15,635
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Revise text.
[[Image:Aap.jpg|right|thumb|Emblem of the American Academy of Pediatrics]]
{{Notebox|'''The AAP does not recommend routine non-therapeutic infant circumcision.''' The AAP is regularly cited with its 2012 circumcision policy as a major US medical organization recommending routine non-therapeutic infant circumcision. The 2012 policy expired in 2017 and has not been renewed or re-affirmed since.<ref>{{REFjournal
|last=AAP Task Force on Circumcision
|url=https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/130/3/585/30235/Circumcision-Policy-Statement
The 1975 policy was considered outmoded so a new "task force on circumcision" with circumcision promoter [[Edgar J. Schoen]] as chairman was formed. It is believed that five of the six members of the task force, or 83 percent, were Jewish.
This statement claimed for the first time that "potential " medical benefits exist.<ref name="aap1989">{{REFjournal
|last=Schoen
|first=Edgar J.
}}
Non-therapeutic circumcision of children is neither diagnosis nor treatment, so the statement means that parents do ''not'' have a right to consent to non-therapeutic circumcision of children. This has caused problems for future advocates of male non-therapeutic circumcision at the AAP, so they have adopted a work-around policy. Future statements regarding male non-therapeutic circumcision resorted to citing a non-germane statement on the medical ethics of sick and dying children.<ref>{{REFjournal
|last=Fleischman
|first=
}}</ref>
The AAP allied itself with the [[American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists]] (ACOG) and the [[American Academy of Family Physicians]] (AAFP) to produce a new [[circumcision ]] policy that would claim a medical benefit. A new task force was named with [[Susan Blank]], a doctor with pro-[[circumcision ]] credentials , as chairwoman. The task force was an unusually large eight-member task force with an unusual constitution. It included:
* Ellen Buerk, {{MD}}, representing the board of directors of the AAP.
<blockquote><p>"In a 2012 position statement, the Academy stated that a systematic evaluation of the medical literature shows that the "preventive health benefits of elective [[circumcision]] of male newborns outweigh the risks of the procedure" and that the health benefits "are sufficient to justify access to this procedure for families choosing it and to warrant third-party payment for circumcision of male newborns," but "are not great enough to recommend routine circumcision for all male newborns". The Academy takes the position that parents should make the final decision about circumcision, after appropriate information is gathered about the risks and benefits of the procedure. By doing this, the AAP attempts to shift the liability for the certain injury of child non-therapeutic circumcision from the doctor to the parents. </blockquote>
The 2012 statement is a shift in the Academy's position from its [https://www.cirp.org/library/statements/aap1999/ 1999 statement ] in that the Academy now says the health benefits of the procedure outweigh the risks, and supports having the procedure covered by insurance. The 2012 position statement is an obvious effort to preserve [[third-party payment]] to physicians, without which most non-therapeutic circumcisions would not be done.</p>
==== Criticism ====