Claims That Circumcision Increases Alexithymia and Erectile Dysfunction Are Unfounded: A Critique of Bollinger and Van Howe's 'Alexithymia and Circumcision Trauma: A Preliminary Investigation'

摘要

In the July 2011 issue of International Journal of Men's Health, Bollinger and Van Howe present results from "'preliminary investigation" involving the Toronto 20-Item Alexthimia Scale (TAS-20) of the relationship between circumcision and alexithymia (stated on the recruitment website as "having no words for feelings") (Bollinger & Van Howe, 2011). They conclude that "Alexithymia in this population of adult men is statistically significant for having experienced circumcision trauma and for erectile dysfunction drug use" (p. 184).The main problem with this small-scale survey is that the 236 circumcised men and 64 un-circumcised men were self-selected, which can lead to a well-recognised source of bias (Rothman & Greenland, 2005). Furthermore, the authors seem to have made no attempt to minimize such potential bias. Indeed, men were recruited through advertisements on two Internet sites: menstuff.org and themenscenter.com (now mensightmagazine.com), both of which appear to take a strong anti-circumcision stance (see: http://mensightmagazine.com/ bookstore.htm#CIRCUMCISION and http://www.menstuff.org/issues/byissue/circumcision.html).