Website named "Healthy Children"

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Revision as of 14:16, 23 September 2025 by WikiModEn2 (talk | contribs) (→‎Surrogate consent: Revise text.)
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The Website named "Healthy Children" is owned and operated by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a medical trade association, and is used to promote the business and income of its claimed 67,000 pediatrician members. The website is published in both English and Spanish versions.

Contents

Circumcision information

As one would expect, the website provides the advice of the AAP regarding child circumcision.

The website formerly provided a message that appeared to be based on the embarrassing, discredited Circumcision Policy Statement of September 2012 that was allowed to quietly expire in August 2017 without being re-affirmed.

The old statement has been removed and replaced in September 2025 by a new statement, which the AAP falsely claims was generated by artificial intelligence (AI). True artificial intelligence searches the world-wide-web for information, however this so-called "Generative AI Overview" only provides information from the Healthy Children website, so it is false, not genuine AI, and may be fraudulent.

We now know that non-therapeutic infant circumcision does lasting, irreversible harm to the patient,[1] however the AAP maintains its silence on the harmful nature of foreskin amputation. As before, physician profit remains more important to the AAP, than patient health and well-being.[2] The AAP does not inform parents on the limitation of surrogates to grant consent for non-therapeutic procedures.

Surrogate consent

Autonomy is a major factor in medical ethics. There are ethical limitations on the surrogate.[3] Surrogates are expected to respect the autonomy of the patient to the maximum extent possible, consistent with providing needed medical treatment. There are no medical indications for circumcision of the newborn, so circumcision is neither diagnosis nor treatment. When the patient is a minor, then surrogate consent is usually granted by a parent acting as surrogate, but granting consent for medically-unnecessary, non-therapeutic circumcision exceeds a surrogate's recognized authority.

Violation of patient rights

"Circumcision" actually is an irreversible amputation of a functional body part. In the United States, even babies have legal rights to bodily integrity.[4] Circumcision may lawfully be performed only if someone has granted a valid consent for the amputation, however no one has the legal power to grant consent in the absence of a medical indication for a non-therapeutic circumcision of a minor.[5]

We now understand that surrogates are ethically limited to granting of consent to procedures for diagnosis and treatment of existing disease.[6] Even the Committee on Bioethics of the AAP (2016) recognizes limitations on parental rights to consent saying:

A parent’s authority is not absolute but constrained by respect for the child.[7]

The decision to perform non-therapeutic circumcision belongs to the patient, not the parents.

The Healthy Children Website fails to tell parents that circumcision is a medically unnecessary, non-therapeutic surgical operation/amputation that may be deferred until the boy can decide for himself if he wants to sacrifice his foreskin.

External links

References

  1. ↑   Bollinger, Dan: Policy Paper: Newborn Circumcision as a Negative Wellness Factor  , Research Gate. (August 2025). Retrieved 16 September 2025.
  2. ↑   Garrett CJ (21 December 2023). The Economics of Circumcision: A Full Breakdown of This Penis Business, Intact America. Retrieved 15 May 2024.
  3. ↑   Kohrman A, Clayton EW, Frader JE, Grodin MA, Moseley KL, Porter IH, Wagner VM. Informed consent, parental permission, and assent in pediatric practice. Committee on Bioethics, American Academy of Pediatrics. Pediatrics. February 1995; 95(2): 314-7. PMID. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
    Quote: 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.
  4. ↑ Union Pac. Ry. Co v Botsford 141 U.S. 251 (1890).
  5. ↑   Hill G. Can anyone authorize the nontherapeutic permanent alteration of a child's body?  . The American Journal of Bioethics. 2003; 3(2): 16-8. PMID. DOI. Retrieved 17 September 2025.
  6. ↑   Myers A, Earp BD. What is the best age to circumcise? A medical and ethical analysis  . Bioethics. 2020; 34(7): 645-63. PMID. DOI. Retrieved 17 September 2025.
    Quote: Based on a careful consideration of the relevant evidence, arguments and counterarguments, we conclude that medically unnecessary penile circumcision-like other medically unnecessary genital procedures, such as 'cosmetic' labiaplasty-should not be performed on individuals who are too young (or otherwise unable) to provide meaningful consent to the procedure.
  7. ↑   Committee on Bioethics. Informed Consent in Decision-Making in Pediatric Practice. Pediatrics. August 2016; 138(2): e20161484.. PMID. DOI. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
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