Thankyou for 100,000 page views of my anti-circumcision blog and Goodbye

Thankyou for 100,000 page views of my anti-circumcision blog.

My working life is about to change, the needs/demands of my profession mean that Iwill expand my Private Consultancy, and my workload will probably double in 2016, so my work in the anti-circumcision campaigns of social media will be severely restricted.  Its now time for others to make their contributions.  I hope that I have made a difference.

Some background information:

My main recent motivation has been to counter the predominant pro-circumcision views in America, while my initial motivation was to counter our own Australian procirc fanatic Brian Morris.

I had been content that routine infant circumcision (RIC) had been overwhelmingly abandoned by both the medical profession and parents of Australia in the 1970's and 80;s, though still stubbornly high with statistics in 2015 showing about 11 to 12% of boys still being circumcised.  In the early to mid 2000's I began to notice the beginning of an incessant media campaign by Brian Morris et al, to reinstate routine infant circumcision in Australia.  I did some research and found that Brian Morris had been a long-term pro-circumcision campaigner who had fought against the abandonment of RIC, he had been condemned for his views, and he had even made dire predictions about the genito-urinary health of Australian males because of the abandonment of circ, which in the end have all proved to be false.  I thought I must add my medico-scientific voice to counter Morris et al.  I initially wrote to the RACP, and was assured by their response about the circumcision of infants, and they informed me that Brian Morris was not a member of the RACP and anything he said in media did not represent the views of the RACP.

I then discovered social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and found that Americans had a much bigger problem than Australians.  I found myself puzzled by America's high infant circumcision rates, and wanted to understand why, and also help support the American anti-circumcision movement. Further research helped me to understand that circumcision had infiltrated the American psyche and was part of their cultural identity and that they would fight very hard to retain the practice.  I was amazed but not really surprised that even the American Academy of Pediatrics was willing to subject themselves to international shame and ridicule to defend the right of their practitioners to continue the practice (What a shame they didn;t put the same effort into defending the rights of their real patients "infant boys").

I can proudly say that most page reads have come from America (52,306), so I have had some influence in the USA even if only small.

I have spent a lot of my very limited spare time in this endeavour, though my writings have predominantly been rushed, and were not for academic publishing or peer review.  When I re-read them, most of my blog posts do read rushed, and are not fit for scientific publishing.  However, that was never my intent, my intent was for these blogs to be read by ordinary people, and to be motivating pieces which would encourage further reading. 

There are many great academic/scientific writers in this field who are worth reading, and a good follow on from my works, such as:

Dr Robert Darby of Circinfo.org http://www.circinfo.org/index.php 
Dr Brian Earp Brian Earp, Proposed CDC guidelines on male circumcision: A critique (at Academia.edu) 
Morten Frisch. Time for U.S. parents to reconsider the acceptability of infant male circumcision.   Prof David Forbes. Circumcision and the best interests of the child. Journal of Pediatrics and Child Health 51 (March 2015): 263-265. 
Source: Brian Earp and Robert Darby. Does science support infant circumcision? A skeptical reply to Brian Morris. UK Skeptic, 10 June 2014.

Best of luck to my friends in this endeavour!