Intact Network, Volume 1, Issue 6. March 1996.
President, Doctors Opposing Circumcision - D.O.C.
Intact Network, Volume 1, Issue 6. March 1996.
President, Doctors Opposing Circumcision - D.O.C.
Pediatricians need to ask themselves why they might want to persuade obstetricians to stop performing circumcisions. Now that is has been fully documented that circumcision causes harm to many individuals, pediatricians may want to stop others from harming their patients. (It is irrelevant whether or not this harm documentation appears in the American medical literature. Keeping such articles out is simply one of the ways that those who insist on perpetuatingthis bizarre practice do so.)
Another reason that pediatricians should want to stop obstetricians from taking a knife to their patients is that the infant is not the patient of the obstetrician. He is the patient of the pediatrician. At the very least, the obstetrician should consult with the pediatrician before doing any procedure, and get his permission.
But it goes beyond that. The obstetrician is not allowed, by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists rules, to care for male patients, except with respect to infertility problems and in emergencies. If he does so, he risks his standing as a specialist in Obstetrics and Gynecology.
If the obstetrician were to ask the pediatrician for permission, the latter should not be willing to grant it because performing circumcision violates the Golden Rule, the first tenet of medical practice, First, Do No Harm! and all seven Principles of the American Medical Association Code of Ethics.1
But that is not all. Circumcision is not surgery. Welch has classified surgery as follows: Repair of wounds, extirpation of diseased organs or tissue, reconstructive surgery, and physiologic surgery (sympathectomy). Routine neonatal circumcision does not fit into this classification. A doctor's license does not cover cutting someone with a knife if it is not surgery.
The American Academy of Pediatrics convened a Task Force in 1970, and reported in 1971 that there are no medical reasons for performing routine neonatal circumcision, to which most of the doctors, and most of the men, in the world will testify. The United States is the only country in the world that does this thing, for non-religious reasons, to a majority of their newbornsons.
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