends cross Mundy Street in Wilkes-Barre Township Friday afternoon with signs highlighting their concerns about male circumcision.

Roger DuPuis | Times Leader

WILKES-BARRE TWP. — Odds are if you are an American male reading this story, you were probably circumcised soon after birth.

And that, say members of Bloodstained Men & Their Friends, is perpetuating an unnecessary and cruel practice without the consent of the children on whom it is performed.

“In the United States, it’s very common for children’s genitals to be tampered with when they’re too young to defend themselves,” said David Atkinson, a member of the nonprofit group who was part of a protest held Friday on Mundy Street to raise awareness of their cause.

“The foreskin is a normal, healthy, valuable part of the human penis, and everyone should have the opportunity to keep all the parts of their genitals,” Atkinson added.

The California-based nonprofit, which was founded in 2012 and has members and supporters from around the nation — Atkinson is from Boston — is currently doing a 15-day tour of Pennsylvania. They came to Wilkes-Barre Township Friday morning, and participants in the demonstration included men and women.

Protesters gathered at the busy intersection of Mundy Street and Tambur Boulevard could hardly fail to draw attention with their signs and placards, but most of all thanks to their signature white suits marred by red paint in the genital area.

“We wear all white with red paint on our crotch to represent the wound that was inflicted on us, without our consent, when we were children,” Atkinson said. “We find that this is a very striking costume and it gets people’s attention, and it makes them realize that when you cut a baby’s penis you are forever damaging the penis of the man he will become.”

“This is a permanent, unnecessary, harmful alteration to the genitals of a perfectly healthy child,” he added.

Statistics, research

According to research by the National Institutes of Health, circumcision of males is one of the most common surgical procedures in the world, although clearly more prevalent in some countries and cultures than others: it is “virtually universal in Jewish and Muslim populations,” for example.

The practice is still fairly widespread in the U.S., at 71.2% according to data in that 2016 NIH report, but significantly lower in many other countries, for example: Australia 26.6%, Brazil 1.3%, China 14%, Canada 31.9%, France 14%, Germany 10.9%, Ireland 0.93%, Italy 2.6%, Mexico 15.4%, Russia 11.8%, Spain 6.6%, Switzerland 5.9%, and United Kingdom 20.7%.

Indeed, the prevalence of circumcision here in the United States has fluctuated in recent years.

A 2013 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at trends in the U.S. from 1979 to 2010. It found that nationwide the practice declined from 64.5% to 58.3% overall that period, but the line was hardly straight: The overall percentage of newborns circumcised during their birth hospitalization was highest in 1981 at 64.9%, and lowest in 2007 at 55.4%. For newborns in the Northeast, the overall trend was flat across the 32 years, and no discernible patterns were evident, although annual rates varied between 60.7% (in 2007) and 69.6% (in 1994).

The CDC report noted that this also was a period of changing guidance on routine newborn circumcision.

“For example, American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) task force reports during the 1970s stated there was no medical indication for routine circumcision of the newborn; AAP revised its position in 1989, stating there were potential medical benefits to newborn circumcision; and then in 1999, an AAP policy statement said that, despite potential medical benefits of newborn male circumcision, there was insufficient evidence to recommend routine circumcision of newborns,” the report added.

In 2007 the AAP formed a multidisciplinary task force to evaluate evidence on male circumcision and update the Academy’s 1999 recommendations. In 2012 it released a policy statement which said: “Evaluation of current evidence indicates that the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks and that the procedure’s benefits justify access to this procedure for families who choose it.”

Specific benefits the AAP identified included prevention of urinary tract infections, penile cancer, and transmission of some sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

Disease prevention is a key reason circumcision has been on the rise in many parts of Africa, for example.

As the NIH study noted, “major health bodies such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have endorsed and currently promote voluntary medical MC (VMMC) in HIV-1 epidemic settings in which the major route of HIV transmission is through heterosexual intercourse.”

Bloodstained Men’s response

On their website, Bloodstained Men argue that “there are lots of myths about foreskin in American popular culture, but in reality, most men around the world live healthy lives with intact penises. They don’t have trouble staying clean or finding sexual partners, and they are generally very happy that no one has stolen an important part of their genitals.”

The group also states that the AAP statement expired after five years — a search of the site turned up no subsequent policy statements — and adds that the European medical community has been vocal in its concerns about the ethics of performing circumcision on children without their consent.

In an email to the Times Leader, Bloodstained Men noted that the issue has been gaining traction in U.S. media reports, and Atkinson said during Friday’s demonstration that the group has found receptive audiences during its protests.

“We have been to cities where we return and protest there several years later, and people have come to join us and say ‘we saw you here three years ago and had never heard of this issue before, and now our children have intact genitals because we saw you here,’” Atkinson said.