Bibliographic record
Abstract
The transition of circumcision from ritual to a prophylactic treatment began in 1870 through orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Lewis A. Sayre (1820-1900).After successfully treating paralysis and hip-joint disease in a few young boys, he used his influential position as president of the American Medical Association to propel his claim that paralysis, epilepsy, hernias and even lunacy could be cured by circumcision.This led to a meteoric rise of circumcision in the first half of the 20 th century until it became routine.However, doubts and criticisms over the medical basis of circumcision soon arose supported, most notably, by Gairdner in 1949 and Preston in 1970.The Canadian Pediatric Society (CPS), following the American lead, stated in 1975 that "there is no medical indication for circumcision during the neonatal period."The CPS reaffirmed the statement in 1982, 1989 and 1996, despite contrary evidence by Warner and Wiswell showing decreased risk for penile cancer and urinary tract infections.All provinces and territories of Canada, from British Columbia in 1984, to Manitoba in 2005, discontinued insurance coverage for routine circumcision.Consequently, circumcision in Canada has fallen from 47.4% of male infants in 1973 to 13.9% in 2003.However, as the practice in Canada continues to decline, medical evidence supporting its benefits is growing.Most notably in 2007, Dr. Stephen Moses, from the University of Manitoba, demonstrated a 53% reduction in risk of acquiring HIV infection in circumcised men.Now with WHO and UNAIDS recommending circumcision as an intervention to reduce the spread of HIV, as well as evidence showing reduced incidences of urinary tract infections, penile cancer, phimosis, and HPV infection, the pendulum might be swinging back in favour of circumcision.Consequently, the CPS is in the process of revising their statement for 2008 -yet another example of history moving in cycles.The practice of male circumcision has been prevalent in our society throughout history.Although cloudy, its origin has been dated back as far as 4000 BC in ancient Egypt, and the procedure is still practiced among the Jewish and Muslim faiths.The accompanying medical benefits of this procedure, however, have been shrouded in controversy.Ethical issues aside, the balance of medical evidence supporting and disputing its practice has seesawed over the past century.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".