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→Reduction of practice: Add inline link.
==Reduction of practice==
A national election was held in the United Kingdom at the end of World War II. The Labour Party gained a majority of the seats in Parliament and its leader, Clement Atlee, became prime minister. The party leaned to the left and supported social welfare. Aneurin Bevan was Minister of Health. [https://www.nhs.uk/ The National Health Service ] (NHS) was created in 1948 to provide free medical treatment for all. Services were provided based on clinical need, not ability to pay.
Sir James Spence, a prominent senior British paediatrician, urged his younger colleague, [[Douglas Gairdner]], to produce a paper on infant circumcision. The now famous classic paper, ''The fate of the foreskin: a study of circumcision'', was published in the ''British Medical Journal'' on Christmas Eve, 1949. The paper reported 16 deaths per year from non-therapeutic infant circumcision and concluded in part: "'''The prepuce of the young infant should therefore be left in its natural state.'''"<ref name="gairdner1949">{{GairdnerDM 1949}}</ref>