On of the silliest arguments of the circumcision promoters is that circumcision is "just like vaccination".  In this comparison they are treading in the footsteps of Dr Remondino and the enthusiasts of the 1890s, who claimed that universal circumcision would control syphilis (and many other diseases) in the same way as compulsory vaccination defeated smallpox. Unfortunately, only the second of these measures had scientific validity. A moment's thought will reveal the absurdity of the vaccination analogy: even blind Freddie could tell the difference between a boy who came back from the doctor after having had an injection and one who came back after having had his foreskin cut off. To mention a few obvious differences:

• Vaccination confers immunity against specific diseases; even if the extravagant claims of its advocates were correct, circumcision could do no more than reduce risk (and not by much). Nobody will become immune to any disease by virtue of circumcision.

• Vaccination adds to the body's natural immune system; circumcision amputates a large and visually prominent part of the penis.

• Vaccination leaves at most a small spot or lump; circumcision disfigures and scars a man in his most sensitive region for life.

• Vaccination is an injection; circumcision is major surgery, accurately described as pre-emptive amputation.

• Vaccination does not diminish the functionality of any body part; circumcision has documented adverse effects on the function of the genitals.

• Vaccination is scientific medicine, with proven protective value; circumcision is a relic of Victorian quackery.

In Not a surgical vaccine, a paper published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health in 2010, the authors criticised the analogy between circumcision and vaccination (so popular with anti-foreskin activists such as Professor Morris) as regrettable and misleading, and concluded that: “The colourful image of circumcision as ‘surgical vaccine’ is a contradiction in terms, on a par with ‘conjectural fact’; such rhetoric has no place in scientific debate.”  Oddly enough, now that there is a vaccine for cervical cancer, circumcision promoters (who pride themselves on their scientific credentials) are going cold on vaccination and warn of terrible side effects and bad reactions. No doubt these do occur in a few cases, but they are nothing like the adverse effects of circumcision. Like the effectiveness of condoms against HIV and other STIs, effective vaccines destroy the argument for circumcision.