Royal Australasian College of Physicians

(The following text or part of it is quoted from the free Wikipedia article Royal Australasian College of Physicians:)

The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) is a not-for-profit medical trade association responsible for training, educating, and representing 17,000 physicians and paediatricians and 8,000 trainees in 33 medical specialties in Australia and New Zealand.

The RACP had declined to recommend non-therapeutic circumcision of boys in its now replaced 2010 statement.

Contents

RACP 2022 statement

There really was nothing wrong with the 2010 RACP statement on circumcision of infant males that required change. The RACP evidently had a change of policy that it would promote circumcision to the Australasian public at the cost of additional pain, trauma, and loss of physiological function to infant boys in Australia and New Zealand.

The current RACP statement on circumcision of infant males as of December 2022 states:

“

After reviewing current evidence, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) believes that the frequency of diseases modifiable by circumcision, the level of protection offered by circumcision and the complication rates of circumcision do not warrant routine infant circumcision in Australia or Aotearoa New Zealand. The RACP recommends that circumcision should be considered for infant males with significant urinary tract abnormalities. Where an infant male has a normal urinary tract, it is reasonable for parents to consider the benefits and risks of circumcision and to determine whether to circumcise their male infant. If parents request a circumcision for their male infant the medical practitioner is obliged to provide accurate unbiased and up-to-date information on the risks and benefits of the procedure. Parental choice should be respected. If parents choose circumcision for their male infant the procedure should be undertaken by an appropriately trained competent medical practitioner, using appropriate anaesthesia and analgesia, in a safe, child-friendly environment, capable of dealing with potential complications. – RACP (RACP statement on circumcision of infant males)

Thus, the RACP recognizes that circumcision of male children is medically unnecessary in general. They do not, however, recognize the child's right to be protected against an arbitrary choice by the parents for this circumcision, as Jonathan Meddings commented in January 2023. So the RACP clearly does not protect children from not required surgery.

The RACP is a medical trade association so it has a duty to promote the business of its physician members, which includes medically-unnecessary, non-therapeutic circumcision of infant boys. The 2022 statement, Circumcision of Infant Males, fulfills its duty to promote circumcision. The statement is typical of other promotional statements regarding male circumcision from medical trade associations and has the usual omissions. Notably, the statement omits mention of the death of a boy in Perth the previous year and the statement by Dr. Duncan-Smith of the Australian Medical Association should be done only for a medical indication.

In a glaring display of medical ineptitude, the 2022 RACP statement cited the 2012 American Academy of Pediatrics statement, which had expired five years before in 2017 and no longer was an official statement. One should also be aware of the citation of papers by circumcision promoter Brian Morris.

The RACP evidently wanted to do what it could to increase the revenue of its members from infant circumcision and to shift responsibilty for the certain injury from the surgeon to the parents.

See also

• Australia
• Circumcision Info Australia
• Circumcision study flaws
• New Zealand

External links

• Official website. Retrieved 17 November 2023