Category Archives: medical

beliefs, medical, sexuality

Foreskins

1 Comment

Digging back through my pile of unread articles over the weekend I came across one from earlier this year entitled The Troubled History of the Foreskin [long read].
Common in the US, rare in Europe and now championed in Africa, male circumcision is hotly debated. Author Jessica Wapner looks at the prevalence of male circumcision in America, the way circumcision is being forced onto developing nations (especially in Africa) and the evidence for whether it is actually effective.


Would you buy a banana like this?

And her conclusion is much the same as mine: It is unnecessary and an abuse just as FGM is. As the article is a long read, here are Jessica Wapner’s concluding paragraphs:

After reading the literature, I’m unconvinced by the evidence used to justify circumcision for health reasons. I’ll explain why by means of a thought experiment. Imagine that infant male circumcision had never been a part of American medical practice, but was common in, say, Spain or Senegal or Japan. Based on what we know about the health benefits of the procedure, would American doctors recommend introducing the procedure? And would that evidence be enough for American parents to permanently remove a part of their child’s body without his agreement?
Remember what the evidence tells us. Either the benefits can be obtained by a milder intervention (antibiotics and condoms in the case of urinary tract infections and sexually transmitted diseases), or the risk is low and open to other preventive measures (penile cancer), or the concern is rarely justified (HIV in the United States). Remember also that Western countries where circumcision is rare do not see higher rates of the problems that foreskin removal purports to prevent: not STDs, not penile cancer, not cervical cancer, not HIV. It’s hard to imagine circumcision being introduced on this basis. It’s equally difficult to picture studies on the benefits of the procedure being done.
The main reason we have circumcision in the US today is not the health benefits. It’s because we’re used to it. After all, if circumcision is not definitively preventing a life-threatening issue that cannot be prevented by other means, can removal of a body part without the agreement of the child be justified? We are so accustomed to the practice that operating on an infant so that he resembles his father seems acceptable. I’ve heard many people give this as their reason. It isn’t a good one.
It’s disconcerting to think that circumcising infant boys may be a violation of their human rights. We castigate cultures that practise female genital mutilation (FGM). Rightfully so … removal of the clitoral hood … is anatomically analogous to removal of the foreskin. Some forms of FGM, such as nicking or scratching the female genitalia, are unequivocally deemed a human rights violation but are even milder than the foreskin removal …
Thinking about male circumcision as an unnecessary and irreversible surgery forced on infants, I can’t but hope that the troubled history of the foreskin will come to an end, and that the foreskin will be known for its presence rather than its absence.

Yes, male circumcision should be a human rights abuse just as is FGM.
Footnote: Before anyone wants to ask, no I’m not circumcised. I’m very glad my parents thought as I do that the procedure is unnecessary and thus an abuse. Indeed from memory a majority (maybe 60-70%) of the guys at school and with whom I’ve shared cricket etc. changing rooms were also entire.

medical, sexuality

Sexual Wellbeing

Sexual Health Week, which is this week, has been run annually by the FPA since 1997. This year’s theme is pleasure and wellbeing.


So often we forget that most sex takes place for reasons of pleasure, intimacy and desire rather than reproduction. As well as being pleasurable, an active sex life is a good form of exercise, reduces stress, aids relaxation and sleep, is a good pain reliever and keeps the prostate gland and genitals healthy.
In this context sex doesn’t just mean what goes on between two (or more) consenting adults, but includes masturbation. Oh come on! We all do it. And masturbation can make you happier, healthier and more fertile. The chemicals released by masturbation include dopamine, which triggers the pleasure centres of the brain and reduces stress; endorphins which reduce pain (including menstrual pain); and prolactin, which aids sleep. Apparently males especially (why especially males, I don’t know) benefit from masturbation when they are under the weather, as it increases the production of bacteria-fighting white blood cells. In addition it can help prevent prostate cancer by flushing out the carcinogenic toxins in the prostate.
As sex educator Emily Nagoski says, pleasure is the best measure of sexual wellbeing. And as Emily would no doubt also point out, you only get the real pleasure if you approach sex with confidence and joy.
However the one thing we really must do to achieve this sexual wellbeing (indeed general wellbeing) is to talk much more openly about sex, our bodies and indeed everything medical. We need much better body awareness and to normalise sex and nudity rather than criminalising them. And I believe that has to include the decriminalisation of prostitution and removing the stigmas around STIs.
But this is only going to get easier if we start talking much more, and much more openly, about sex. And that means all of us: parents with children; friends with friends; partners with each other; everyone with their doctor.
The more we talk about what sex is really like, ensure consent and promote informed choices, the less harmful the extreme images, videos and information can be. Good communication really does enhance sexual wellbeing, and it is important that people have the confidence to speak openly and clearly to health professionals about their sexual health.
So if there is one thing I want everyone to start doing during this year’s Sexual Health Week — well I want you to start any time; the sooner the better — it is to talk about sex: with friends, parents, your children, your doctor, your brothers & sisters … anyone and everyone.
The more we talk, the easier it will get. And the more we talk the better our wellbeing.

history, links, medical, science

Your Interesting Links

OK, so here we are again with another instalment of links to interesting (well, I found them interesting) items you may have missed the first time round. There’s a long list this time, so lets start with the hard(er) stuff and then it’s all down hill.
The Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, which measures its success against a National Happiness Index, is planning to invest in the widespread use of electric vehicles. And why not, because of its mountainous terrain Bhutan has copious hydroelectric generation.


Now here is something I’ve known for a while and find quit disturbing: many widely used forensic techniques have never been subjected to scientific scrutiny but rely for veracity on the original testimony of some long-forgotten, apparent expert. Which to me means that any conviction which has relied on forensic data could well be unsafe. And yes, that includes fingerprints.
Herring Gulls. Love them? Or hate them? Either way they provide a valuable service.
How many microbes do you think there are in your house? Yep, thousands. That’s thousands of different species! Here are three stories about the research: from the BBC, from the North Carolina State University research team and from one of the study leaders, Rob Dunn.
Meanwhile in South Africa a team of very small archaeologists have found thousands of bones, apparently from an unknown hominin species, in a virtually inaccessible cave.
And so to the medical … Ovarian cancer is nasty because it is so hard to detect. But (as I have been saying for ages) if women were to lose their fear of saying ‘vagina’ the rate of early diagnosis could increase dramatically. We (everyone, men and women) just have to become more comfortable with our bodies, and talking openly about them, for the good of our health!
“What’s a uterus?” This stunning level of body ignorance and illiteracy is demonstrated in an article in the Guardian from an Australian oncologist.
Now here is a medical affliction which is really frightening: sudden death syndrome.
So what is it like to be permanently like a robot; not being yourself either physically or emotionally? It’s called depersonalisation disorder and is apparently quite common but almost totally misunderstood.
It’s a good week of strange afflictions (they’re not all diseases as such). Here’s another: aphantasia. Which is basically living without any mental images; no mind’s eye; no ability to conjure up a picture of your loves ones; nothing.
Back to the more mundane … Why is it that many of use sneeze when going from the dark into (bright) light? That’s right: no-one really knows, but there are some ideas.

On the chemistry of plums, prunes, chewing gum and constipation.
Apparently we have bees all wrong. Royal Jelly seems not to be what makes a queen bee, but it’s what the royal larvae aren’t fed (and which is fed to workers) that forces them to become queens.
We all seem to like bees but hate wasps. But some people do like wasps despite having been stung about the privy parts. Yes, I too like wasps despite never having had more than an odd sting on the arm.
A couple of weeks ago, George Monbiot created a stir by admitting to eating a roadkill squirrel. And then repeating the exercise on live TV. Seems to me this is rather more honest than getting someone else to rear, slaughter and butcher a pig for you.
Still on the wild world, there’s a fish which is older than the dinosaurs: the lamprey. And it is returning to UK rivers after 200 years. Though it is unlikely that any time soon there’ll be enough to have a surfeit of lampreys like Henry I — which is probably as well as they are quite nasty creatures.

Do you live with a weirdo? You do if you live with a cat. Here are some tales of feline oddness.
Which sort of takes us naturally onto common beliefs we get wrong.
There are many many very wet places on this planet, but which of them wins the crown for being the wettest place on Earth?
And now to the historical … Just why was Orkney the centre of ancient Britain? Long before the Egyptians built the pyramids or ancient Britons built Stonehenge.
And talking of Stonehenge … archaeologists have discovered an unsuspected huge ritual arena just two miles from Stonehenge.
Westminster is NOT the Mother of all Parliaments. The original quotation is “England is the Mother of all Parliaments”.
Ah yes, the age old mystery of the Princes in the Tower. After 500 years it should be a very cold case but some forensic historians are trying to bring it back to life.
Next up two brief pieces from the History of London website. The first on the Great Plague and the Fire of London; the other on the Civil War and Restoration.
IanVisits is running an irregular series on unbuilt London: great projects that never happened. Here’s his piece on the iron London Bridge that never was.

London took a hammering from the Luftwaffe in the Blitz and after the war it took 20+ years to reclaim and build on all the bomb sites. So why is so much of London being redeveloped now?
Finally here’s the story of the oldest known message in a bottle, and one of the longest running scientific experiments. The bottle was cast adrift in the North Sea around 10 years before the Great War and surfaced again earlier this year!
Hopefully you’ll not have to wait quite that long for the next instalment …

books, medical, nudism, people, sexuality

Book Review: Bare Reality

Laura Dodsworth
Bare Reality: 100 Women, Their Breasts, Their Stories
Pinter & Martin; 2015
Bare RealityThis is a fascinating book in which 100 women share un-photoshopped photographs of their breasts alongside honest, courageous, powerful and sometimes humorous stories about their breasts and their effect on their lives. The women come from all walks of life: from a Buddhist nun to a burlesque dancer; ages ranging from 19 to 101; everything from a 32AAA to a 36K bust; entirely natural through surgically enhanced and surgically reduced to bilateral radical mastectomy.
The cover blurb suggests the book will make you reconsider how you think and feel about your own body as well as those of the women in your life. And yes, it may for those who have not thought about these things before. Has it for me? I don’t think so, but the jury is still out. But these women’s perspectives and experiences are certainly revealing, intimate and at times moving.
The stories recounted cover the whole range:

  • I hate my breasts — I love my breasts
  • I wish they were bigger — I wish they were smaller
  • They’re totally non-sensitive — they’re so sensitive it’s painful
  • They don’t do anything sexually — they’re my most erogenous feature
  • Breastfeeding is so gross — I love breastfeeding
  • Breastfeeding is what they’re for — sex is what they’re for
  • I love bras — bras are the work of the Devil
  • I hated them, so a had them enhanced; now they’re horrible and I hate them more
  • I could never have them enlarged/reduced — can’t understand why everyone doesn’t have a boob job
  • This is the first time I’ve ever shown them to anyone — I’m nude all the time
  • How is it men never learn what to do with our breasts but my girlfriend just knows?
  • And of course, why are (most) men so fixated on breasts?

Probably everyone would agree there are a small number of real stunners (though we probably wouldn’t agree which ones) and there are an even smaller number of horrors (like one spectacularly bad boob job); but the vast majority are just breasts — normal breasts — just like you’d see on any topless beach; nothing to get hung up about.
Which is all very much as one might expect so I can’t say I was struck by anything at all surprising. Sad; pathetic; moving; joyous. Yes all of those. But no moment of “OMG how did I not know/suspect that?!”. And in a way I found that disappointing. I had expected there would be something profound about women and their breasts that had passed me by, but if so it isn’t revealed here.
That having been said I did find the book both interesting and compulsive reading. Whether you are male or female, if you want an insight into how women view their breasts this is a must read. I would commend the book to everyone, but especially to teenagers — of both genders, but boys especially — as an essential part of learning, understanding, cherishing and being completely comfortable with your, and everyone else’s, body. To which end we could now do with the equivalent books of male and female genitalia.
Oh, and do not expect the book to be titillating. It isn’t.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆

medical, natural history, science

Oddity of the Week: Victorian (Medical) Oddities

Warning: not for the squeamish.
Conjoined piglets and two-faced kittens! Oooo-eerrr!
In the 19th century, bodies (both human and animal) were hard to come by, so medical and veterinary schools abandoned many dissections and taught their students using remarkably odd objects like waxwork embryos and exploded skulls as well as preserved specimens like this octopus.


The Guardian has a gallery of more interesting examples at www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jul/09/victorian-oddities-two-faced-kittens-conjoined-piglets-in-pictures
Enjoy your lunch!

history, links, medical, science

Your Interesting Links

Another of our irregular round-ups of links to items you might have missed the first time.
We all drop our dinner down our shirt — some of us more than others — but how often do we stop to think about the chemistry behind stain removal?
I’m almost always warm and yet I know plenty of people who, unless sitting on a tropical beach, are always cold. So why do some of us feel the cold more than others?
While talking about people it seems that some people can’t picture things; they can’t conjure up mental images, almost as if their “mind’s eye” is blind.
Which leads me on to an interesting three-part article from Maria Konnikova on sleep: falling asleep; why we sleep; and on waking up (or not). [Long read]
More human wonders … Why do some people collect lint in their navels but others don’t? Spoiler: hair and clothes.
Apparently broccoli is bad for you, like, really toxic bad. Or then again, maybe it isn’t?
A list of links wouldn’t be complete without some reference to our feline friends, now would it! This attempts to explain what your cat is trying to say to you.
And while on language, here’s an interesting infographic on the world’s 23 most spoken languages — they’re spoken by over half the world’s population.
If you’re like us you love the iconic Le Creuset cast iron cookware. David Lebovitz does and he managed to get a tour of the Le Creuset factory.


If you had to think up a new use for recycled plastic, I bet you wouldn’t dream of a plastic road. Well the Dutch just did!
Shuffling quickly now from the modern into the historical … Here are five interesting facts about Lewis Carroll.
And from Carroll’s love of logic and puzzles to the secret codes on British banknotes.
Going backwards, someone has found, dumped in a skip, a wonderful collection of photographs of the construction of Tower Bridge dating from around 1890.

Next our friendly blogging London cabbie takes a look at the curious history of Craig’s Court, off Whitehall.
And even further back here’s an alternative view of the Middle Ages.
And finally back down to earth. Critics claim that pornography degrades women, dulls sexual pleasure, and ruins authentic relationships. But does it? Seems the evidence suggests the critics are wrong.

amusements, medical

Ten Things #19

This month’s “Ten Things” is a bit more unusual. There are many strange diseases out in the wild and some are weirdly named, so I bring you …
Ten Oddly Named Diseases (with the animal/plant affected in parenthesis)

  1. Astrakhan Spotted Fever (humans)
  2. Flaccid Trunk Disease (elephants)
  3. O’nyong-nyong fever (humans)
  4. Whirling Disease (trout)
  5. Lime Witches’ Broom Phytoplasma (citrus trees)
  6. Wobbly Possum Disease (possums)
  7. Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (humans)
  8. Huanglongbing (citrus trees)
  9. Motley Dwarf Disease (carrots)
  10. Corridor Disease (bovines)
history, links, medical, nudism, science

Your Interesting Links

OK, so here’s another round of links to interesting items you may have missed the first time. As always we start with the nasty, hard, scientific stuff and then it’s all downhill.
First here’s a long-ish piece on the fascinating world of chimeras. Although the article concentrates on humans, much the same applies to all animals and there is an interesting paragraph which explains how tortoiseshell cats are always female.


Why are some people are left-handed? Apparently some left-handed people have same genetic code abnormality as those with situs inversus, the condition where the major organs are on the “wrong” side of the body.
I’m one of those annoying people who crack their knuckles. Surprisingly scientists have only now shown why knuckles pop when pulled — and it’s all down to physics.
And here’s some more strange finger science. Professor William B Bean measured the rate at which his fingernails grew over a period of 35 years to discover that growth slows as one ages.
Still on new scientific discoveries, researchers have just worked out what sustains the human foetus during its first weeks, and it isn’t the placenta but womb milk.
Staying with food … Why do we crave specific foods? And no, it seems it isn’t because of some deficiency which the craved for food will satisfy.
Have you ever wondered how the medical profession came up with the stethoscope? Wonder no longer: it all started with Laennec’s Baton.
How do you teach trainee doctors (and other healthcare professionals) to do breast and internal examinations? Yep, there are people who use their bodies to make a living as Gynaecological Teaching Associates, guiding the trainees what to do with their hands.
Well after that I think we need a strong gin and tonic!
Italian man starts turning his property into a trattoria; goes to fix the toilet; and ends up years later with a major archaeological site.
Maps are so much more interesting than GPS! Here are 12 amazing maps which show the history, and fascination, of cartography.
Over 250 years ago British clockmaker John Harrison was ridiculed for saying he could make a pendulum clock accurate to a second over 100 days. He has finally been proven right.
The Paston Letters are one of the most valuable, and well known, sources of information on late medieval life in England. Now the British Library have digitised them and put the images online.
Coming a bit more up to date, the Victorians had plans to build a skyscraper taller than the Shard. Thankfully reality prevailed and they didn’t because the science of building materials was not nearly advanced enough.

Let’s end in the realm of human rights. First there is a new, and very powerful, resource which aims to bring human rights to life using beautiful infographics, stories and social media. It’s the brainchild of a top human rights barrister, so it should be reliable.
If, as many would claim, nudity is the ultimate test of self-acceptance. Why are we so afraid of it?
More next time!

medical, sexuality

Talking Sex Ed

As a society, and as individuals, we need to be talking about sex. More specifically we need to be talking sex education with our youngsters.
Emily Nagoski, author of the best selling Come As You Are, has written a short piece (for The Big Issue) on how we are failing to get a grip of sex ed, and what should be changed.

Thanks to my “sex ed”, by the time I got into my first sexual relationship, I had no idea … I didn’t have a damn clue. Nobody I knew had a clue … It’s all very well learning to put a condom on a banana, but it’s not much use if you then don’t know what to do with the banana, or what you want to do with the banana, or even how you feel about the banana in the first place.

condom-banana

Learning to put a condom on a banana — or indeed anything else vaguely banana-shaped — is certainly important, but it isn’t the whole story by a long way. And we need to be addressing the whole story.
You can find Emily’s full article here. Read it. It is important. For you. And for the next generation(s).

medical, science

Oddity of the Week: Chimerism

One person outside but two people inside. That’s the gist of the chimera, a human being who carries the DNA (and sometimes the body parts) for two. It sounds crazy, but it happens. In fact, doctors think it probably happens more often than we realize. Unless there were some reason to test the DNA from cells in different parts of your body, you could easily be a chimera and never know it.
A chimera is a single organism composed of genetically distinct cells. This can result in male and female organs, two different blood types, or subtle variations in form. Animal chimeras are produced by the merger of multiple fertilized eggs.


Tetragametic chimerism occurs through the fertilization of two separate ova by two sperm, followed by aggregation of the two at the blastocyst or zygote stages. This results in the development of an organism with intermingled cell lines. Put another way, the chimera is formed from the merging of two non-identical twins. As such, they can be male, female, or have mixed intersex characteristics.
This can produce an organism with totally different characteristics on each side of the body: different genders or different colouring — as in the budgie above. Or it can cause mozaicism where the organism contains patches of the different cell types, something most easily spotted in coat colouring — as in the human above — or eye colour.
But very often the mosaicism is there; we just don’t know it.