Harvey Marcovich was sharing a platform with a fellow paediatrician when they were asked about the potential health benefits of preserving the male foreskin. As his colleague was female, and he is Jewish, he was able to dodge the question on the grounds that neither of them had any right to give an opinion.

I’ve said before that I find it odd that removing the foreskin should have religious significance. Genesis 17;13 reports that Abraham was commanded to do it when Ishmael was his only son, and Abraham duly circumcised every male in sight. When, around 2,000 years later, Muhammad made the Abrahamic tradition the basis of his teaching, he too went in for mass circumcision of his followers. However, at the birth of Christianity, when Paul began to make Gentile converts, he wisely found theological reasons not to insist, using exotic metaphors from the Hebrew Scriptures which refer to circumcision of the heart, eyes, ears and lips.

I was brought up to study the Bible all day long every Saturday, as a Seventh-Day Adventist, but my devout parents somehow managed to keep me in the dark about what “circumcision