AAP Circumcision Policy 'Seriously Flawed', Condemned by Canadian Children's Rights Group

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Well, in fact that's already happening, has been for years now. Below is my obligatory list of world medical organizations opposed to it. There are actually more on this list than are linked to here, and it's increasing into other fields, including some court rulings and politicians actually voicing opposition to the practice, especially in Europe. The AAP is really under attack from all sides, and they're running scared, because they're a private organization made to further the interests of doctors, not patients, and many American doctors who are following the controversy know that there is reason for them to fear eventual lawsuits, especially with organizations like www.foregen.org working on regeneration that's not very far away, and is likely to be expensive. The vast majority of medical organizations in the world with a policy on circumcision are outright against it. including:

Swedish Pediatric Society (they outright call for a ban)

Royal Dutch Medical Association calls it a violation of human rights, and calls for a "strong policy of deterrence." this policy itself has been endorsed by several other organizations, including:

The Netherlands Society of General Practitioners,

The Netherlands Society of Youth Healthcare Physicians,

The Netherlands Association of Paediatric Surgeons,

The Netherlands Association of Plastic Surgeons,

The Netherlands Association for Paediatric Medicine,

The Netherlands Urology Association, and

The Netherlands Surgeons’ Association.

They recently held a symposium this past June to evaluate whether to ban it. one of the speakers is a man who did a recent study showing a decrease in sexual sensation in circumcised men, and an increase in sexual difficulties for them as well.

British Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons

This procedure should be delayed to a later date when the child can make his own informed decision. Parental preference alone does not justify a non‐therapeutic procedure.... Advise parents that the current medical consensus is that routine infant male circumcision is not a recommended procedure; it is non‐therapeutic and has no medical prophylactic basis; it is a cosmetic surgical procedure; current evidence indicates that previously‐thought prophylactic public health benefits do not out‐weigh the potential risks..... Routine infant male circumcision does cause pain and permanent loss of healthy tissue. |

Australian Federation of Aids organizations They state that circumcision has "no role" in the HIV epidemic.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan has taken a position against it, saying it is harmful and will likely be considered illegal in the future, given the number of men who are angry that it was done to them and are becoming activists against it.

The President of the Saskatchewan Medical Association has said the same (link above).

The Central Union for Child Welfare “considers that circumcision of boys that violates the personal integrity of the boys is not acceptable unless it is done for medical reasons to treat an illness. The basis for the measures of a society must be an unconditional respect for the bodily integrity of an under-aged person… Circumcision can only be allowed to independent major persons, both women and men, after it has been ascertained that the person in question wants it of his or her own free will and he or she has not been subjected to pressure.”

Swedish Association for Sexuality Education published this guide that talks about circumcision, in a pretty negative way. not an official advocacy policy but it makes it fairly clear. it also talks about how the frenulum is sexually sensitive, and helps prevent infection by blocking fluid from the urethra; the frenulum is often removed in an infant circumcision, yet easier to leave intact if an adult is circumcised.

Royal College of Surgeons of England

"The one absolute indication for circumcision is scarring of the opening of the foreskin making it non- retractable (pathological phimosis). This is unusual before five years of age."..."The parents and, when competent, the child, must be made fully aware of the implications of this operation as it is a non-reversible procedure." |

British Medical Association

it is now widely accepted, including by the BMA, that this surgical procedure has medical and psychological risks. .... very similar arguments are also used to try and justify very harmful cultural procedures, such as female genital mutilation or ritual scarification. Furthermore, the harm of denying a person the opportunity to choose not to be circumcised must also be taken into account, together with the damage that can be done to the individual’s relationship with his parents and the medical profession if he feels harmed by the procedure. .... parental preference alone is not sufficient justification for performing a surgical procedure on a child. .... The BMA considers that the evidence concerning health benefit from non-therapeutic circumcision is insufficient for this alone to be a justification for doing it. |

Australian Medical Association Has a policy of discouraging it, ad says "The Australian College of Paediatrics should continue to discourage the practice of circumcision in newborns."

Australian College of Physicians:

"The possibility that routine circumcision may contravene human rights has been raised because circumcision is performed on a minor and is without proven medical benefit. Whether these legal concerns are valid will probably only be known if the matter is determined in a court of law .....Neonatal male circumcision has no medical indication. It is a traumatic procedure performed without anaesthesia to remove a normal and healthy prepuce."|

I love that statement about human rights. it mentions that the only way to determine the validity is to ask the courts. as if it's not the job of a medical organization to take a stand as well.

Royal Australasian College of Physicians

Some men strongly resent having been circumcised as infants. There has been increasing interest in this problem, evidenced by the number of surgical and non-surgical techniques for recreation of the foreskin.|

A letter by the South African Medical Association said this:

The matter was discussed by the members of the Human Rights, Law & Ethics Committee at their previous meeting and they agreed with the content of the letter by NOCIRC SA. The Committee stated that it was unethical and illegal to perform circumcision on infant boys in this instance. In particular, the Committee expressed serious concern that not enough scientifically-based evidence was available to confirm that circumcisions prevented HIV contraction and that the public at large was influenced by incorrect and misrepresented information. The Committee reiterated its view that it did not support circumcision to prevent HIV transmission. We trust that you will find this in order. Yours faithfully Ms Ulundi Behrtel|

Royal Australasian College of Surgeons I like this one especially. It's a detailed evaluation of the arguments in favor of circumcision, they note that during one of the recent trials in Africa, the researchers claimed the re was no loss of sexual satisfaction. but the RACS called them out:

"Despite uncircumcised men reporting greater sexual satisfaction, which was statistically significant, Kigozi et al (2008) concluded that adult male circumcision does not adversely affect sexual satisfaction or clinically significant function in men." In general, they discuss how there's no evidence to support it.

this study shows significant harms to men's sexual ability and satisfaction after circumcision.

Here's a page from an activist site that has a short list of some organizations as well, with a few other details. most I already listed though.

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Both. To summarize, that poll showed that while 77% of doctors claim to base their recommendation for/against circumcision on medical evidence, in fact their opinion was influenced strongly by whether they were circumcised. 68% of cut male doctors supported it, and 68% of intact males opposed it. females were influenced heavily by the status of their partners, and kids. and it's worth noting that other studies show that parents are influenced almost exclusively by the status of the father.

And what's alarming, is that circumcision is taken so lightly, that 23% (nearly 1 in 4) of doctors openly admit to recommending it without basing it on medical evidence. That's just incredible, that supposedly scientific professionals would feel the impunity to recommend an irreversible amputation of tissue without medical evidence, on a nonconsenting person no less. And this is in an age where we are supposedly lawsuit happy. North American Society's willful blinding to this practice is incredible.

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Not sure why people are downvoting you.

I'm cut as well. I don't feel particularly strongly about the issue. That said, I won't be getting my son cut. I just don't see any real benefit in this day and age. Perhaps at some point in the past, when standards of hygiene were abysmal and knowledge of transmission vectors for common diseases was limited to superstition and cures generally only found in the "kill it with fire" category, it may have been necessary. It simply isn't necessary any longer.

I don't particularly believe my life is significantly worse for it, though. I feel fine, I love sex as much or more than the average married male my age and I'm lucky that my wife wants it just as much as I do, it means I get to have it significantly more than the average married male my age. I haven't suffered overmuch for being circumcised. I just think it's unnecessary and antiquated.

I really don't understand why people feel so strongly about it.

[–]Matthieu101 0 points1 point2 points 13 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Well I know for myself, a main reason is hearing about the circumcisions around the world were effecting so many children in horrible ways.

I mean yeah, in a first world country the risk is lower, but damn kids are dying by the hundreds over in Africa because of circumcisions. Some are ending up permanently mutilated. And that's only the reported ones...

And I think your first paragraph pretty much explains it... It all has to do with the rights of a child and the undue risks associated with getting it nowadays. I too will not have my child circumcised. There's just no need for it anymore. (Just like you said).

It's really frustrating seeing people try to defend it; like it actually has some sort of magical/huge benefit to life. All it is is unneeded risks with your kid.

I'll be damned if my kid gets sick/passes away just because of a circumcision. I don't care how small the risk, there's still a risk.

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I'm talking about the industrialized world. what your friend is doing is because of the claims or reducing HIV in Africa, under African rates of HIV. in the industrialized world, likelihood of heterosexual HIV infection is incredibly low, last I checked the number a male in America has a roughly 0.02% lifetime chance of getting HIV through heterosexual sex.

ANyway,t eh claim that it reduces HIV is pretty questionable, because the studies claiming it were very flawed and have been shown to not accurately predict actual infection rates.

The claims about HIV and STDs have gotten a lot of media attention, but are actually highly questionable. below are a few studies published in medical journals showing that the random control trial (RCT) studies which claimed a protective effect had several flaws, and various evidence against that circumcision does not protect against HIV.

http://www.publichealthinafrica.org/index.php/jphia/article/view/jphia.2011.e4/html_9

This is a very good examination of the three RCTs which claim circumcision prevents HIV showing that in fact, they had several flaws and their findings are not statistically significant. some highlights:

What does the frequently cited “60% relative reduction” in HIV infections actually mean? Across all three female-to-male trials, of the 5,411 men subjected to male circumcision, 64 (1.18%) became HIV-positive. Among the 5,497 controls, 137 (2.49%) became HIV-positive, so the absolute decrease in HIV infection was only 1.31%, which is not statistically significant. Furthermore, the claimed efficacy of male circumcision in reducing HIV transmission has been contradicted by at least 17 observational studies. To take just one example, Mor et al in an epidemiological study of 58,598 men found no relationship between male circumcision and HIV transmission. In at least Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, Swaziland and Tanzania, HIV is more prevalent among circumcised men. In Malawi, the HIV rate is 13.2% among circumcised men (9.5% among intact men), while in Cameroon the HIV rate is 5.1% among circumcised men (1.5% among intact men). If male circumcision reduces HIV transmission as the RCT authors would have us believe, then why is HIV prevalence much higher in the United States (where most men are circumcised) than in developed countries where most men are intact (eg Europe, Scandinavia, United Kingdom)?...

...That the very small absolute reduction of about 1.3% was not statistically significant (relevant from a policy implementation perspective) has been overlooked in the RCT reports, where only the relative reduction in HIV transmission has been highlighted. Even accepting the exaggerated female-to-male effect sizes reported by the RCT investigators, for every 100 men circumcised, it appears that 66/67 = 98.5 men would receive no HIV-preventive benefit. In countries where HIV prevalence is lower than in Uganda, the NNT would even be higher. Thus, it appears that almost 37.5 million men are to be circumcised for no HIV-preventive gain whatsoever. Furthermore, how can mass circumcision programs be justified if circumcised men still need to use a condom and practice safe sex to prevent HIV infection and other STDs?|

This one shows that the actual problem is the number of infected prostitutes per country, not circumcision: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000543

http://www.rhm-elsevier.com/article/S0968-8080%2807%2929302-4/fulltext

http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/full/10.2217/17469600.2.3.193

This one is actually a webpage, but it shows in detail many of the flaws with the RCTs: http://www.circumstitions.com/HIV-SA.html#loss

http://www.thewholenetwork.org/14/post/2011/10/new-study-australia-rejects-circumcision-as-a-preventative-for-hiv.html

http://dontgetstuck.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/denied-withheld-and-uncollected-evidence-and-unethical-research-cloud-what-really-happened-during-three-key-trials-of-circumcision-to-protect-men/

http://www.zimdiaspora.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8811%3Ahiv-infection-rate-higher-on-circumcised-men&catid=38%3Atravel-tips&Itemid=18

http://www.thewholenetwork.org/14/post/2011/10/us-navy-finds-that-circumcision-does-not-prevent-hiv-or-stis.html

http://www.drmomma.org/2009/08/nuts-and-bolts-of-hiv-in-usa-and-why.html

http://dontgetstuck.wordpress.com/circumciseion-intact-living-with-hiv/

http://www.drmomma.org/2009/09/hiv-increases-in-africa-where-most-men.html

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Title	AAP Circumcision Policy 'Seriously Flawed', Condemned by Canadian Children's Rights Group
Author	Falkner09
Upvotes	169
Comments	52
Date	August 28, 2012 3:09 PM UTC (13 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/yypw9/aap_circumcision_policy_seriously_flawed/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/aap-circumcision-policy-seriously-flawed-condemned.1014805 https://theredarchive.com/post/1014805

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