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Comment by aaaaaaaaaaab | Hacker News Reader

>Consider a world without antibiotics

In a world without antibiotics I’d rather not want anyone getting within 10 feet of my son’s penis with an unsterilized blade, thank you. Not to mention the whole “direct oral suctioning” tradition of some religious groups [1], which sounds like a recipe for spreading herpes and other goodies.

[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/safe-bris...

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Considering in that world said child, with or without circumcising, often only had 50:50 odds of making it to adult hood, but if they were an adult, these things would matter?

You’d likely have others overrule you.

Such is society, or something.

Risk of death or permanent tissue damage due to poor medical practice long before a boy had any chance to reproduce isn't necessarily less significant than possible moderate transmission risk reduction for sexually transmitted diseases later in life [if they flouted strong social conventions against extra-marital sex]. Traditional societies hadn't figured out that cleaning tools between procedures reduced infections immediately afterwards obviously didn't know about the links between circumcisions and mildly reduced risk of certain rare ailments decades later.

You'd likely have others overrule you regardless, but the same applied when it came to unambiguously harmful quasi-medical procedures like FGM blood-letting.

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