Is Non-Therapeutic Circumcision Ethical?
Debating the ethics of circumcision is moot because circumcision is already recognized as unethical. Four United Nations documents make clear that taking away a baby’s right to develop normally and naturally takes away his right to self-determination. The Declaration of the First International Symposium on Circumcision, adopted March 3, 1989, by the General Assembly of the First International Symposium on Circumcision, states: “We recognize the inherent right of all human beings to an intact body. Without religious or racial prejudice, we affirm this basic human right.”
Routine circumcision gained popularity in English-speaking countries during the Victorian era, supposedly to reduce the incidence of masturbation, which was mistakenly believed to cause disease. While the strategy failed, recognition of the sexual importance of the foreskin was made clear. Unfortunately, what did work, from that disingenuous introduction into Western medicine onward, was that circumcision became the miracle treatment for the dreaded disease of the day. None of the supposed benefits of circumcision has withstood scientific scrutiny, but that didn’t stop the process whereby, when one justification was disproved, another was adopted to take its place.
Parents and guardians do not have the right to consent to the surgical removal or modification of their children’s normal genitalia, just as they cannot authorize removal of their child’s normal ear, nose, or labia. Physicians and other healthcare providers have an obligation to refuse to remove or mutilate normal, healthy body parts. In addition, insurers are ethically bound not to fund such practices.
Only when a diagnosed condition exists, and after all less invasive treatments have been exhausted, can circumcision be performed on a minor and, then, only with the parent’s informed consent. This is the standard of care for all other procedures, yet it has never been applied to the medical anomaly of circumcision.
The only persons who may consent to medically unnecessary or cosmetic procedures are the individuals themselves, after they have reached the age of consent, and then only after being fully informed about the risks and benefits of the procedure.
Physicians who practice circumcision are violating the first maxim of medical practice, “Primum Non Nocere” (First, Do No Harm), and anyone practicing genital mutilation is violating Article V of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
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And here is an answer about this that has been accepted by the British Medical Journal;
EXPERT REFUSAL: THE PHYSICIAN’S RIGHT AND DUTY
(Sexual mutilation, the physician’s point of view)
Considering on the one hand, that deontology forbids amputations without serious and strict medical motive, on the other hand Foldès’s and Taylor’s discoveries of the importance of the second sex organs of woman and man, the specific organs of autosexuality, however not yet Nobelized these discoveries may be, it is the physician’s duty to turn away requests of cosmetic or religious intervention that might alter the function of sexual organs, whatever the age, sex or religion of the person may be. They must inform them that it is their duty, and right, to do so and will not let them go without having taught them the value of the organ in question.
They must not yield to the blackmail of their ability in matter of anaesthesia or prevention and treatment of haemorrhages and infections. On the contrary, they must warn the person not to turn towards somebody else and foremost not doing it by a non-physician or by themselves, which would be illegal exercise of medicine.
In this aim and in order to protect the patient or their children from likely resorting to either other physicians (and risk spending their money in vain) or taking high risks resorting to non physicians, they must warn them that, since they are themselves now informed, they have the absolute professional obligation, by exception to the principle of privacy of consultation, to inform public authorities (health services, school staff and legal authorities) about the patient’s claim right away, so that further request will not be refunded by private or public insurance, the operation be impeded or parents and the possible operator be prosecuted. In case this would not be the law in some countries, associations of physicians must ask for such laws to be enacted.
Expert refusal renders informed consent of the parents or the patient lapsed.
This is the definitive piece on circumcision... all other debates aside as to the worth or non-worth of the procedure. It comes down to a boy's right to choose. I never had the choice - and although they did an ok job, this part of my body wasn't theirs to take.
You hit the nail on the head, ukmarcus. The fundamental issue here is the unalienable human right to one's own body. It's all about private property rights. We don't call them "privates" for nothing. Our own body parts are the most important private property anybody on earth has ever owned. Every healthy organ and tissue and cell in every human body belongs, by right, to the person whose body grew it. Other people are entitled to have whatever negative opinions they like about anybody's body part(s), but having a negative opinion about other people's body parts does not entitle anyone to CUT OFF other people's body parts. My negative opinion about your penis or any other body part - to which opinion I have an absolute right - does NOT entitle me to CHOP UP your penis or any other body part. I hope you can agree with me, and acknowledge that your negative opinion about my body parts does not entitle you to chop up mine either. Everything else is a side issue or a non-issue. This is the most no-brainer of all no-brainers. If you want to chop up sex organs, start - and stop - with the only one you'll ever own.
You will also find that Edgar is Jewish, which would lead him to rationalize scientific data to support God's reasoning for introducing circumcision to Abraham and his decedents.
The std's that he mentions, are condition which are passed on from an infected person and not the result of having natures design penis. These virus or pathogens are more likely than not, to enter the urethra during sexual activity, rather than passing through a more membrane type glans penis of a natural male. Sexual activity is a fluctuating pressure against the head of the penis as in and out! It causes the partners fluids to enter the urethra and move in and out of it during the pressure changes... from positive pressure to negative pressure as ...in and out!!! There is verbal deception and misleading being used to support a notion! For this above reason, a circumcised male who does not wear a condom is equally vulnerable to the same std's!....simple principle of physics..doctor or no doctor!
This may very well be true for those Jewish who have for the past 150 years and also for many Christian religious including G. Ellen White who headed the Adventists - Kellogg and Queen Victoria. Edward Edinger in "Ego and Archetype wrote:
"The Self is the ordering and unifying center of the total psyche (conscious and unconscious) just as the ego is the center of the conscious personality. Or, put in other words, the ego is the seat of the 'subjective' identity while the Self is the seat of the 'objective' identity. The Self is thus the supreme psychic authority and subordinates the ego to it. The Self is most simply described as the inner empirical deity and is identical with the 'imago Dei'... Since there are two autonomic centers of psychic being, the relation between two becomes vitally important... Indeed the myth can be seen as a symbolic expression of the ego-Self relationship."
Twisting legal arguments to pretend that there is something unethical about it is one thing but I find the question strange to begin with. It is the same as asking: Is non-therapeutic immunisation ethical?
Like non-therapeutic circumcision, non-therapeutic "immunization" is unethical as well. Like circumcision, vaccines are ineffective at providing significant protection from disease and have nothing but numerous complications, just as circumcision.
Do not confuse Law with Philosophy. Ethics resides in Philosophy. If slavery was legally acceptable, would it then be ethical? According to your statement it would be.
Your correlation to the question about ethics states: "Is non-therapeutic immunization ethical?" is a wrong correlation. A more proper correlation to your thread would be for someone to to say to you: "If you were given the Date Rape drug and then taken advantage of, a rape did not occur."
Schoen's objection to the ethical argument against adults mutilating children's healthy sex organs - "Parents Have the Right and Duty to Protect Their Infant's Health” - implies that amputating healthy body parts from children protects their health. Absurd. It does the opposite. It kills a normal, important, healthy body part, traumatizes the child physically and emotionally, and leaves him only part a man. It damages his health and wholeness. Schoen states a fact, but misuses the fact to advocate a medically unnecessary sex crime against babies. He can hardly be called an unbiased expert, since he is mutilated himself and has sexually mutilated, with his own hands, thousands of boys, and has been responsible for the mutilations of thousands more. He is an old man. It would be very hard if not impossible to teach this old dog new tricks. He is too busy trying to justify his old tricks. He seems to think he's smarter that God, Mother Nature and evolution combined. Wrong again, Dr.