The Nerve's "Dispatches" section: 'How Insensitive' discusses circumcision

From back in 2007, still this is a very good, brief article describing how and why it is that men lose sensitivity (and, a lot of it) in their penises when they are circumcised. It also discusses the issue of HIV/STD transfer prevention and the jumbled results from the few studies done on the matter. And to recommend it further, it is brief and to the points. Excerpt:

'The science in this case concerned one of the most controversial and common medical procedures practiced in the West: circumcision of the penis. The study, published in the April 2007 BJU International (the former British Journal of Urology) under the title "Fine-Touch Pressure Thresholds in the Adult Penis," is the latest research salvo in the war for the neonatal foreskin.
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Anti-circumcision advocates cite methodological problems with the STD studies while raising a separate question about the ethics of discarding a body part to prevent its becoming infected. In order to establish what, exactly, a male person loses when he loses his foreskin, the study set out to compare sensation in the cut and the uncut organ. Its conclusion may seem obvious to those of us with only a lay interest in the penis, but it's controversial, nonetheless: uncut dick feels more. A lot more.

"The study shows that the foreskin is the most sensitive portion of the penis," said study coauthor Robert Van Howe, a pediatrician at the Marquette General Health System in Marquette, Michigan. "It's not like you're chopping off plain old skin. The analogy would be like removing your lips, because the lips are more sensitive than the skin around them."
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But even if the medical establishment arrived at an undisputed consensus, I'll keep thinking about the well intentioned parents — and doctors — in the nineteenth century who circumcised millions of boys to protect them from hip dysplasia. Doesn't that history give us a special obligation to be cautious?
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...Personally, if I'm ever in the position of deciding whether an infant is going to have the most sensitive part of his penis cut off in exchange for potential health benefits later in life, the full range of what They have been telling us over the last 150 years is going to raise a red flag.'