ANOTHER VOICE
A new explanation for the appalling behaviour of young British males
AUBLRON WAUGH
At the time of writing, the names chosen for the infant daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York are known only to readers of the Sun newspaper, so I must await confirmation that it is to be called Beatrice Mary Elizabeth before assuming my traditional mantle of uninvited bad fairy at the feast. But by deciding to have a daughter, whatever other shame and embarrassment they may cause us, this terrible couple have at least postponed a further outbreak of the cruel and divisive national debate about whether or not it should be circumcised.
At the time when a sinister California- based pressure group called NOCIRC (National Organisation of Circumcision Information Research Centers) announced as a huge victory that the children of the Prince and Princess of Wales were to remain uncircumcised, I held all my angry emotions in rein out of respect for the blameless couple. Such consideration would not, of course, apply to the Yorks. But I feared that other, impressionable young couples might be persuaded by the heir to the throne's example, who might otherwise have treated the fashionable medical orthodoxy of the time with the suspicion it so often deserves.
Sure enough, the celebrations at Combe Florey had scarcely entered their tenth day over the news that Mrs Patrick Marnham, wife of the celebrated Private Eye historian and Paris correspondent of the Indepen- dent, had given birth to a son, Edward, when a letter arrived from Marnham breaking the news that the lad is not to be circumcised. I had thought to write this piece as an open letter to Mr Patrick Marnham on a Very Serious Subject, but he begged me not to do so. One would not normally allow sentiment to stand in the way of Art and Truth, but it occurred to me that the form of an Open Letter is sometimes held to establish a Right to Reply, as I learned to my cost when I last addressed an Open Petter to Mr Derek Jameson, now the most famous man in Britain and an obvious candidate for the OM, along with A. N. Wilson, when next a vacancy occurs.
If! had been composing an Open Letter, it would undoubtedly have started with David's lament for Jonathan from 2 Samuel i. 20:
streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph . . . . 0 Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!
But its real purpose would be to point out to this Jonathan, with whom I fought shoulder to shoulder against the cavaliers at All Hallows preparatory school, near Shepton Mallet (or at least I think I did), that medical opinion has now changed. It would be almost impossible to find a single general practitioner in Britain who was aware of it, but in California, home of the great anti-circumcision movement, the pic- ture has changed entirely.
Until this year, all discussion of the subject was tied to a 1975 decision of the American Academy of Pediatrics that there were no good medical reasons for routine circumcision. In face of the ac- knowledged fact that uncircumcised males were more prone to contract syphilis, gonorrhea and genital herpes than those who had been circumcised, the AAP re- commended greater attention to personal hygiene among the uncircumcised. This was repeated in face of the discovery that only ten of the 50,000 men known to have contracted penile cancer since the 1930s in the United States were circumcised.
What has changed outlooks in California — and threatens to change them in the AAP any day now, when a new study group reports — is the new evidence on transmission of Aids. In June of this year, the California Medical Association's policy-making body voted overwhelmingly to endorse a resolution calling circumcision 'an effective public health measure'. This was on the instigation of a Mountain View urologist, called almost unbelievably Dr Aaron Fink, who was able to point to papers presented in Stockholm on a study of heterosexually transmitted Aids con- ducted in Nairobi and Miami, one by Dr King K. Holmes of Seattle, the other by Dr Marcaret Fische, of the University of Miami. Both showed that in an extensive survey of male clients of infected prosti- tutes, the risk of infection was significantly related to the lack of circumcision.
More impressive than either of these has been the Reed Army Institute of Research
programme in Washington which covered 220,000 male army infants over a ten-year period, showing that the rate of urinary tract infections among uncircumcised boys — sometimes leading to permanent dam- age or death — was ten times the rate among the circumcised. Its author, Dr Thomas Wiswell, says that the findings have converted him to the cause of cir- cumcision: 'The numbers are so over- whelming that I had to reverse myself.'
In face of all this new evidence, NOCIRC's organiser, Ms Marilyn Milos, can only repeat, parrot-like, that the proc- edure provides no health benefits and causes unnecessary pain. Her arguments have reduced the incidence of male cir- • cumcision in the United States from 65 per cent of newborn males to 60 per cent. Goodness knows how much extra suffering has resulted, and will result in the years ahead. I regret I can answer no queries on this subject, as I am sending all the papers as a matter of some urgency to my friend Marnham in Paris.
An extraordinary side-product of my researches in this matter suggests that whereas 60 per cent of American males are circumcised, and the world average is 20 per cent, the figure for Britain is a mere one per cent. The explanation is obvious: in Britain, where such services would be virtually free, there is no inclination to provide them. Instead, our idle doctors seize at any bogus statement issuing from the American pressure group NOCIRC and its running dogs in the AAP to deny that the practice has any medical value. wonder if this extraordinary disparity be- tween Britain and the rest of the world also explains other things which have been noticed about young British males: their poor academic performance, their lack of discipline and tendency to football hooli- ganism. It is often remarked that Jewish, Muslim and old-fashioned Christian chil- dren are best behaved, and the phe- nomenon is attributed to family influence. This seems rather insulting to the families of progressive Christians and atheists. The fact remains that Jews, Muslims and tradi- tional Christians are more likely to be circumcised. It will need a study group to establish the connection, but it might be a good idea for Mr Kenneth Clarke, on his return from holiday, to prepare a crash programme to circumcise all uncircumcised males.
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