CIN (Circumcision Information Network) 3:20

Introduction
This weekly bulletin is a project of CIN, the Circumcision Information Network (formerly CIN CompuBulletin). The purpose of this weekly bulletin is to educate the public about and to protect children and other non-consenting persons from genital mutilation. Readers are encouraged to copy and redistribute it, and to contribute written material.
--Rich Angell, Editor.

"THE FORESKIN IS NECESSARY"
An article by Paul M. Fleiss. MD, MPH, and Frederick Hodges
Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, April 1996.
Contributed by typist DYKS96A@prodigy.com ( GEORGE HILL)
Seventh of a multi-part series.

Educating Parents:
The physician today has a duty to refuse to perform circumcision.  He also
has a duty to educate parents who request this surgery for their children.
 Modern parents who have come of age in the era of mass circumcision may
require gentle counseling in this area.  Frequently circumcised fathers today
demand that their children be altered to 'match' them.  There could be no
worse reason to subject a child to surgery than this.  A simple refusal of
this irrational demand is not enough.  Circumcised fathers who display this
neurotic behavior deserve compassionate, psychological counseling to help
them overcome their anxieties about normal human genitalia and to help them
come to terms with their own circumcision.  The health care professional's
obligation is to serve the child's interests and not the parents.  It is not
in the child's interest to be subjected to a disfiguring amputative surgery
without therapeutic necessity.

It is unethical to subject the child to surgery merely to serve the
psychological needs of the parents.  Parents need education and guidance from
educated physicians if this conflict of interest arises.  Most parents are
very grateful to learn that it is not necessary to subject their newborn
child to sexual surgery.  

"RETHINKING AMERICA'S PENILE CODE"
Contributed by freeman@geophys.washington.edu (Ted Freeman) 
The following article by Elizabethe Brown appeared 15 April in the Journal
American, a newspaper which serves the Seattle area's Eastside.  Edited for
brevity.

Long before Clayton Schneider was born, his parents decided against having
him circumcised.  Amanda Schneider, Clayton's mother, read up on the
procedure before giving birth and became convinced it was unnecessary and
even harmful.

Schneider persuaded two friends to shun circumcision for their sons.  And she
took a local nurse-practitioner to court -- and won -- after the woman,
apparently acting from ignorance, tried to forcibly retract Clayton's
foreskin during a routine examination when he was 4 months old.

At that age, the foreskin is fused to the glans, or head, of the penis.  The
tissues naturally separate over time, and the American Academy of Pediatrics
says they should not be forced apart.

But in America -- a country with the highest rate of nonreligious
circumcision in the world -- not even health professionals can be counted on
to know that, says Frank Cranbourne, executive director of the Washington
chapter of NOCIRC, an international organization opposed to circumcision.

"You have to protect your baby from professionals and others who treat this
as a curiosity and an oddity," says the 42-year-old Port Townsend man.

Clayton, who's now 3, screamed bloody murder during the disastrous
appointment with the nurse-practitioner.  "I had to push her hand away, then
she tried to push my hand away," his mother recalls.  "She's pulling on him,
and I'm in a pushing match with her."

Afterward, Schneider brought the nurse-practitioner literature from NOCIRC
and asked her to read it.  She also asked the nurse to admit she was wrong
and to promise not to do what she had done to other infant boys.

The nurse refused. Schneider took her to small-claims court.  The nurse
didn't show up.  The judge awarded Schneider $100 for emotional stress;
Clayton wasn't permanently harmed by the incident.  The nurse paid the money.
 Schneider wished the woman had just read the NOCIRC information.

"I think if more people were informed about this, they'd feel the same way,"
she says.

Often, parents feel their sons will be ridiculed in the locker room at
school, or fathers fear the reaction when their sons discover they are
different from their daddies.

Amannda Schneider says her husband Ken, who is circumcised, was concerned
about that for little Clayton.  But while discussing the issue one night
among family, Ken's father revealed that he was never circumcised.

"So here's Ken, 28 years old at the time, and he'd never seen his father,"
Schneider said.  "My husband was very quick to come around."

FROGS AND SNAILS AND PUPPY DOGS' TAILS... 
Contributed by brogers@softlab.co.jp (Brian P. Rogers)
The following article by Dr Thomas Stuttaford is from the London Times (1st
May 1996) and is reprinted without permission.  It is also available on the
WWW at:

http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/96/05/01/timfeamed01001.html?11804.
 Edited here for brevity.

"Should little boys be made to suffer the same fate as puppy dogs' tails?"

FOR at least 100 years many breeds of working dog have had their tails
docked.  The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons has in recent years decided
that tail-docking is unnatural and an abuse of the puppy.

Doctors never like to be eclipsed by vets and today they have been having
their own ethical discussions on a mutilating operation of infancy.  The
standards committee of the General Medical Council, the governing body of the
medical profession, discussed the morality of cutting the foreskin off baby
boys.

Circumcision is to some doctors every bit as much an outrage as docking
puppies' tails is to some veterinary surgeons.  Boys occasionally may bleed
and in some unfortunate cases become infected.

The members of the General Medical Committee debated the problem at length,
and reached no conclusion.  Further discussion with interested groups will
take place.

Rather than improve the standards of circumcision so that the occasional baby
boy does not bleed, or if he does, there is somebody there to arrest the
hemorrhage, and to make certain that infection does not occur, many
paediatricians have advocated that circumcision should be abandoned
altogether, unless there is an obvious medical condition that it would
rectify.

STUPID QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Given the choice, most rational folks would choose to have their infant sons
circumcised."
Dr. Terry W. Hensle, director of pediatric urology at Columbia College of
Physicians and Surgeons, as quoted in a 19 May 1996 New York Times article
entitled "How Circumcision Came Full Circle," by Emily Benedek.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION call NOCIRC, the National Organization of
Circumcision Information Resource Centers at (415) 488-9883, fax (415)
488-9660.  Ask about the resource provider nearest you.  For written
information, write NOCIRC, PO Box 2512, San Anselmo, CA 94979, with SASE
and/or donation if possible.  For further internet information, contact the
Doctors Opposing Circumcision Web site at
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~gcd/DOC.

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