Difference between revisions of "Ethical and factual issues with Circumcision: A Parent's Choice"

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Never the less, Jewish parents are questioning the practice since they are finding that it is inconsistent with other Jewish values. [[Bruchim]] has been organized with a goal of making non-circumcision acceptable in Jewish synagogues.
 
Never the less, Jewish parents are questioning the practice since they are finding that it is inconsistent with other Jewish values. [[Bruchim]] has been organized with a goal of making non-circumcision acceptable in Jewish synagogues.
  
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Although circumcision is not mentioned in the Qu'ran, It has long been a part of [[Islam]].
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Although circumcision is not mentioned in the Qur'an, It has long been a part of [[Islam]]. Information on the extent of the practice among Muslims in the United States is lacking.
  
 
===Reasons why parents may ''not'' choose circumcision===
 
===Reasons why parents may ''not'' choose circumcision===

Revision as of 18:01, 18 July 2025

The Healthy Children website is owned and controlled by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which is a medical trade association and not any kind of "academy". Medical trade associations advance and promote the business, financial, and legal interests of its physician members. The AAP uses the Healthy Children Website to promote additional business for its pediatrician members. Parents should always remember that doctors make money from doing circumcision and do not make money when circumcision is not done. This creates substantial bias in information about circumcision provided by doctors.

Circumcision: A Parent's Choice was adapted from Circumcision: What You Need to Know.

Ethical Issue

Violation of boy's right to Autonomy

When we visit Circumcision: A Parent's Choice,[1] we are immediately confronted with a violation of medical ethics in the very title of the article. The title suggests that parents should act as a surrogate to grant surrogate consent for non-therapeutic infant circumcision, which has no medical indication as boys are not born with a diseased penis. The AAP's own Committee on Bioethics limits the use of surrogate consent to diagnosis and treatment of disease when necessary to maintain health.[2] This is immediately seen as a shocking disregard for well established pediatric medical ethics, since it is a violation of any infant boy's right to autonomy.

The Committee on Bioethics (1995) elaborated:

Such providers have legal and ethical duties to their child patients to render competent medical care based on what the patient needs, not what someone else expresses. Although impasses regarding the interests of minors and the expressed wishes of their parents or guardians are rare, the pediatrician's responsibilities to his or her patient exist independent of parental desires or proxy consent.[2]

The Committee on Bioethics (2016) said:

Physicians have both a moral obligation and a legal responsibility to question and, if necessary, to contest both the surrogate’s and the patient’s medical decisions if they put the patient at significant risk of serious harm.[3]

In the case of non-therapeutic circumcision, the circumcision decision belongs to the boy and NOT the parents. The decision should be deferred until the boy can decide for himself.

Other ethical violations

Ethics of non-therapeutic child circumcision explains how circumcision of boys violates all cardinal and secondary principles of medical ethics.

Factual review

Circumcision: A Parent's Choice does not provide citations for its claims, however this review will provide citations. (Additional citations are found in linked files.)

What happens during a circumcision

The AAP has omitted informing parents that, should they grant consent for a circumcision, their infant son would be immobilized by being strapped a plastic restraint device called a circumstraint. The circumstraint has been compared to a "medieval torture device" by Dr. Michael S. Green.[4]

Is circumcision painful?

Yes, the pain of circumcision is extreme and traumatizing, but infant boys are too young to tolerate general anesthesia, which is dangerous in the newborn period.

The analgesia used to subdue the pain of circumcision is only partially effective, so your son will still feel substantial pain during the amputation. The main value of the analgesia may be to relieve the guilt that parents who elect circumcision feel. It does not do much for the boy.

The post-surgical pain from the amputation of his foreskin will persist for two to three weeks, during which time you may expect your baby to be fussy due to his pain.

What should I expect for my baby after circumcision?

Your baby will have an open wound on his penis after circumcision because in the newborn period the amputation wound is not customarily sutured. The penis with an open wound will be contained in a plastic diaper along with your son's urine and feces. You may be instructed to coat the wound with Vaseline.

Your son may be traumatized and may experience shock after his circumcision.

Your son may be unable to initiate breastfeeding due to the trauma.

Reasons why parents may choose circumcision

Medical benefits. The claim that the "benefits outweigh the risks" was put forward in the 2012 Circumcision Policy Statement, but received so much criticism that the statement was allowed to expire in 2017. The benefits do not outweigh the risks, function loss, and malefits. Circumcised boys have three times as many penile complaints compared with foreskinned boys.[5] Moreover, the circumcision amputative surgery puts boys at risk of infection, bleeding, and surgical mishap, including complete penile amputation and death.

HIV. The AAP falsely claims that there is "A markedly lower risk of acquiring HIV". This is based on outmoded and obsolete research from 2007. The HIV page provides numerous recent studies that show circumcision has no effect on the risk of contracting HIV infection.

Urinary tract infection. Circumcision promoter Thomas E. Wiswell, M.D., started the UTI scare in 1983. The story is fully told in The UTI Scare. The presence of the foreskin does not cause UTI. The opposite is true. The foreskin has immunological and protective functions that work to prevent all types of infection, including UTI. The AAP knows this. The incidence of post-circumcision UTI is very high in Israel. What we see here is the AAP doing what it was created to do — promote and increase the income of its members[6] — even though it harms boys.

Social reasons Circumcision of boys in the United States had been highly promoted and was nearly universal in the late 20th century. It has been a gradually declining practice since about 1980. Today, it is much more common for young males to have an intact foreskin. The fear that a foreskinned boy would be viewed as a freak is a thing of the past.

Religious or cultural reasons Circumcision on the eighth day of life has long been a tradition for boys born into Jewish families. A circumcision by a doctor would not meet the religious requirements of Judaism.

Never the less, Jewish parents are questioning the practice since they are finding that it is inconsistent with other Jewish values. Bruchim has been organized with a goal of making non-circumcision acceptable in Jewish synagogues.

Although circumcision is not mentioned in the Qur'an, It has long been a part of Islam. Information on the extent of the practice among Muslims in the United States is lacking.

Reasons why parents may not choose circumcision

Belief that circumcision should be a person's own choice. This position is consistent with international human rights law, the medical ethics cardinal principle of autonomy, and respect for human decency. The circumcision operation may be done at any age, so a boy may elect to be circumcised when he reaches the age of discretion or he may reject circumcision. In any event, it will be his choice.

Belief that if "it ain't broke, then why remove normal tissue?" The foreskin evolved by "survival of the fittest" over hundreds of thousands of years. It is an essential part of the penis and necessary for optimum protection, health, comfort, and normal sexual function.

Fear of the risks. Complications are rare and usually minor but may include bleeding, infection, cutting the foreskin too short or too long and improper healing. Risks also include complete penile amputation and death. One should consider the sad case of Cole Jordan Groth as an example of a circumcision going wrong.

Although it frequently seems to be overlooked by medical doctors who profit from circumcision, one must consider the irreversible loss of multiple physiological functions.

Belief by some that the foreskin is needed to protect the tip of the penis. Without it, the tip of the penis may become irritated and cause the opening of the penis to become too small. This can cause urination problems that may need to be surgically corrected. This is more than a "belief". It is a well-proven fact. The tip of the penis is called the meatus. It is where the urethral opening is found. This area is protected by the foreskin of normal, foreskinned boys, but has no protection in circumcised boys. about 10 to 20 percent of circumcised boys develop meatal stenosis which is a narrowing of the opening of the urethra.[7] These circumcised boys need a special operation to surgically widen the opening of their urethra. Meatal stenosis appears to be unknown in foreskinned boys.

Belief that it can affect sexual sensation. Some feel that circumcision makes the tip of the penis less sensitive, causing a decrease in sexual pleasure later in life. The wording of this items reveals the AAP has fundamental misunderstanding of the source of male erogenous sensation. The source of male erogenous sensation are the Meissner's corpuscles in the foreskin, not the tip of the penis, which makes the foreskin primary erogenous tissue.[8] Circumcised men have a substantial deficit in erogenous sensation.[9]

Belief that proper hygiene can lower health risks. Children can be taught proper hygiene that can lower their chances of getting infections, cancer of the penis and STIs. Proper hygiene certainly is important,[10] but it is the immunological and protective function of the foreskin, created over hundreds of thousands of years by natural selection[11] that provide the greatest protection to children.[5]

Are there any problems that can happen after circumcision?

The AAP has used calming language here so that you will think circumcision is safer than it is, however these are very serious life-threatening issues.

Your baby does not urinate normally within 6 to 8 hours after the circumcision. Failure to urinate after circumcision can cause death as happened to one hapless infant in the province of Ontario in Canada.[12]

Bleeding doesn't stop at the spot where the foreskin was removed. It is difficult to overstate the risk from post-circumcision bleeding. Blood loss danger to infants is much greater for infants as compared with adults because the infant has very little blood in his tiny body. Exsanguination and death are possibility after circumcision because there are cases on record of this happening. The case of Cole Jordan Groth is instructive. Baby Groth was circumcised in the hospital nursery. He bled inside his diaper, but the bleeding was not detected until the following morning. He suffered exsanguination, but survived with organ damage. He has never left the hospital. His parents think he may need a heart transplant.

The redness around the tip of the penis gets worse after 3 to 5 days. The "redness" is better known as "inflammation". Your baby has an open surgical wound on his penis where the amputation occurred. The inflammation indicates your son's penis is likely to be infected. The penis with the open wound is kept in a diaper along with your son's feces. It is not unusual for infection to occur in this environment as your son's feces is likely to contain bacteria. Contact your son's primary care physican immediately.

Yellow discharge lasts longer than a week. It is normal to have a little yellow discharge or coating around the head of the penis in the first week. The yellow discharge is pus. Its presence indicate your son's body is fighting infection. Contact your son's primary care physican immediately.

What if I choose not to have my baby circumcised?

If you choose not to have your baby circumcised, you will have made a very wise choice for your son. He will not suffer the horrible pain of circumcision. He will not be exposed to the risks and complications that can occur after circumcision. He will immediately enjoy the protective functions of his foreskin and in his adult life, he will enjoy sex as nature intended it.

When the AAP wrote, "talk with your child's doctor about how to keep the penis clean", It is apparent that they were trying to make you believe that keeping an intact penis clean is very hard. Actually, caring for an intact penis is much easier than caring for a circumcised penis. The intact penis is protected by its foreskin, so all a parent has to do is to wash the outside of the foreskin.[13]

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ REFweb (3 February 2025). Circumcision: A Parent's Choice, Healthy Children. Retrieved 12 July 2025.
  2. ↑ a b REFjournal AAP Committee on Bioethics. Informed Consent, Parental Permission, and Assent in Pediatric Practice. Pediatrics. February 1995; 95(2): 314-7. PMID. Retrieved 12 July 2025.
  3. ↑ REFjournal Katz Al, Macauley RC, Mercurio MR, Moon MR, Okun AL, Opel DJ, Statter MB. Informed Consent in Decision-Making in Pediatric Practice. Pediatrics. August 2016; 138(2): e20161484. PMID. DOI. Retrieved 12 July 2025.
  4. ↑ REFweb Anonymous (21 March 2021). Circumstraint, IntactiWiki. Retrieved 13 July 2025.
  5. ↑ a b REFjournal Fendereski K, Horns JJ, Driggs N, Lau G, Shaeffer AJ. Comparing Penile Problems in Circumcised vs. Uncircumcised Boys: Insights From a Large Commercial Claims Database With a Focus on Provider Type Performing Circumcision. J Pediatr Surg. November 2024; 59(11): [161614]. PMID. PMC. DOI. Retrieved 13 July 2025.
  6. ↑ REFweb Bollinger, Dan (2012). High Cost of Circumcision: $3.6 Billion Annually, https://www.academia.edu, Academia. Retrieved 14 July 2025.
    Quote: As the saying goes, follow the money. Now you know why neither the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, American Academy of Family Physicians, or the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists haven’t condemned this unnecessary surgery, and why their physician members are quick to recommend the procedure to expectant parents.
  7. ↑ REFjournal Van Howe RS. Incidence of meatal stenosis following neonatal circumcision in a primary care setting. Clin Pediatr (Phila). January 2006; 45(1): 49-54. PMID. PMC. Retrieved 15 July 2025.
  8. ↑ REFjournal Winkelmann RK. The erogenous zones: their nerve supply and significance. Mayo Clin Proc. 21 January 1959; 34(3): 39-47. PMID. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
  9. ↑ REFjournal Sorrells ML, Snyder JL, Reiss MD, Eden C, Milos MF, Wilcox N, Van Howe RS. Fine‐touch pressure thresholds in the adult penis. BJUI. 19 March 2007; 99(4): 864-9. PMID. DOI. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
  10. ↑ REFweb Anonymous (2013). Penile hygiene in the intact non-circumcised male, Circumcision Information Reference Library. Retrieved 1 March 2025.
  11. ↑ REFbook Darwin, Charles (1859): The Origin of Species. London: Murray.
  12. ↑ REFjournal Cairns J, et al. Circumcision: A minor procedure?. Paediatr Child Health. April 2007; 12(4): 311-2. PMID. PMC. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
  13. ↑ REFweb Anonymous (June 2023). Care of the Intact Penis, Doctors Opposing Circumcision. Retrieved 16 July 2025.
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