Should Boys be Circumcised?

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No medical society recommends neonatal circumcision. By this action, they imply that non-circumcision or genital integrity is most likely to provide the highest state of health and well-being. Nevertheless, they have failed to state this explicitly and parents frequently are deceived into believing that circumcision is best for their child.

The United States, where infant circumcision is promoted, has a very expensive health care system, however, the infant morbidity and mortality is much higher than it should be in any developed nation.

By contrast, in Australia, where infant and child circumcision has been discouraged since 1971 and where the incidence of circumcision has declined steeply, infant mortality has been cut in half.

Genital Integrity provides total freedom from the complications, risks, loss of physiological functions, emotional issues, sickness, and occasional deaths that follow the circumcision of children.

The Canadian Paediatric Society says:

•    All infants, children and adolescents – regardless of physical or mental disability – have dignity, intrinsic value, and a claim to respect, protection, and medical treatment that serves their best interests.

•    Although family issues are important and must be considered, the primary concern of health professionals who care for children and adolescents must be the best interests of individual children and adolescents.

These principles are equally applicable in the United States. The medical establishment of the United States, therefore, has a duty to change its policy regarding infant and child circumcision to discourage the practice, so as to promote child health and well-being throughout life.

Goldman, however, writes persuasively on the emotional inability of circumcised doctors to develop a responsible genital integrity policy. It appears that the United States medical establishment will be unable to develop a genital integrity policy until intact, non-circumcised doctors, who are free of the emotional consequences of child circumcision, are in the majority.

Boys should not be circumcised, so that they may enjoy optimum health and well-being and so that a new generation of non-circumcised doctors may grow up and institute a genital integrity policy for America’s children.