Background: I came back from the Middle East in late 2008 and fell over ILL.  I'd cough until I hacked up blood, pulse hammering, drink some water, pass out for a couple of hours, repeat. Sinus drainage, congestion, the works.

The VA was as useless as the VA usually is, giving me 6 different medications to fix the symptoms, but not addressing the cause.  "But you feel better, right?"

Yeah, but I'd like to get back to when I didn't need 6 pills and inhalers a day to survive.  Even if it means surgery.

Found a good private doc (Dr Sanjay Vyas, Indiana Primary Care, highly recommended if you can get on his list), who did five minutes of tests and discussions and said, "I think you have severe allergy and asthma, see this guy."

Dr Garrick Hubbard, nationally rated, Indiana Allergy and Asthma Care. Also highly recommended. He even has workarounds for people allergic to allergy treatment. Yes, that exists.  My wife has that.

Now, a lot of vets came back with similar stuff, and we're still sorting out how much was environmental, contamination, etc.

Dr Hubbard did a bank of tests, determined I had several environmental allergies I'd had not before deploying, and asthma, same.  (My pre-deployment PT test was 50 pushups in 60 seconds, 50 crunches in 60 seconds, 1.5 mile run in 11 minutes, and 60 seconds later my resting pulse was 63 bpm). After deployment, they wouldn't let me run in case I died.  I was bad. See para 1.

So Dr Hubbard lays out this list of issues, tells me the treatment, tells me median recovery is about 70%.  Given that my 8 liter lung capacity was down to a functional 2 liters, that sounds great.

Five years later, I was unmedicated between shots, lung capacity over 5 liters, no need for an inhaler, and I very occasionally take a decongestant or antihistamine if the trees are really bad, or the wet leaves are getting moldy.  We've been tapering off the shots for a while and should be ceasing them shortly.

I want you to comprehend that my doctor is top rate.  My doctor who is an expert in breathing issues.

During the initial COVID panic, he was requiring patients to remain in the exam room for the 30 minute post-injection observation period.

As of last week, back to normal. Get your shots, sit in the waiting area, which is roomy and has good ventilation. The staff are still wearing masks.

So if you're going to sit there shrieking that "OH MY GOD! WE CAN NEVER SIT THAT CLOSE AGAIN OR WE WILL ALL DIE! BECAUSE SCIENCE! YOUR DOCTOR IS TERRIBLE AND YOU NEED TO FIND A BETTER ONE RIGHT NOW!"  Then I'm going to just note that Dr Hubbard knows more science than you, and has proven so.  I'm healthy again.

Stop shrieking about "Because science!" and actually look at some.

COVID is bad for vulnerable populations, especially the elderly. But it's not going to last forever, and there's no significant risk even to asthmatics, if you're responsible about your hand washing and coughing.

And the odds are there will never be a vaccine, nor will it matter by summer.

Idiots in comments will be mocked.

From George Avery, PhD. MPA


Dr. Avery has a PhD in Health Services Research from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and has conducted significant research in the area of public health emergency preparedness, including five journal articles and two book chapters on the topic. He has served on several CDC advisory boards, including a panel on preparedness and emergency response centers, and consulted for the Defense Department on Medical Civic Action program doctrine. He has edited a special issue of the research journal Bioterrorism and Biodefense and served as a reviewer for the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management as well as Disaster Medicine and Public Health. He is a health services researcher with a medical analytics firm in the Midwest, and has formerly been a professor with the public health program at Purdue and worked from 1990-2000 with the Arkansas Department of HealthΓÇÖs Division of Public Health Laboratories.

 

We are seeing a panic reaction towards the newly emerged SARS-COVID-2 [Wuhan] epidemic, marked by panic buying of items including the much-joked about toilet paper, drastic action by political figures that often impinges on basic civil rights, and potentially devastating lasting economic impact. Much of this has been fueled by naïve and sensationalist reporting of fatality rates, such as a March 10, 2020 report by the Bloomberg news service that implies that 3.4-3.5% of infected individuals die (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-09/travel-companies-pull-forecasts-italy-extends-ban-virus-update ).  This has caused comparisons to the 1919 Influenza A:H1N1 pandemic and its 2.5% case fatality rate, which would qualify as a level 5 event on the CDC’s Pandemic Severity Index (PSI) and has led to a panicked overreaction worldwide. This case fatality rate, however, to a trained epidemiologist is obviously a significant overestimation of the actual fatality rate from the disease.

Ascertainment bias is a systematic error in statistical estimation of a population parameter resulting from errors in measurement - usually, in undermeasurement of a parameter. In this case, we are underestimating the actual number of cases in the population, which is the denominator in the calculation of the estimated case fatality rate. We are accurately estimating deaths, but to get the case fatality rate, we divide deaths by our estimate of the number of cases. Because that it too low due to measurement error, the estimate of the case fatality rate is too high.

For example, for a hypothetical disease if we have three deaths and observed ten cases, then the case fatality rate is 30% (3/10=0.3 or 30%). If, however, there were actually 300 cases, and only 10 were observed and reported, ascertainment bias has led us to underestimate the cases and overestimate the case fatality rate, which is actually 1% (3/300=0.01 or 1%).

In this case, in the absence of population-based screening to more actually estimate the total number of cases, we are only counting cases who are sick enough to seek health care -- almost all disease reports are made by healthcare professionals. We are missing people who have no more than a cold or who are infected but show no symptoms, individuals who almost certainly make up the overwhelming majority of actual cases. Thus, as in my hypothetical example, we are overestimating the case fatality rate for the disease.

There is, however, data available on SARS-COVID-2 [Wuhan] that allows us to get a better grasp on the actual case fatality rates for the virus.

One case is that of the cruise ship Diamond Princess, which achieved some notoriety from the well-publicized outbreak among its 3711 passengers and crew in January and February of 2006. Held aboard in constricted quarters, the population was subject to 3068 polymerase chain reaction (pcr) tests, which identified 634 individuals (17%) as infected, with over half of these infections (328 ) producing no symptoms. Seven infected passengers died, all of them over the age of 70. Adjusting the data for age, researchers at the London Institute of Tropical Medicine have estimated a fatality rate per infection (IFR) for the epidemic in China of 0.5% (95% CI: 0.2-1.2%) during the same period. This is far below the earlier estimates of 3.4% or greater that were promoting panic over the epidemic.  See Russell et al, Estimating the infection and case fatality ratio for COVID-19 using age-adjusted data from the outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, MedRXIV 2020 at https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20031773v2.full.pdf.

South Korea has also implemented far wider population-based screening than the US, expanding their screening past suspected cases to voluntary population screening in geographies frequented by identified cases. As of March 15, as Stanford University economist Richard Epstein has noted, they performed over 235,000 tests and identified 8, 162 infections with 75 deaths (CFR=0.91%). Again, only about 10% of the deaths were in the population under the age of 60. See https://www.hoover.org/research/coronavirus-isnt-pandemic . While their population screening efforts were far better than that of the United States, this was still not a broad-based screening effort (such as was used on the Diamond Princess), being biased because while it looked at a broader population, it still was enriched with cases by looking only at a segment of the population with a higher risk.  Still, the case fatality rate is significantly below the 3.4% rate that caused the public panic.

What we are likely seeing, in my estimation, is an epidemic with a real case fatality rate between 0.2 and 0.5%, which is similar to the 1957 Asian Influenza A:H2N2 or 1968 Hong Kong Influenza A:H3N2 pandemics, which were also essentially virgin field respiratory epidemics. These pandemics rate, not as PSI5 events, but as PSI2 events on the CDC scale. They are certainly atypical and more severe than a PSI1 event (such as a routine seasonal flu epidemic), but not a shattering event like the 1919 influenza A:H1N1 pandemic. These earlier pandemics essentially tripled the number of deaths due to influenza experienced annually, and were posed little long-term economic or other damage to the population despite being handled without the extreme measures that are currently being adopted or proposed by political figures. Like those pandemic events, SARS-COVID-2 [Wuhan] has its most significant impact on elderly or otherwise compromised individuals, with few fatalities observed in the population under the age of 60. From what we have observed, half of those infected show no symptoms, 40% show mild symptoms such as a cold, and only about 2% advance to serious or critical illness. What is needed now is for politicians and the population to pause, take a deep breath, and address the epidemic with rational measures, such as social distancing of the older population, ring screening around identified cases, quarantine of identified infected individuals, and adequate hospital triage systems to protect other patients and health care staff rom infection in order to preserve our ability to treat the most severe cases. This is a strategy identified by myself and colleagues at Purdue in 2007 to ensure adequate capacity to deal with another true influenza pandemic, and it applies to this one as well.

 

 

http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/natural.html The blog of a born again vegan who insists humans are "naturally" vegan.  I will quote him in italics.

 

Looking at the evidence fairly

The meat-eating reader already has half a dozen objections to this before s/he's even read the rest of the article, and I will address those objections specifically, but first let me address them generally: It's human nature to want to feel that what we're doing is right, proper, and logical. When we're confronted with something that suggests that our long-held belief might actually be wrong, it's uncomfortable. We can either consider the new evidence fairly, adding to the discomfort about our possible error, or we can reject that premise without truly considering it, which allows us to sidestep any uncomfortable feelings.  And we do this by searching our minds for any possible arguments for why the challenge must be wrong, to justify our current beliefs. This practice is so common psychologists have a name for it: cognitive dissonance.

 

Response:  And you can switch the words "meat eater" for "Weed eater" and get exactly the same outcome. Vegtards will go into denial and ignore the fact that agriculture kills billions of animals, and that most plants are toxic, but animal flesh is natural and immediately digestible.

  

In graphical form, it goes like this:

Evidence that humans' anatomy favors a plant-based diet

Evidence to the contrary

 

Response:  Funny. He got the two bars backward.  I'm still waiting for him to provide the bounteous list of edible plants our ancestors consumed during the Glacial Maximum in Asia in December.  He hasn't, and he can't, because there wasn't.   You ate food (meat), or died.

The first thing the USAF teaches in survival school is, "You can always eat bugs or animals."  It's not even worth the time to learn which plants are edible, beyond a few very obvious ones.

  

He said: [Meat eater argument] "Humans have always eaten meat."

 

No, we haven't, and I'll provide evidence for that shortly.  More importantly, early humans, like modern humans, could have simply acted outside of instinct, and made interesting dietary choices contrary to their anatomy.  We really have to look at our digestive system to get the best evidence for what we're optimized for eating, not what some humans chose to eat.  Otherwise, thousands of years from now anthropologists might conclude that eating McDonald's is natural because humans circa 2012 used to eat a lot of it.

Also, of early humans who did eat meat, they might have eaten it as sparingly as modern chimps do.

 

Response:  Indeed. Effectively 100% of animals are edible, and effectively 100% of plants are not (we can eat a tiny fraction of a percent of weeds.  There is only a tiny fraction of percent of animals that are toxic).  Digestive system proves we are carnivores.  Thousands of years from now, anthropologists might conclude that eating plants is natural because humans circa 2012 ate a lot of them.

And what "Some" humans choose to eat? Every hunter gatherer society we know of (notice that first word), from the Inuit to the San and !Kung Bushmen, to the natives of the tropical Amazon jungle, to the proto-Europeans, to the plains Indians, eats or ate meat. Every. Single. One.

Because statistically, all animals are edible, and almost no plants are. Meat also provides much higher nutritional density, and can be preserved easily.  And, meat is available all year round.

What would cause people to act "out of [their] instinct"? The unavailability of meat (our natural food).  When food was not available, we ate weeds.

Really, I've done this experiment. Even if you know which plants are edible, A: It's a bitch of a time gathering enough for a meal, 2) they are very seasonal with short shelf lives, and III] they taste like grass.  They're revolting.  Most people make vegetables palatable by cooking them with oil and salt.

Seriously, you want me to believe people picked up rocks and spears and hunted down animals that would gore, stomp or bite back because it was an "interesting dietary choice"?

And "Might have"?  What kind of argument is that? Especially when we have proof that most primitive peoples seek meat first, even if they have other options, and during most of the Paleolithic we were more carnivorous than wolves.

And of course, all those cave paintings that show people throwing spears at cabbages.  Definitely vegetarians.

Argument fails of logic and rhetoric.

 

He says: [meat eater argument] "We're capable of eating meat, therefore we're omnivores. Case closed."

Okay, fine, then cats are omnivores, too. ("Case closed.")  Commercial cat foods, both wet and dry, contain things like rice, corn, and wheat.  In fact, some people feed their cats a pure vegan diet with no meat at all.

But of course, cats are true carnivores.  We don't call them omnivores just because they'll eat things contrary to what nature intended.  That would be silly.  No one makes that argument for cats.  But they make it for humans, enthusiastically.  However, they can't have it both ways: Either we don't assume humans are omnivores just because we can eat meat, or we apply the same standard to other animals and conclude that cats are omnivores, too.  Which is it?

 

Response: Cats can digest almost no vegetables. We can digest a very few vegetables, and, here's the important part:  We've selectively bred and engineered those plants to be more edible, or edible at all.  There's no breeding necessary to make a bovine or ungulate edible.

And some people feed their children a pure vegan diet. You know what happens?

 https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1GIWA_enUS625US625&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=baby%20died%20vegan%20diet

The children DIE.  They even sometimes die because the mother insists on being a vegtard and can't provide enough nutrition for the baby.

You know what you've never heard of happening and never will? An Inuit baby dying because his parents fed him too much whale and caribou, and not enough lichen and grass seed.

We're carnivores.

 

He says: [people complain] "You're not a credible source."

You don't have to believe me, you can look at the evidence I cite.  My critics talk as though I claim this article to be original research, but really, I'm just reporting on what the science says, citing credible sources along the way.

 

Response:  No, it's original speculation, unsupported by fact, citing lots of out of context and fringe statements that are not credible sources.  To find one, you'd have to first know what one was.

 

He says: [meat eater argument] "Vitamin B12. End of story."

I'm not joking when I tack on "End of story" to the sample counter-arguments. People actually make them that way, literally.  Here again, they think one point invalidates all other evidence.  Amazing.

The argument here is that since B12 isn't found in plant foods and modern vegans must supplement, a vegan diet can't be natural.  Here's what's wrong with that argument:

1.B12 isn't made by animals, it's made by bacteria. (source)  It's found in animal foods because they're a hotbed of bacterial activity. It's also found in feces of most species.  Historically it was easier for vegans to get B12 because their environment was so dirty. Plants pulled from the ground and not washed scrupulously could have bacterial contamination, and thus B12. (source)

2.B12 is also found in lakes, before the water is sanitized. (source)

3.Remember that "plant-eaters" aren't exclusively plant-eaters; they eat some small amounts of non-plant foods.  For example, of the 1-5% of chimps' diets that aren't plants, most is generally termites, which happen to be loaded with B12. (source)

4.We saw that fecal matter contaminating the environment can provide B12.  But not taking any chances, many plant-eating animals actually eat their own feces.  Prehistoric humans might have done the same. (Human feces is loaded with B12.) (source)

5.Because the ability to absorb B12 decreases with age, the Food and Nutrition board says that all people over 50 should eat B12-fortified food or take B12 supplements, not just vegans. (source)

 

Response:  Well, I wonder how much shit this guy eats to get his B12.  This almost sounds like a TMI about his personal fetishes.

But, using his logic--just because we CAN get B12 from eating shit, doesn't mean we SHOULD. And again:  "Might have."  No evidence provided for his coprophilic fetish.  Nor is it common--most grazers avoid contaminated grass. Browsers don't risk it.  Few carnivores do it.  There's no evidence of any healthy human doing so. Shit smells like shit for a reason.

I'm starting to think this guy is fucking insane.

 

He said:

So the best evidence isn't historical diets, best evidence is our own bodies.  If we'd really been eating a lot of meat for a long time, that would be reflected in our anatomy, but it's not. 

 

Response:  Like the fact that almost 100% of animals are edible and digestible and almost 100% of plants are not? That anatomy?

My original offer was to send him 100 unlabeled plants. Using his natural senses, he should determine which ones were edible, which not, and which were toxic.

 

He said:

Then there's this research:

Robert W. Sussman, Ph.D., professor of anthropology, [spoke at] the American Association for the Advancement of the Science's Annual Meeting....[E]arly man was not an aggressive killer, Sussman argues. He poses a new theory, based on the fossil record and living primate species, that primates have been prey for millions of years, a fact that greatly influenced the evolution of early man.

"Our intelligence, cooperation and many other features we have as modern humans developed from our attempts to out-smart the predator," says Sussman.... The idea of "Man the Hunter" is the generally accepted paradigm of human evolution, says Sussman, "It developed from a basic Judeo-Christian ideology of man being inherently evil, aggressive and a natural killer. In fact, when you really examine the fossil and living non-human primate evidence, that is just not the case."

 

Sussman's research is based on studying the fossil evidence dating back nearly seven million years. "Most theories on Man the Hunter fail to incorporate this key fossil evidence," Sussman says. "We wanted evidence, not just theory. We thoroughly examined literature available on the skulls, bones, footprints and on environmental evidence, both of our hominid ancestors and the predators that coexisted with them." ...

But what Sussman and Hart discovered is that Australopithecus afarensis was not dentally pre-adapted to eat meat. "It didn't have the sharp shearing blades necessary to retain and cut such foods," Sussman says. "These early humans simply couldn't eat meat. If they couldn't eat meat, why would they hunt?"

It was not possible for early humans to consume a large amount of meat until fire was controlled and cooking was possible. Sussman points out that the first tools didn't appear until two million years ago. And there wasn't good evidence of fire until after 800,000 years ago.

 

Response:  "Evil"?  The researcher seems to have a bias for his hypothesis.  Why is killing inherently evil, if it advances your genetic survival?  Sounds like he's the one with Christian guilt.  And his hypothesis (not theory) is unsupported by evidence. We have cutting tools going back three and a half million years. They weren't used for peeling fruit. They were used for breaking bones.  We almost certainly used unworked rocks and sticks before that.

Also, Australopothecines are another species.  That's like looking at pandas and concluding grizzly bears naturally eat maple leaves, but have made an "interesting choice" to seek out salmon and deer. 

But, Australopithecines DID have tools and DID eat meat. 3.4 million years ago.

And it's perfectly possible to eat raw meat without "Shearing tools."

So, the idiot cites another idiot, who, despite an advanced degree, isn't aware of a lot of basic facts.  But I bet his vegetarian buddies love him. This is like "Professor" Bellesiles, who insisted colonial Americans didn't have weapons and somehow won a revolution with harsh letters of protest.

Also, 800K years ago predates modern Homo Sapiens. So, once again, he's saying that some other species MIGHT have been a vegetarian because it hadn't developed the brains to bang the rocks together. I think the professor isn't even clear on the difference between tool using omnivorous Australopithecenes and weed-munching ape Paranthropus boisei.

They also lived in a very tropical environment where they MIGHT have found edible plants all year, but WOULD find animals all year, especially kills made by bigger predators. And of course, P Boisei effectlively was a panda, sitting in the weeds munching grass stalks.  Try that. You'll starve in a week. It had a different metabolism because it was a different species.

He said: In any event, the idea that our ancestors might have decided to mimic other animals and eat more meat isn't a particularly compelling argument that it's natural for us to do so.  Given that humans act outside of instinct, looking at historical behavior isn't as convincing as looking at anatomy and health effects—as we'll do in a moment.

 

Response:  In any event, that certain people have DECIDED to mimic other animals and eat weeds isn't a particularly compelling argument that it's natural for us…

When most animals are edible and most plants are not.

Note again, the "might" word.  His entire site is "we MIGHT not be carnivores, we MIGHT have eaten plants, we MIGHT have eaten feces, we MIGHT…."

We eat meat.  We're a carnivore. Sadly, we live in a world where moral and genetic defectives (look at his picture) have the CHOICE to eat weeds and convince themselves they're somehow more moral and healthy…if they can buy enough supplements and highly processed plants to gain the nutrition they'd get from eating a cow.

From another page on his site:

As to this:
Saying we're omnivores because we're capable of eating meat is just silly. 
 
Incorrect. Again:  Almost EVERY animal is edible, the exception being some ugly fish and ugly reptiles we had no access to until quite recently.
Almost EVERY plant is either non-edible or toxic, and we have no sensory way to tell which is which, how are we possibly "naturally" herbivorous?  Using his own rhetoric, just because we CAN eat (a fraction of a percentage of) plants, doesn't mean we should.
 
Again, I will send him 100 unlabeled plants or plant parts.  He can prepare and eat the ones you believe are edible.  We'll see how well he does.
 
In fact, the reverse is true for all humans--if they have the enzymes for starch digestion, they still can't effect full processing. We CAN eat starch, but it's not natural.  It also destroys our metabolism in other than trace amounts.  Feed a Bushman or Inuit wheat and they get very ill.
 
He lists:
 
Brown Rice                  
Tomatoes                  
Potatoes                  
Green Peppers                  
Corn                   
Lettuce (iceberg)                   
Celery                   
Cucumbers                   
Oats                   
Carrots                   
Broccoli                  
Pinto Beans                  
 
 
Did you notice that NONE of those edible plants existed in their present form 10K years ago? Every single one is a cultivar.  The grains are seasonal and require agriculture to store in any usable quantity.  Half of them are New World.  Most require extensive processing. They are not "natural" foods. Hell, broccoli is less than 3000 years old, and you'd need 3.5 lbs a day to get enough protein, and you'd still be short some essential amino acids. (He claims this is a myth. That's yet another part of his site where you can point, laugh, and get something strong to drink.)
 
And, all of them require killing animals in the agricultural production process, so any moralizing argument is ridiculous.

 

Our early ancestors from at least four million years ago were almost exclusively vegetarian. 
 
So, completely different species were vegetarian?  And? A few million years before that, you find carnivorous chickens.

I can't think of any reason to read more. His "compelling" arguments are complete bullshit, he's scientifically illiterate, he's cherry-picking out of context soundbites and his arguments devolve to "might have."

Look, if you like weeds and want to eat them, knock yourself out.  I actually like broccoli and tomatoes, I love cucumber, and onions and garlic are a staple here.  But beans, besides being dreadfully unhealthy, taste like cardboard.

But don't pretend to be especially moral or enlightened from your choice of diet.  And don't try to persuade people that's a post-agricultural revolution LUXURY that a few people with defective senses can afford to eat is "natural."  

A weed-based diet requires about 12X the volume than meat (he even admits, offhandedly, that one has to eat "enough" weeds to get protein, which he says you don't really need to survive. Again, look at his picture.  He's certainly proof of that, but I wouldn't brag about it), and if you allow for the shorter shelf life, it works out to about 15X.  Then, grains especially require lots of arable acreage, lots of water, generate a lot of methane (Rice alone is about 1/3 of human methane production, equalling all meat production by itself), and all the animals who had that as a habitat are killed, or displaced and killed.  There's nothing green about it.

And I have to go kill some animals directly, like a man, not indirectly and passive-aggressively, like a whiny bitch, because they're delicious and nutritious.  

ADDENDUM:  Tard's response to my request for a list of edible plants available in the Paleolithic in winter, and in regard to the MODERN vegetables he listed was, "Sorry, you lose. Better luck next time."

In other words, he's unable to list said plants, which I predicted, because they didn't exist. 

But he's never wanted a debate. He wants to feel special and enlightened.

EDIT NOTE:  So far, at least 3 people have decided not to genitally mutilate their male children, based on this article.  Including at least one Jew.

I'm here to denounce the barbaric practice of male genital mutilation. I'll start with facts, then move to opinion, and destroy the myths that most people seem to have, being as ignorant of male genital landscape as they were of the female clitoris a century ago.

First, let's look at why this Semitic practice became a thing in the west: One John Harvey Kellogg.

John Harvey Kellogg (February 26, 1852 ΓÇô December 14, 1943) was an American medical doctor in Battle Creek, Michigan, who ran a sanitarium using holistic methods, with a particular focus on nutrition, enemas and exercise. Kellogg was an advocate of vegetarianism and is best known for the invention of the breakfast cereal known as corn flakes with his brother, Will Keith Kellogg.

Corn flakes and enemas. Great combination.

And why was he terrified of protein?

His dietary advice in the late 19th century, which was in part concerned with reducing sexual stimulation, discouraged meat-eating, but not emphatically so.

No, he had more emphatic ways of dealing with sexual stimulation:

Kellogg was a skilled surgeon, who often donated his services to indigent patients at his clinic.[9] Although generally against unnecessary surgery to treat diseases,[10][11] he did advocate circumcision, allegedly to prevent masturbation.

He was an especially zealous campaigner against masturbation; this was an orthodox view during his lifetime, especially the earlier part. Kellogg was able to draw upon many medical sources' claims such as "neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of onanism," credited to one Dr. Adam Clarke. Kellogg strongly warned against the habit in his own words, claiming of masturbation-related deaths "such a victim literally dies by his own hand," among other condemnations. He felt that masturbation destroyed not only physical and mental health, but the moral health of individuals as well. Kellogg also believed the practice of this "solitary-vice" caused cancer of the womb, urinary diseases, nocturnal emissions, impotence, epilepsy, insanity, and mental and physical debility; "dimness of vision" was only briefly mentioned.

Kellogg worked on the rehabilitation of masturbators, often employing extreme measures, even mutilation, on both sexes. He was an advocate of circumcising young boys to curb masturbation and applying phenol to a young woman's clitoris. In his Plain Facts for Old and Young,[7] he wrote:

ΓÇ£ A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision, especially when there is any degree of phimosis. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. The soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice, and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed. ΓÇ¥

further

ΓÇ£ a method of treatment [to prevent masturbation] ... and we have employed it with entire satisfaction. It consists in the application of one or more silver sutures in such a way as to prevent erection. The prepuce, or foreskin, is drawn forward over the glans, and the needle to which the wire is attached is passed through from one side to the other. After drawing the wire through, the ends are twisted together, and cut off close. It is now impossible for an erection to occur, and the slight irritation thus produced acts as a most powerful means of overcoming the disposition to resort to the practice ΓÇ¥

and

ΓÇ£ In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid (phenol) to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement. ΓÇ¥

He also recommended, to prevent children from this "solitary vice", bandaging or tying their hands, covering their genitals with patented cages and electrical shock.[7]

In his Ladies' Guide in Health and Disease, for nymphomania, he recommended

ΓÇ£ Cool sitz baths; the cool enema; a spare diet; the application of blisters and other irritants to the sensitive parts of the sexual organs, the removal of the clitoris and nymphae... ΓÇ¥

Got that? Butchering the genitals would prevent masturbation!

So, if you're taking medical advice from this child-butchering, vegetarian, god-nut, quack freak, you should probably be killed right now. Oh, he was also a huge racist and proponent of eugenics.

Obviously, this doesn't work, and the practice on females was stopped.

On males, it persists, and there are even people who promote it as improving penile and sexual function.  It's good for you!

Wrong.

It's very common for men with butchered penises to insist they really aren't missing anything, just as good or better, glad they have it.

Wrong.

The most oft-repeated lie is, "The foreskin is basically just skin."

Wrong.

Even if it was "just skin," how would slicing off the skin NOT affect sensation? If you blister your hand, you have less sensation than before, on that "just skin."

The foreskin is just skin on the OUTSIDE. Inside it's a stretchy membrane that covers about 2/3 of the penis. Feel free to measure from the scar up and around, and do the math on how many square inches that is. (And yes, you have a scar. Scars are generally not a good thing for function.)

And you can confirm with just about any intact man that the inside of that membrane is pretty much nothing but nerves. If you have it, you can achieve orgasm with very light fingertip contact just on that skin.

That's not the most important part, though.

You know how when your glans rubs against your underwear it's irritating, then painful, then crippling?

No?

Well, it would be if your penis was properly functional.

That's a mucous membrane, or is supposed to be. By slicing off that "just skin," the sensitive mucous membrane has to become epidermis.

So, first you've sliced off half the sensory nerves, then you've killed most of the other half.

It's a tribute to nature and the human nervous system and its almost cybernetic workarounds that you can orgasm at all. I have no idea how, since you're missing everything I use for the purpose. But I guess the way blind people learn to hear better, something awakens to handle the job in some half-assed fashion.

Really, it's absolute butchery and functionally equivalent to slicing the female clitoris. If you protest one and endorse the other, you're a hypocrite and have no moral standing. At least the Muslims who butcher both sexes are morally consistent, and therefore superior to you.

Now, awareness of this is becoming prevalent, but there are some guys in not only complete denial, but in protest that they're somehow better with half a dick.

~~~

"The glans is more sensitive without skin in the way."

Certainly. The foreskin rolls back. And here's the neat part: ALL THE NERVES INSIDE IT COME INTO PLAY, TOO! If you have so little grasp of anatomy, you shouldnΓÇÖt be commenting.

As noted above, slicing off the protective skin turns that mucous membrane into epidermis. Your eye will also collect more light if you slice off that silly lid thing. But that may not be a benefit.

~~~

"Oh, so I'm less of a man because I'm missing flesh. Why don't you tell that to the guys at Walter Reed recovering from burns."

Yeah, I'm sure they're all there insisting, "No, I'm glad the skin is burned off. It makes the flesh underneath so much more sensitive!"

~~~

"You're dick obsessed."

Right. You tie baby boys into restraints and slice bits off their genitalia, without anesthetic, while they scream, and even suck the baby dick clean with your mouth (if you're certain sects of Jewish), but I'm the one who's dick obsessed. Cool story, bro. Are you convincing yourself?

By the way, can you name any other surgical procedure you'd perform on an infant, without anesthetic? That you wouldn't expect to get you arrested for child abuse and torture and jailed?

~~~

"It hasn't affected my sexual pleasure at all."

How would you know? Since all that flesh was butchered before you were aware of it, you're like a person blind from birth insisting eyes aren't really important.

Please name any other process where removing healthy tissue doesn't affect function or increases it.

~~~

"Some day, some chick is going to look at your junk and be grossed out."

In 47 years and about 50 lovers this has never been an issue for me. I guess I have better self-esteem and never dated shallow whores. But hey, appeasing a woman's visual senses totally justifies destroying your sexual pleasure, right?

~~~

"It reduces the odds of penile cancer!"

No, actually not at all.

From Wikipedia again:

Penile cancer is a rare cancer in developed nations with annual incidence varying from 0.3 to 1 per 100,000 per year accounting for around 0.4ΓÇô0.6% of all malignancies.[1] The annual incidence is approximately 1 in 100,000 men in the United States,[2] 1 in 250,000 in Australia, (where there are less circumcisions) and 0.82 per 100,000 in Denmark. (even less) In the United Kingdom, fewer than 500 men are diagnosed with penile cancer every year. (Also a lower rate than the US.)

Circumcision during infancy or in childhood may provide partial protection against penile cancer. Several authors have proposed circumcision as a possible strategy for penile cancer prevention;[1][19][24] however, the American Cancer Society points to the rarity of the disease and notes that neither the American Academy of Pediatrics nor the Canadian Academy of Pediatrics recommend routine neonatal circumcision.

"Partial protection," because the only part of the penis that can't get cancer is the part you cut off…which, if it becomes necessary, can be cut off IF you get cancer. So, your proposal is to butcher the genitals of 999,999 baby boys because it MIGHT help with the one remaining one. This is sort of the inverse of not getting immunized because there MIGHT be a reaction to the serum.

And of course, if I suddenly develop cancer of the foreskin tomorrow, it can be removed easily enough, and I've had 35 years of greater sexual pleasure than you. But, as noted above, this not only isn't an issue, it's less of an issue in nations where they don't butcher their babies.

You may as well insist, "We have formula, so let's slice the tits off baby girls so they can't get breast cancer later in life!" "Oh, nipples aren't very sensitive. You don't need them for sexual pleasure."

By the way, the mortality rate for botched circumcisions (Botched butchery, dear God how horrifying is THAT concept?) exceeds the mortality rate from penile cancer. Great job.

~~~

"It reduces the odds of getting AIDS."

Bullshit.

This comes from studies that certain African tribes who practice genital butchery have lower rates of AIDs. They also almost all have either/or, or both, Islam (better sanitation than the animistic savages around them) or better food and cleaner water, so lower incidence of ANY disease.

And even if so, you're again butchering 100K babies against the odds 375 of them (per the CIA World Factbook) will reduce their odds of getting AIDS via that one small part of the anatomy, rather than open sores in the mouth, or the most common method, by receiving anal sex from a carrier. Through the foreskin would require insertion into a carrier, and damage to the membrane both.

And we have these things called "condoms" and "blood tests."

Again, you're taking the short end of the bet, and apparently assuming your boy is going to grow up to be a gay ass-pounder with no self control.

My gay friends resent that characterization, with good reason.

~~~

A new one, from a person who admits there's no valid medical reason for doing so:

"My baby, my choice."

Wow.  Now that's special.

Except that's not really what you're doing. is it? What you are doing is denying your future adult child a choice.

Would you "choose" to bind your child's feet, Chinese style? Oh, wait--that's illegal in this country (and there, too, as far as I'm aware).

Would you "choose" to have them tattooed?  That would be illegal.

Would you "choose" to have them branded, with a scar they'd carry forever?  That also would be illegal.

But you want to "choose" to butcher their genitals? Well, that's AOK in America! Never mind what they might want in a couple of decades. You've taken that choice away. It's not like dietary or clothing choices they can decide to change later if they wish, or even religious indoctrination they can consider for their own interpretation. You've chopped them up, it's a done deal.

But if you can't articulate a reason for this choice, then here's where we stop being friends. Because I literally cannot trust you not to "choose" to molest your chlidren. They're just a thing you play with, like that doll you mutilated in 2nd grade.

~~~

"It's biblical."

Actually, no. It's Semitic. If you actually read your New Testament, this is much discussed. Jews did it. Greeks did not. One example quote:

Was anyone called while circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Was anyone called while uncircumcised? Let him not be circumcised.

Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters. I Corinthians 7:18-19

But unless you're not wearing mixed fibers, not eating pork or shellfish, etc, why would you suddenly escalate to genital butchery?

And if some invisible friend in your head is telling you to slice up bits of your baby, perhaps you should be in some other institution.

If you butcher your kids, you are a vile human being and should have your skull clubbed in like a baby seal.

If you were butchered through ignorance, you have my sympathy and pity, but please don't pretend you're morally superior and it was a good thing that happened.

It's butchery, it's superstitious barbarism, and it needs to be outlawed.