American Academy of Pediatrics Circumcision Statement

Monkey can't get banana through glass. Poor little dude.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says:

Role of Hygiene

"there is little evidence to affirm the association between circumcision status and optimum penile hygiene."

STDs including HIV

"behavioral   more...factors appear to be far more important than circumcision status."

Penile Cancer

"in a developed country such as the United States, penile cancer is a rare disease and the risk of penile cancer developing in an uncircumcised man, although increased compared with a circumcised man, is low."

Ethics

Of course here, they hedge and say while even though cutting off part of your baby's genitalia "is not essential to the child's current well-being" they are perfectly fine with parents and doctors using cultural tradition as justification. This report is also the first time the AAP has acknowledged(after decades of doctors mindlessly repeating the belief that babies don't feel significant pain) that circumcision without anesthesia is traumatic and if circumcision is to be done, anesthesia should be used.

I would like to know if the AAP thinks cultural tradition is an acceptable reason to cut off the clitoral hoods(biologically analogous to foreskin) of infant girls especially if it is done with anesthesia as is the case here: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWvi475cYZY">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWvi475cYZY</a>
(the video is not particularly graphic as it was made by a mother who had her own clitoral hood cut off when she was a baby and she wants to continue the tradition)

If you want, you can read the full AAP policy here: <a href="http://www.cirp.org/library/statements/aap1999/">http://www.cirp.org/library/statements/aap1999/</a>  less

"There are no valid medical indications for circumcision in the neonatal period."
- Committee on Fetus and Newborn. Standards and Recommendations for Hospital Care of Newborn Infants, 5th edition.   more...Evanston, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics. (1971). p.110.

"Circumcision is not a medical decision. Preventing an improbably future infection is a spurious indication. The standard of care is antibiotics, not amputation."
- Eileen Marie Wayne, MD, Letters (Nothing to debate on circumcision), American Medical News, (27 July, 1998). P.27.

"My own preference, if I had the good fortune to have another son, would be to leave his little penis alone."
- Benjamin Spock, MD

"Historians of the future will find it incredible that we mutilated babies by cutting off the end of their penises in the name of medicine. There are now serious concerns this routine procedure may actually deprive adult men of a vital part of their sexual sensitivity."
- Dean Edell, MD - Radio and Television Medical Advisor

"Circumcision causes pain, trauma, and a permanent loss of protective and erogenous tissue... Removing normal, healthy, functioning tissue for no medical reason has ethical implications: circumcision violates the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 5) and the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 13)."
- Leo Sorger, to American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology: Stop Circumcisions, Ob Gyn News, (1 Nov., 1994). p.8.  less

Who is smarter? Or just more annoying?

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