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using Template:GollaherDL 1994
==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. The NHS did not provide non-therapeutic circumcision, so the incidence of circumcision dropped to a very low level.<ref name="gollaher1994">{{REFjournal |last=Gollaher |first=David L. |init=DL |author-link=David Gollaher |title=From ritual to science: the medical transformation of circumcision in America |journal=Journal of Social History |date=GollaherDL 1994-09 |volume=28 |issue=1 |pages=5-36 |url=http://www.cirp.org/library/history/gollaher/ |accessdate=2021-10-26}}</ref>
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>