The Brian Morris Project

Who is Brian Morris?

If Halperin and Bailey are the court marshalls in the tight-knit group that has recently turned their obsession (also believed sexual fetish for some) with circumcision into a cause celebre among the befuddled HIV/AIDS agencies in Africa and America, Brian Morris is the court jester. His comically absurd claims for circumcision are generally believed to embarrass the more serious among their ranks.

Morris, a barely functioning molecular scientist with a bad case of digression disorder, hails from Australia. The rising tide of human rights, dignity for all people, and social inclusion has mostly lifted Australians out of the practice of infant circumcision. But old Morris has swum for decades against the tide and still pens crazy articles urging children be forcibly circumcised, emphasizing his fervor by ending many of his sentences with exclamation marks!

It would be easy to discount him. However, crazy sometimes has its own attraction, especially for people who feel picked on for choosing to circumcise their children. He may come across as a little (or a lot) nutty, but he still gets published. That fact alone proves that this is a political issue and not medical, no matter how much both sides argue the medical aspect.

The best thing that ever happened to Morris in the last 25 years is HIV/AIDS. If it didn't already exist, he would surely be busy inventing some imagined plague just like it. As it is, he is grateful for a disease he can hang his argument on that invokes hysteria and hand-wringing among the international community of desperate HIV/AIDS professionals.

In a weird sort of way, Morris has a lot in common with the IAVA and AVAC in that he has taken circumcision completely out of context and made it part of his mission in life. What on Earth could circumcision have to do with molecular biology? Or vaccine development? But Morris is obsessed with it far more than a self-proclaimed heterosexual male should be, and so he has fashioned himself into a sort of expert on the subject.

He reminds me a great deal of the court experts we see all the time in the United States. Some guy spends one summer studying a subject and then spends the next three decades testifying about it, in rote fashion, cross-examination be damned. And just like the faux court experts that slip in like snakes, every rebuttal is an opportunity to sharpen one's argument, evidence or no evidence. This is rhetoric, after all. Not science.

Why should you contact him?

I'm not sure you should contact him. Wearing him down is not likely to work. So maybe a collection of his more absurd and self-rightous retorts would be the best approach. He's known to be a loose canon, shooting off his mouth, insulting startled inquirers whenever they don't get it, according to him.

At the very least, the public can attempt to contain him, like some toxic oil spill lapping at the shores of a city beach. If you have any correspondence from Morris, the comments are open. By all means, post it for our amusement and for our protection.

Professor Brian J Morris
Department of Physiology
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 AUSTRALIA
Email: brianm@medsci.usyd.edu.au
Phone: +61 2 9351 3688
Fax: +61 2 9351 2058

Bio at his university is here.

An extensive rebuttal to the many claims he makes on his own website is here.

Comments

[Adam]

Your personal attacks on Professor Morris clearly indicate you have lost the debate

Rest assured, SCIENCE will triumph in the end !!

[Hey !! This isn't an absurd or self-rightous retort from Morris !! Keep trying !! Or is it ??]

[andrew]

What a lovely summary of Brian Morris...it is very timely you have added him to your list of anti foreskin loonies...there is no one more anti foreskin in Australia than him...thankfully his online bio says he only has daughters...I wonder, what if one of them falls in love with an intact guy?...has he instructed his daughters never to have sex with an intact guy?..how does he he sleep at night?...

[Joe in CA]

Adam: No need to personally degrade Morris. He does this himself and David is merely pointing out the obvious.

Brian J. Morris is probably the most biased long-standing pro-circ in the world. He's been trying to link circumcision to the prevention of some disease for quite some time now, so don't take anything on that site seriously.

No scientific "study" justifies the violation of human rights of an individual. EVER.

Neo-natal circumcision is an elective, completely cosmetic, non-medical procedure, and as such doctors have no business performing it on babies, let alone appealing to parents to help them "decide."

This doctor is guilty of conducting, and actively promoting MEDICAL FRAUD.

med-fraud.org

Circumcision is worthless and doesn't prevent ANYTHING.

Circumcised men STILL get HIV, UTIs and STDs, and TRUE science can't deny this.

Hopefully you're right and science DOES triumph in the end so that the genital mutilation of healthy children is put to rest.

[Ron Low]

While it may be pointless to continue a dialog directly with prof. Morris, I would suggest that forwarding his ridiculous remarks to the chair of his department would be very productive - one crazy remark and brief rebuttal per e-mail, every time a new crazy remark appears.

[Hugh Young]

I think the most convincing way of rebutting Prof. Morris is out of his own mouth:

"The foreskin of uncircumcised boys can become accidentally entrapped in zippers, resulting in pain, trauma, swelling and scarring of this appendage."

"Boys and men who are not circumcised can be a source of irritation if they do not retract the foreskin when they urinate, as ‘splatter’ will occur. Although not a medical problem, it is a source of annoyance for other people (such as a parent or partner) if it is they that have the job of cleaning the bathroom."
(From a former website "Medical Benefits of Circumcision")

"Recurrent UTIs occur in 19% of uncircumcised boys, but in none of the circumcised."
(From "Why circumcision is a bio-medical imperative for the 21st century")

This is based on a study (Conway et al.) of nearly 75,000 children (presumably about 34,900 boys). They knew the circumcision status of only 36 of the 68 boys with any UTI. That 19% is FIVE boys with recurrent UTIs, out of the 26 known to be intact. Details at www.circumstitions.com/Utis.html#conway

It can be argued that this use of Conway's figures crosses the line into scientific fraud.

[Prof Brian Morris]

THE FACTS ON MORRIS:
Brian Morris is a leader in medical research having made major breakthroughs in heart disease, cancer and ageing.
For over 35 years he has led the field of research on renin, one of the most important regulators of red renin’s structure, but found a new molecule – ‘prorenin’ –now been implicated in diabetic nephropathy and retinopathy. He found how renin and its precursor are synthesized inside cells, he cloned the human renin gene, and elucidated the way the expression of this important gene is controlled. All of this involved a diverse array of cutting-edge molecular techniques.
A key factor that lowers blood pressure is kallikrein. Morris was also the first to clone and sequence a human kallikrein gene (highly cited publication). This gene turned out to be a close relative of the gene for PSA, which is used in prostate cancer screening. His prostate-specific kallikrein is now an adjunct test for prostate cancer, and could have a causative role.
Brian Morris pioneered the field of the molecular genetics of hypertension. He first examined the renin gene, and then went on to identify a number of genes that cause this common condition that affects 1 in 4 adults, and is a major risk factor for heart attack and stroke.
His genomics research led him to clone and characterize unique factors that regulate the process by which cells generate their enormous repertoire of proteins (over 100,000) using a much more limited set of genes (23,000). This process is known as ‘alternative splicing’. Over 15% of cancers and developmental disorders involve mutations in splicing proteins and he is currently trying to elucidate the mechanisms involved.
Morris was inventor of the first test, which he patented, for the virus (high-risk types of HPV) that causes cervical cancer. He has been assisting Australian industry to bring the HPV test to the consumer in a way that makes cervical screening simpler, better, and far less intrusive for women.
He has been a major national and international conference organizer, chair, and invited presenter. This has included his initiatives in the area of hypertension genetics, physiological genomics, health and longevity. His promotion of better cervical screening and ways to improve genital health in general via male circumcision have also made him well known nationally and internationally.
Prof Morris has provided years of service on the Editorial Boards of the two major journals in the field of hypertension, namely Hypertension (the major specialist journal of the American Heart Association) and Journal of Hypertension (the official journal of the International Society for Hypertension). In 2002 Morris was elected Fellow of the American Heart Association. He has served on NHMRC Grant Committees (including 2008), and is a long-serving member of the Executive of the High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia, currently being Treasurer of that body.
His success in teaching and nurturing research students led him to being conferred the University of Sydney Faculty of Medicine Award for Excellence in Postgraduate Research Supervision in 2006. In this regard, over he past decade his students have won 7 young investigator awards at national medical and genome conferences, an international young achiever award, a Young Tall Poppy Award, Bercovici Medal, Rebecca L Cooper Medal and University Medal. Two were awarded NHMRC CJ Martin Fellowships, and two won NHMRC Peter Doherty Fellowships. Most students and postdocs have gone on to senior academic and industry appointments in Australia, the USA and UK. One is the present Dean of Medicine at The University of Sydney.

[David]

Gee, Prof Morris, then how do you explain your irrational love affair with a surgical procedure? It's more than a little bizarre that you so boldly and publicly profess and engage in the promotion of a fetish with so marginal value in light of your accomplishments.

I am indebted nonetheless to Hugh for pointing out Morris's wonderfully unself-conscious slipping into the fallacy of appeal to authority - his own - and the fallacy of appeal to irrelevance - his other work.

And while I would hesitate to make such lofty comparisons, Morris joins the ranks of Sir Isaac Newton who was keen on alchemy, double Nobel winner Linus Pauling who was a devotee of megavitamins, and Nicola Tesla who spent his early years doing pioneering electrical engineering, and his latter years trying to make an electrical death ray.

[Hugh Young]

A couple of diagrams at Circumcision and UTIs now clearly illustrate the inadequate facts from which Prof. Morris generated his absurd statement that "Recurrent UTIs occur in 19% of uncircumcised boys, but in none of the circumcised." (From "Why circumcision is a bio-medical imperative for the 21st century")

Such innumeracy exaggeration and quotation out of context is typical of his work on circumcision - one can only hope that it hasn't contaminated the rest of his illustrious career.

[rouftop]

Let's see. This site is run by a lawyer and a woman with a BA in philosophy and psychology. Dr. Morris is a molecular biologist who studies STD's. I know with whom I'll cast my lot.

Furthermore, few of the sentences in Dr. Morris's site end in exclamation points. Like the anti-circumcision studies themselves, the author of this blog has cherry-picked the results that suit his agenda.

Finally, in terms of obsession, this site is certainly every bit as obsessed about not circumcising as Dr. Morris's site is in favor. Pot, meet kettle.

[David]

Cast your lot with whomever. Just wear a condom and don't force your beliefs on an unconsenting child. That way, no one gets hurt by Morris and his "lot's" dangerous obsession.