
Adversarial childhood events are associated with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome - Melchizedek
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/06/07/339465
======
elil17
Performing unnecessary surgery on childrens genitals is pervasive and needs to
stop.

Most horrific is female genital mutilation, which makes sex painful for women.

Also terrible are surgeries performed on intersex babies with genitals that
aren’t male or female. Surgeons choose makethe babies genitals conform as
closely as possible, but they often mess up - people end up with painful
genitals or the wrong genitals. Most intersex people could grow up with their
original genitals and be perfectly healthy.

And now it turns out circumcision kills baby boys. Maybe we could just stop
with the chopping up kids genitals.

------
ethagknight
I think it’s kinda shoddy of the author to claim that “circumcision causes
SIDS” on his twitter feed, while the abstract states there is merely a slight
link “and is useful for generating hypotheses and nothing more”. The focus
should be on are there other stressors to test for? There are infinite other
possible links to stressors in an infants life. Responding to another thread,
my children sleep in their stomachs because they scream bloody murder until
you flip them over— which one would you say is a great or stressor, tummy
sleep or kicking and screaming? I also found out today that HN comes out
strong against circumcision, which is all good, I just wasn’t expecting
literally every thread to be on MNC.

I’ve found, with baby parenting, there is an enormous amount of guesswork
presented as fact, and this paper seems to push that. Case in point, Procedure
for handling newborns at my hospital in Memphis TN has changed substantially
with each of my kids over the course of 5 years. “Nurse: oh we don’t do that
anymore, it’s not good for the baby”. Oh but it was fine for my first 2 kids?

*edited to clean up and fill out my intended points

~~~
DanBC
> I’ve found, with baby parenting, there is an enormous amount of guesswork
> presented as fact, and this paper seems to push that. Case in point,
> Procedure for handling newborns at my hospital in Memphis TN has changed
> substantially with each of my kids over the course of 5 years. “Nurse: oh we
> don’t do that anymore, it’s not good for the baby”. Oh but it was fine for
> my first 2 kids?

That's not "guesswork pushed as fact", that's more information being
discovered through research.

It's very hard to do research into this kind of stuff, and when you've done
the research it's hard to take the stuff you've learnt across a population and
apply it to individuals.

~~~
wtvanhest
As a soon to be new parent, I've also found a tremendous anount of guess work
presented as fact.

Research seems to be the area most susceptible to politics and willful
misinformation. My wife and I just pick the safest perceived route, and only
deviate from that when something seems like an unresearched old wives tail.

My child will sleep on his back, but I dont blame the OP for scratching his
head and wondering what is worse?

------
eganist
Are we sure there isn't a relationship (or an overlap, specifically) between
"parents who circumcise their newborns" and "parents who allow their kids to
fall asleep facing down?" Because I'm pretty sure this debate was measurably
settled in the late 90s.

[https://www1.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/documents/SIDS_...](https://www1.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/documents/SIDS_QA-508-rev.pdf)

~~~
oneplane
I suppose a difference in discussion could be bodily harm vs. behavior
monitoring/modification. Cutting your baby would be somewhat different than
assisting a newborn in not killing itself, comparable to not having exposed
220v wiring within reach. However, I'm not sure how that 90s debate went.

------
DannyBee
I swear we had this discussion a few days ago.

Reddit also debunked this particular paper.

Here is the methodology:"In the 22 US states analysed where the health
insurance Medicaid covers male circumcision, cot death is significantly
higher"

That's it. Not exactly a well done study.

It turns out the author is also the same person making widely debunked "Jews
are descended from Khazars" claims. They do not seem to be doing any sort of
reliable science.

------
malkia
It was a bit of a cultural shock, coming to USA, and learning that huge
population (apart from jewish & muslim) were being circumcised. Years later,
when our son was born, it came to me again about this societal "norm", but
didn't even think for a second that this needs to be done. I hope the society
(apart from cultural/religious observations) changes.

------
oneplane
I wonder why it's still allowed to modify the body of a minor for lifestyle
reasons without their knowledge or consent. Seems a bit ridiculous to me. The
article is somewhat larger than just Circumcision, but since the title mostly
points to that, it's the comment you're going to get ;-)

~~~
solipsism
It's still allowed because people are ignorant, and those who aren't ignorant
are irrational and are extremely good rationalizing (like all of us are about
some things).

Another big factor is that the medical community has absolutely dropped the
ball here. I believe that any ethical doctor must refuse to do a circumcision
without a valid medical reason. The Hippocratic Oath demands it.

~~~
jrs95
Well I imagine an attempt to ban circumcision would be immediately called
anti-Semitic and then it would never happen. And that’s something nobody even
wants to be accused of, so there’s less pressure to do this than there
otherwise might be.

~~~
tobias3
That's what happend here in Germany. There was a court case where male
circumcision was ruled bodily mutilation. Afterwards they created a law to
make it legal only as religious practice (after a lot of discussion).

------
newnewpdro
The impression I've gotten from most American parents I've brought up the
issue with in the past is that they believed it was more hygienic and better
for the health of the child to be circumcised.

Nowadays, being much older and wiser, I've come to understand that to really
mean circumcision eliminated the need to regularly clean the child's penis
behind the foreskin and educate him on doing so. It simply eliminates the
topic entirely.

There was a thread on 4chan.org/b of all places not long ago where a young man
photo-documented the _first_ time he had ever cleaned his uncircumcised penis.
He claimed his parents never educated him on the subject, and never cleaned
behind the foreskin for him. He only just discovered it now, at what appeared
to be a quite mature age. The process looked _brutal_ and _disgusting_ , and
it took him multiple days of incrementally removing a hardened shell of smegma
by picking away at it, leaving a very raw-looking skin behind.

It was quite surprising, and I had never envisioned such an extreme outcome as
possible in an uncircumcised boy's life. Some parents are incredibly
incompetent when it comes to teaching their kids about anything related to
genitalia/sex. Circumcision avoids the issue for those cases, and I assume the
incidence of these problems is also higher in religious households where the
topic of sex tends to be more suppressed.

~~~
rootusrootus
There is no change in cleaning requirements for a young boy's penis whether it
is intact or not. By the time a boy needs to clean under his foreskin, he will
long have been doing his own baths. I guess make sure he has enough
information by then on what to expect, but honestly I'm surprised that people
don't naturally figure out how to clean their own bodies. Did we really have
to be taught this a thousand years ago?

~~~
newnewpdro
> Did we really have to be taught this a thousand years ago?

Pre-religion, no, I don't think so.

Some religious households are frankly insane and raise their young to
specifically avoid such discovery and exploration of genitalia. Don't forget
there are religions in the world where women's genitals are mutilated to such
an extent as to remove the clitoris entirely.

There's also a somewhat common condition [1] of the foreskin where it's
relatively small and too tight around the head to be pulled back and cleaned.
Imagine a young man having such a condition in such a conservative household
where nobody ever discussed his penis beyond the minimal potty-training.

The 4chan story I mentioned in my previous post appeared to be such a case of
a tight foreskin, where he had simply never pulled it back because it didn't
seem possible. The level of ignorance about his own anatomy was genuinely
shocking, and if there weren't such obviously authentic amateur cell-phone
photographs accompanying the whole ordeal I would have been certain it was
fake.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phimosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phimosis)

------
sbinthree
That circumcision is still practice is insane. What is the benefit of all of
the aggressive moralizing that goes on towards all kinds gender and sex causes
at this point, and yet first world genital mutilation of boys gets almost no
attention while causing 14% of male SIDS. Do not care about religious freedoms
at that point.

~~~
m_fayer
All sorts of benefits. Just because this particular just cause has no chance
of getting off the ground because no politician is willing to put themselves
in the crosshairs of pretty much all Jews AND Muslims and a large amount of
Christian hangers-on (religious liberty advocates), doesn't mean that other
causes without such formidable impediments are somehow moot.

EDIT:

I think I was unclear. I am NOT defending circumcision, I don't think it's
defensible. I was responding to the parent poster, specifically this:

> What is the benefit of all of the aggressive moralizing that goes on towards
> all kinds gender and sex causes at this point, and yet...

I was trying to say that just because we can't get anywhere in banning male
circumcision, doesn't mean that "all kinds gender and sex causes..." have no
benefit.

~~~
fullshark
Aren't the only benefits a slight decrease in STD transmission + easier
cleaning of smegma? I think it remains mostly due to status quo bias. I can't
imagine the medical community recommending another body modification with only
two things that minor in favor of doing it.

~~~
rootusrootus
Also, the STD transmission angle is suspect. Last I checked, a lot of it was
based on studies out of Africa. There are lots of reasons to think that is
apples to oranges. Comparing to other modern Western nations with a very low
circumcision rate yields different conclusions.

~~~
tboughen
Indeed. A study in Africa I read about halted the trial part way through on
ethical grounds because the STI contraction rate in the circumcised cohort was
so much lower. However I found no evidence that they had taken into account a
healing penis wound causing less frequent (zero?) intercourse for this group.

------
MrBingley
> The allostatic load hypothesis posits that SIDS is the result of perinatal
> cumulative painful, stressful, or traumatic exposures that tax neonatal
> regulatory systems.

If true, this would mean that babies can literally be "stressed to death".
Wow. I wonder what the age is when this begins to taper off.

Also, circumcision for babies and children should be outlawed. All freedoms
are subject to limitations, including religious ones.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Wow. I wonder what the age is when this begins to taper off.

Never? Stress causes heart attacks, suicide, overeating, etc. in adults. For
example: [https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/broken-
heart-...](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/broken-heart-
syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20354617)

------
ransom1538
Why? From what I read:

Easier hygiene. Circumcision makes it simpler to wash the penis. However, boys
with uncircumcised penises can be taught to wash regularly beneath the
foreskin. Decreased risk of urinary tract infections. The risk of urinary
tract infections in males is low, but these infections are more common in
uncircumcised males. Severe infections early in life can lead to kidney
problems later. Decreased risk of sexually transmitted infections. Circumcised
men might have a lower risk of certain sexually transmitted infections,
including HIV. Still, safe sexual practices remain essential. Prevention of
penile problems. Occasionally, the foreskin on an uncircumcised penis can be
difficult or impossible to retract (phimosis). This can lead to inflammation
of the foreskin or head of the penis. Decreased risk of penile cancer.
Although cancer of the penis is rare, it's less common in circumcised men. In
addition, cervical cancer is less common in the female sexual partners of
circumcised men.

~~~
ceejayoz
There's a lot of conflicting/unclear research and it's my understanding that
there's not much _solid_ evidence in either direction on most of this stuff.
Small studies, questionable causation, etc.

That said, the _hygiene_ argument is insane to me. Anyone who can be taught to
wipe their ass can be taught to clean their penis.

~~~
rootusrootus
Especially since pre-puberty, boys should be taught not to try and retract
their foreskin for cleaning. It's not necessary, and forcing it might very
well cause damage. From the perspective of a five year old, cleaning a
circumcised penis and an uncircumcised penis is exactly the same.

------
aymendaoudi
Calm down folks, the paper is a preprint, it hasn't even been peer-reviewed
nor published yet.

------
ummonk
Repeat after me, correlation =/= causation.

Also, whether it causes SIDS or not, infant circumcision is horrible.

------
yumraj
What I've always found ironic about circumcision is that it is done mostly by
religious folks who consider humans to have been created by God as God wanted.

So, by circumcision in a way they're trying to fix a God's mistake!

~~~
albertgoeswoof
No, it’s God’s plan, he sent the choice here to test you.

Don’t worry if you make the wrong choice though, it’s all God’s plan! Actually
do worry because you’ll suffer all your life and go to hell if you screw up.
But it’s all for a reason, you wouldn’t understand it. Stop questioning and do
as I say.

------
Markoff
personally i find even very selfish from parents piercing girls ears for
earrings (like at least 80% parents do here around me), chopping skin of my
son would be even crazier idea

if she wanna wear earrings or he wanna be circumcised they can make their
choice when the time is right, but it's not up to me, i think same even about
parents forcing their own religion onto their children and baptizing them

and i am not some theorist, i have actually both of those children

------
dogma1138
According to the annual UNICEF report Israel has a lower infant mortality rate
than most of Europe not to mention the US and it’s pretty much a country where
everyone gets circumcised.

Also in the US according to the CDC the demographic which has the highest SIDS
rates is Indian Americans (not native Americans) and they have the lowest rate
of circumcision amongst the US population.

------
Paul-ish
Is there a difference in SIDS between boys and girls?

~~~
Melchizedek
Yes, SIDS is more common in boys.

------
dominotw
I didn't know that circumcision was a thing till I moved to a country where
its the default. One girl even commented its "strange" to not be circumcised,
no its "strange" to chop off a body part.

~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17638716](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17638716)
and marked it off-topic.

------
ceejayoz
Important to note this bit:

> Ecological analyses are useful to generate hypotheses but cannot provide
> strong evidence of causality.

[https://xkcd.com/882/](https://xkcd.com/882/) and
[http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations](http://tylervigen.com/spurious-
correlations) may be relevant here as a result.

------
patagonia
There is the whole, reduces your chances of contracting HIV thing...

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127372/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127372/)

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-
fiction-c...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-
circumcision-helps-prevent-hiv-infection/)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5594533/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5594533/)

Edit: for those down voting, please see child comment with additional studies
that are also current and cover multiple populations. HN is generally opening
to arguments backed by peer reviewed research, I don’t know why this topic
would be any different. Also, DannyBee’s comment is interesting, regarding
this article having been previously debunked

~~~
bodas
Chopping the whole thing off would reduce the risk of HIV even further.

~~~
patagonia
I actually don’t understand why providing links to articles with scientific
research spanning a decade that backs up a hygiene practice that reduces the
costs of one our lifetimes worst global health epidemics would elicit such
snarky sarcasm. I actually don’t

~~~
rootusrootus
Please be aware how much of that research sources back to a few studies in
Africa. There are a few essential differences between the US and Africa beyond
foreskin.

~~~
patagonia
How about a study published this month:

[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199453)

Or one that considers multiple countries:

[https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/7974070](https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/7974070)

Or a 2010 article about men in the United States:

[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0008723)

I’m literally finding this stuff by googling on my cell phone, so clearly
you’ve not bothered to check yourself. Given the costs in dollars and lives I
don’t understand the biases toward writing this off.

