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|accessdate=2025-04-30
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==Guidance from the Bioethics Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics==The Bioethics Committee of the [[American Academy of Pediatrics]] released has provided important guidance on adapting general principles to pediatric practice.The Committue published an important statement applicable to surrogate consent in February 1995. It contains many general principles for the guidance of pediatricians but avoided directly considering [[circumcision]], the big moneymaker.<refname="bioethics1995">{{REFjournal
|last=Kohrman
|first=
}}</ref>
The Bioethics Committee of the AAP revisited informed consent in August 2016 with a statement<refname="bioethics2016">{{REFjournal
|last=Katz
|first=
}}</ref>
The statements address consent for treatment of disease in pediatric patients, however they have relatively little to say about non-therapeutic procedures such as [[circumcision of the newborn]]. The 1995 statement did say:
<blockquote>
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.<ref name="bioethics1995" />
</blockquote>
This statement would cover doctors who refuse to perform harmful non-therapeutic circumcision on boys, however it is not clear if it ever has been applied to refusal to perform injurious [[circumcision]].
The 2016 statement identifies the harm principle and states:
<blockquote>
The harm principle may be seen as a more realistic standard to apply in pediatric surrogate medical decision-making. The intent of the harm principle is not to identify a single course of action that is in the minor’s best interest or is the physician’s preferred approach, but to identify a harm threshold below which parental decisions will not be tolerated and outside intervention is indicated to protect the child.<ref name="bioethics2016" />
</blockquote>
==Consent for circumcision of minors==
If a boy is to be [[circumcised]], then someone must grant effective consent. The boy may not do it for himself because of his minority status. [[Circumcision]] of boys is a medically-unnecessary, non-therapeutic, harmful excision of functional tissue that causes loss of various functions. Hill (2003) raised the question of who can grant effective consent for such an injurious operation.<ref>{{REFjournal