Circumcision affects 15.3 million children and young adults annually. In terms of gender, 13.3 million boys and 2 million girls are subjected to the involuntary removal of part or all of their external sexual organs every year. The problem of female circumcision has been addressed on an international level, but male circumcision remains a controversial subject that many academics have been reluctant to examine. Circumcision is tolerated today because it has been practiced for millennia by a small but vocal minority of religious and ethnic groups, however, when the practice is examined through...

How is it that, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is still possible for males and females to be denied their inherent right to keep all the body parts with which they were born?

Circumcision is a cultural phenomenon that affects 15.3 million children and young adults annually. In terms of gender, 13.3 millions boys and 2 million girls are subjected to the involuntary removal of part or all of their external sex organs every year. Few people, however, ask why such practices persist or how modern societies can tolerate this inherent violation of human rights. The...

Every year, across the globe, an estimated 13.3 million boys and 2 million girls are involuntarily subjected to genital cutting. Both male and female genital cutting persist, generating a multi- billion-dollar-a-year industry that is defended by its proponents with dubious studies, manipulated statistics, and an appeal to "custom." Physicians and parents alike have been misled into believing that these mutilations are beneficial, necessary, and harmless. Today, flawed studies have allowed the promotion of circumcision as a way of combating HIV/AIDS in Africa, an experiment that failed in the...

In this volume, an international panel of experts in the fields of medicine, law, ethics, anthropology, sociology, history, religion, and politics, thoroughly examine this violation of human rights and correct widely held medical misinformation.