Joseph4GI: JOHNS HOPKINS: Meatal Stenosis Article Scrubbed from Website

Intactivists have taken notice that Johns Hopkins Medicine scrubbed a very telling article from its website.

The article in question is one that admits that meatal stenosis is a common complication of circumcision, and it outlines a procedure to correct it.

The article was still available as late as May 23 this year, but intactivists noticed that the article went missing after they tried to access it recently.

Luckily we now have the Wayback Machine which faithfully archives articles such as these.

The archived page can be accessed here.

To archive the article even further, I've taken the liberty of copying it word-for-word and posting it here.

Furthermore, I took a screen shot and I'm including it in this post also.

2010

A Kid-Friendly Approach to Meatal Stenosis

September 08, 2010

Ming-Hsien Wang, M.D.
Pediatric urologist Ming-Hsien Wang had seen one too many parents with complaints about their child’s “office procedure” to correct meatal stenosis, a common complication of circumcision characterized by a difficult-to-aim urinary stream and painful, prolonged urination due to the development of scar tissue at the urethral meatus and frequent urinary accidents. Not only was undergoing meatotomy with only a topical anesthetic in a physician’s office traumatic for the child, but then he had to use a dilator daily for several weeks following the procedure to prevent one side of the meatus from adhering to the other. Among the complaints were complications like bleeding, infection, voiding problems leading to urinary retention and bedwetting, and recurrence of the stenosis. So Wang decided to follow a kinder, kid-friendly approach.

“I’d rather the child go to sleep with brief, quick sedation, and use magnification to excise the scar tissue and invert the urethral edges out precisely so there is no need for self dilation,” Wang says. “The cure rate is close to 100 percent.”

In children who are not toilet-trained, Wang explains, the meatus frequently rubs against a wet diaper and over time causes the loss of the delicate epithelial lining of the distal urethra, resulting in adherence of the lining and leaving a pinpoint orifice at the tip of the glans. While studies show generally good surgical outcomes with the office procedure, Wang stresses there’s less pain and risk of complications like recurrence with her reconstruction approach. Parents are happy, too.

“Parents say the child is urinating so much better,” Wang says. “Also, the child is no longer wetting his bed, or he’s only wetting his bed twice a month rather than every night.”

For more information, call 410-955-2914.

This article is now missing, and the original link now redirects somewhere else.

Here's the original link:

http://www.hopkinschildrens.org/a-kid-friendly-approach-to-meatal-stenosis.aspx

Find the uploaded screenshot below:

Click to enlarge

The question is, why was this article scrapped suddenly?

My only guess is that it's damning evidence.

At a time when male infant circumcision is in decline here in the US, and when Johns Hopkins is trying desperately to push male circumcision in Africa, they can't have articles like this raising eyebrows.

To sell the image that male circumcision is this "risk-free" surgery, medical organizations that advocate it must make sure to present only articles and "research" that presents male circumcision in a positive light, and conversely, hide all evidence of adverse effects.

As they say, however, you can fool some people, some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time.

Sooner or later, people are going to find out the truth, and Johns Hopkins will have to explain why they kept important information from parents and male patients.