Circumcision is one of the largest wide spread debates going on across our Nation and our world. Circumcision's increased popularity over the last one hundred years in the United States is due more to medical greed and medical ignorance, than to medical necessity. Many people across the United States have been miss-lead to believe for over one hundred years that being circumcised is for some reason cleaner and healthier than not being circumcised. This is the leading myth about circumcision across America. I have found that most people actually think that it is gross and dirty to be uncircumcised. This is a deranged accusation however, we cannot blame people for thinking this way because that is what they have been taught for years and that is what their parents were taught and so on. This myth does have a root, it is in Dr. Kellog's preaching in the 1880's against masturbation, using circumcision as a means to the end (Joannides 533). Masturbation was a horror to those who lived in these Victorian times (Grossman 100). Dr. Kellog, the founder of the Kellog's company was a fanatic against masturbation and he preached that having the foreskin of a young boy's penis removed would lead to less temptation for them to play with themselves which was considered impure, or unclean. This is what lead to the rumor and miss belief that being clean meant circumcision. However, there really is no validity in being circumcised, it is not the truth to say that it is cleanest to be circumcised. So why are so many people circumcised? I believe it is due to medical greed among the medical community and medical ignorance among the rest of us who give over our sons for this becomingly routine procedure. After all it was preached to our grandparents buy their parents and to our parents by our grandparents and the custom has become so redundant in the United States, why would anyone question its validity now?.
