News

NORM-UK welcomes Professor Jack Cohen

Monday 14th September 2009
A prominent reproductive biologist has thrown his weight behind NORM-UK, the charity concerned with the male foreskin and campaigning for personal choice in circumcision.

Professor Jack Cohen, who has an academic career spanning 55 years, has co-authored books with Terry Pratchett and worked as a consultant on science fiction productions, joins actor Alan Cumming and art critic Brian Sewell as a patron of the charity.

Professor Jack Cohen with Dr John Warren and Dr Peter Ball at the NORM-UK AGMSpeaking as an honoured guest at the charity's annual general meeting in Staffordshire, Professor Cohen said. "I'm delighted to join NORM-UK, to help to raise public awareness of the very real issues around male circumcision."

"As a tissue researcher in Boston in 1963-4 I became known as the prepuce man, collecting 400 infant foreskins for experimentation in one year (sometimes from parents who had fainted after watching the surgery on their son). Now it seems this poacher has turned gamekeeper!"

"Although I circumcised my first two sons", he added, "I have increasingly questioned the practice, and its origins. I support the principle that every man and woman has the right to veto alterations of their body. Unfortunately in its early historical form circumcision was designed to weed out and ostracise those who resisted authority –denying them the right to reproduce. Thus the harm has become deeply entrenched with questioning seen as an aberration. I’m happy to see this is beginning to change."

Asked whether the African circumcision experiments should sway parents who are questioning circumcision, Professor Cohen said, "There are still no good grounds for believing that circumcision will protect a boy from HIV in the future. The small numbers who were apparently protected by surgery in the trials don't justify the policy conclusions drawn, particularly when they stand in contrast to population evidence, in Africa and elsewhere."

Dr John Warren, Chairman of NORM-UK commented, "We are delighted to have Professor Cohen as a supporter of our work, and we concur with his view of the African HIV experiments. Parents who think circumcising might reduce their child’s risk of HIV should ask, why should Israel have the same HIV rate as Sweden when one is almost entirely circumcised and one almost entirely not circumcised? They should also ask whether they can be sure of his future sexuality. There is no evidence that circumcision protects gay men at all and in fact in Britain a circumcised gay man is 20% more likely to report having been diagnosed HIV+ than a gay man who has not been circumcised."

[ Full Press Release from NORM-UK ]