The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Book Data

Title	The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Subtitle	Why can't the United States stop circumcising boys?
Author	Robert Darby
Pages	61
Edition	2013
Publisher	SJF Publishing
ISBN	978-1878411112

Never mind guns; the real danger to American kids is foreskins" - or so elements of the American medical industry would like us to believe.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

• What is it about Americans?
• Is it the force of habit?
• Is it the Puritan heritage?
• Is it the power of the health industry?
• Is it the prestige of scientific journals?
• Is it because babies can’t say No?
• Why is it that Americans cling to routine circumcision of male infants when the rest of the developed world is trying to discourage or even prohibit the operation?

Are Americans really more afraid of foreskins than of homosexuals? In this provocative survey, medical historian Robert Darby aims to place this American exceptionalism in historical perspective and consider why — despite mounting opposition — circumcision still thrives in the United States long after it has been abandoned by the other anglophone countries that originally took it up.

Covering the medical evidence, cultural/social factors, religion and bioethical aspects, as well as an analysis of the latest policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics, this short book will appeal to anybody with an interest in sexuality, health, human rights and their own body.

It is one that no American parent can afford to miss.

About the author

The late Robert Darby was an independent scholar and freelance writer who lived in Canberra, the capital of Australia. "I began my writing and research career as a literary historian, with a Ph.D. on Australian literature and politics in the 1930s, but my interests have broadened since then to include many topics in cultural, social and medical history, as well as ethics and current affairs. My major published work so far has been a detailed account of the rise and fall of routine "health" circumcision in Britain (A Surgical Temptation, 2005), and since then I have written widely on medical, historical and ethical aspects of both male and female circumcision — which I regard as primarily a human rights and social justice issue, not really a medical issue at all. I have also prepared a collection of the medical writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, Round the Red Lamp (Valancourt Books, 2007), and an edited edition of Elements of Social Science by the great Victorian iconoclast George Drysdale. Although he is largely forgotten today, his book was extremely popular throughout the second half of the 19th Century as a source of information and advice on "the facts of life" and especially contraception. My most recent article is "The child's right to an open future: Is the principle applicable to non-therapeutic circumcision", published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, July 2013."

See also

• http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/
• http://www.circinfo.org/
• http://www.amazon.com/The-Sorcerers-Apprentice-Robert-Darby-ebook/dp/B00AXPRD1Q