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Last August, the American Academy of Pediatrics released its new circumcision policy
in a flurry of publicity.
The policy claimed that "the benefits outweigh the risks"
- without actually comparing them.
It fell short of recommending universal infant circumcision,
though it was widely reported as having done so
and it recommended that insurance pay for this "non-recommended" procedure.
That policy was instrumental in passing the unconstitutional German law
allowing non-therapeutic circumcision
This week, Pediatrics published a rebuttal from 38 heads or spokespeople
for the Paediatric Associations of Austria, Britain,
Denmark, England,
Estonia, Finland,
Germany,
Iceland,
Latviia,
Lithuania, Norway, Sweden
and the Netherlands -
and senior pediatricians in Canada, the Czech Republic, France and Poland,
accusing the AAP of
cultural bias,
and finding fault with its methodology,
its conclusions
and its ethics.
Publication of the rebuttal was delayed while the AAP's Task Force on Circumcision
prepared its reply.
If the Bundestag had seen the rebuttal their law might not have passed.
Now the rebuttal and reply have been published together,
and the reply just
underlines the same cultural bias for which it was criticized.
It basically says "You're another!"
- without noticing that leaving a child's genitals alone,
doing nothing to them
is medically and ethically a different kind of thing a different kind of thing
from cutting part off.
They reveal their bias even while denying it.
They refer to the whole *** as "uncircumcised"
and discount the *** value of the *** found by some studies because
"the relevance to individuals undergoing circumcision during infancy was questionable"
but with apparently no consideration of individuals not undergoing circumcision
during infancy
They falsely claim that
"approximately half of US males are circumcised and half are not"
In fact,
a chart in their own policy indicates the rate is more like 80 percent.
This is in order that they can say
Although that 50:50 ratio
may lead to a more tolerant view towards circumcision
in the United States than in Europe,
the cultural "bias" in the United States is much more likely to be a
neutral one than that found in Europe
where there is a clear bias against circumcision.
In fact, in Europe,
doing nothing,
simply leaving the child's body alone,
is just the default position.
No need for any "cultural bias" or any "Task Forces on
Leaving Children's Genitals Alone".
They go on:
"A culture that is comfortable with both the circumcised ***
and the UNcircumcised *** would seem predisposed to a more dispassionate analysis
of the scientific literature
than a culture with a bias that is either strongly opposed to circumcision
or strongly in favor of it."
In what mad world is the United States a culture that is comfortable
with the whole ***
when the Task Force won't even call it that?
And "not strongly in favor of circumcision"?
When TV shows can include 9 or more belittling references to foreskins
and the men with them
without exciting comment?
(Positive references are virtually unknown.)
American medical textbooks seldom show the ***
and may define it it as
"the part that is removed by circumcision".
To rebut the claim of its 38 eminent critics that the *** has a *** function
the Task Force says: -
Members of the Task Force appreciate that the *** has nerve fibers:
The Task Force clearly recommends adequate pain control
for infants undergoing circumcision.
However the Task Force did not move
beyond what these studies actually revealed
to speculate about the effects that circumcision might have
on *** function or pleasure."
The 38 European critics do not need to "speculate" -
Their male members or their male partners will have foreskins and know first-hand
what pleasures they give.
Maybe they didn't didn't appreciate that probably none of the Task Force do.
What those studies actually reveal, the task force says,
is that the *** has nerve bundles and pain fibers
The *** contains Meissner corpuscles and the inner surface of the ***
resembles a mucous membrane.
Well of course the inner *** resembles a mucous membrane, because it is one.
like the lips.
The lips also have nerve fibers and Meissner corpuscles, which are sensitive to light touch.
Whose first thought about those would be about how to minimize the pain
of lip-removal?
Who either doubts, or can find a study to prove
that the nerves of the lips are intimately involved in the pleasure of kissing?
Who needs such a study?
You might as well demand a study to prove that women's unamputated ***
may arouse heterosexual men!
The Task Force, both in its policy and this response to its critics,
criticises the only study
that actually attempted to measure the sensitivity of the *** itself
by ignoring its main findings -
that "male circumcision removes the most sensitive part of the ***".
They now admit
that the critics' argument
about the basic right to physical integrity
is an important one
Yet they ignored this important argument in their 2012 policy
and now they contrast it with a new, unmeasured and undocumented claim, that
"it is also true that some males will be harmed by not being circumcised"
Well, the man who had to cut his own arm off
after it was trapped under a boulder in the desert
was presumably harmed by not having had it previously amputated
but nobody would ever think that meant infant amputtion should be given
even a moment's consideration.
Yet this is just the
"circumcision to prevent zipper injury" argument
favored of Professor Brian Morris
writ large.
The Task Force says nothing about the critics' case, based on the AAP's own policy
and assuming that the studies it uses can be relied on
that the diseases circumcision reduces are so rare,
or of such late onset
or so readily prevented or treated by other means
that circumcising infants to prevent them is a bad option, compared to just
letting the child grow up to decide the fate of his own genitals.
Its claims that "the benefits outweigh the risks" is now nowhere to be seen
and it goes undefended.