The Circumcision Issue

Clinical Pediatrics, Volume 39, Issue 1: Page 65, January 2000.

Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

The editorial by Bloom and Koo (Clin Pediatr 1999;38:243-244) describes the practice of male circumcision as purposeful surgical intervention...nearly as old as the human species. In appealing to the antiquity of the procedure, they speculate that there must have been some pervasive reasons for its durability. They acknowledge however the cosmetic damage of circumcision which lead Celsius to develop an operation to restore the prepuce to men dissatisfied with its non-consensual amputation.

Male circumcision predates the Hippocratic oath, the Nueremberg Code and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Each of these international standards ought to have led the medical profession to cease the non-therapeutic disfigurement of the normal, healthy penis. Yet the medical profession cling tenaciously to a practice which clearly breaks the standards they claim for themselves. The best excuse Bloom and Koo can offer for this is that some males will need later surgery to the foreskin. They claim that the solution is likely to be circumcision. This merely shows that they lack the vision to see the object of health care as being to restore the foreskin to health rather than cut it off.

Bloom and Koo appeal to the antiquity of circumcision as if that justified continuing this ancient and primitive operation. Perhaps it is time to ask why contemporary medicine is still so reliant on an ancient religious mutilation?

John D Dalton
Howgate Farm, Linglabank, Frizington, Cumbria, CA26 3SU, United Kingdom.

Cite as:

Dalton J. The Circumcision Issue. Clin Pediatr 2000;39(1):65.

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