Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that,

Once a routine procedure for newborn boys, circumcision is falling rapidly out of favor in the United States — even as growing evidence suggests that the surgery may reduce the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
In recent years, many doctors and medical groups, including the influential American Academy of Pediatrics, have stopped recommending routine circumcisions because they believed there wasn’t enough evidence that it’s medically necessary.
More states also have been cutting Medicaid funding for circumcisions, which typically pays for about a third of all circumcisions each year. Sixteen states — including California, Florida and Maine — no longer cover the surgery. A number of private insurers also have stopped paying for the procedure.
As a result, overall circumcision rates in the U.S. have fallen to the lowest level in more than half a century, from 63.5% in 1993 to 55.9% in 2003, the last year for which federal data are available.
Removing the foreskin from the penis can’t prevent transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. The best prevention techniques remain reducing the number of sexual partners and using condoms.

Yesterday, the JTA made the controversial statement that, “The rate of circumcision of Jewish boys is believed to be higher than in the general population.”
You don’t say.
But hey, what Jews do for cultural reasons and what gentiles do for health considerations have nothing to do with each other.
Or do they?
According to the largest Jewish anti-circ organization, there is a connection.
“Though American circumcision practice is generally believed to be independent of Jewish circumcision practice, it is not. Jewish practice and the American practice are connected. For example, of all the letters to the editor in response to the 1999 American Academy of Pediatrics Circumcision Policy Statement, the most strongly pro-circumcision responses were from Jewish doctors, including two who also perform Jewish ritual circumcisions. Of course, there are also Jewish doctors that oppose circumcision, and Thomas Wiswell, a strong circumcision advocate, is not Jewish. However, some of the most outspoken advocates for circumcision tend to be Jewish. This suggests a religious or cultural bias on the part of these advocates. According to a MEDLINE search, Edgar Schoen, a strong Jewish advocate, has been published 20 times in the medical literature on the subject of circumcision.
Regarding the medical profession’s attitude toward circumcision, a physician at a major hospital in Boston who wrote the hospital’s circumcision information sheet for parents defended its pro-circumcision bias by stating that “the religious aspect of circumcision plays a significant role. According to this physician, discouraging circumcision would put doctors “in a position of attacking religious belief. This stance suggests that religion may be a factor that inhibits the full disclosure of medical information and medical views on circumcision. In our experience, this example appears to represent a pattern suggesting that American discussion or questioning of the issue is affected by the Jewish presence. Therefore, we believe that when the subject is circumcision, mentioning religious affiliation is relevant to assessing potential bias.” [Footnotes deleted] If true, this is problematic. The Jewish community, who screams like an eight day old infant when someone plants a tree in a public space in December, should be more sensitive to foisting our own religiously inspired cultural preferences on others in the name of AIDS prevention.