Circumcision violates child’s charter rights

April 4th, 2012 Posted in Medical | No Comments »

From thestar.com

Re: Circumcision tied to lower prostate cancer risk: study, March 12

I am continually baffled at the seemingly endless array of problems that routine infant circumcision is supposed to “cure” or “prevent.” First it was masturbation in the Victorian era, then cancer, then HIV (even though the U.S. with a high rate of circumcision has a much higher rate of HIV transmission than non-circumcising countries like Germany, Norway and Sweden, and infants are not sexually active anyway) and now cancer again, even though the data in this study is showing correlation and not causation — a common misconception.

Also the idea that the foreskin is “prone to tiny tears during sex” has never been proven and is contrary to the evolution of a body part that Charles Darwin described as being designed for “reproductive excellence.”

The procedure itself does not treat any medical condition in infants and children and is therefore unethical as removing healthy, normal, functional tissue from an infant for no medical reason is a clear violation of the doctor’s oath to “do no harm.”

Infant circumcision is also a violation of the child’s rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, specifically Article 7: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person,” and Article 15: “Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.”

Girls in this country are protected from having any part of their genitals removed or altered without medical necessity but to refuse the same protection to baby boys is sex-based discrimination. The owner of the penis as an adult is the only person who should be making a choice about circumcision — there is no other body part that parents and doctors are simply allowed to remove without just cause (even ears, which are prone to infection) and the very slim possibility that removing a boy’s foreskin might offer him a tiny protection from cancer is still no justification for performing elective and very painful surgery on a helpless infant.

I had hoped the Star would manage to avoid the usual “circumcision good/foreskin bad” media trap but, alas, it has been pulled in as well. I recommend the Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project, The Whole Network and Doctors Opposing Circumcision for factual information on the subject.

Catherine Schau, Milton

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Article: My Body, My Choice: Ban Non-Consensual Circumcision

March 9th, 2012 Posted in Medical | No Comments »

By Matthew A. Taylor

November 22, 2011

Rabbi Lerner’s defense of infant circumcision (“No to the Proposed Legal Ban on Circumcision”) is filled with holes. One of the holes is in my heart and inscribed on my body.

Credit: Creative Commons/G. J. Charlet III

Like countless men who have been circumcised, I’m angry about what was taken from me. If I could go back in time to the moment before this was done to me, I would use any means necessary to stop it. I wish there’d been a law against it. I’ve spent many nights ruminating in grief. I know other men like me who have sunk into deep depression while wrestling with the pain of this violation.

“Circumcision is a matter of individual choice,” Lerner told the Jewish Week newspaper.

What about my choice? Shouldn’t my right to an intact body matter? Lerner doesn’t address the possibility that a man should have the right to make the choice for himself. Advocates of circumcision evidently believe the feelings of the human who is being cut are irrelevant. Anyone with an open heart who listens to the screams of a baby being circumcised cannot honestly believe that babies want to be circumcised.

While parents have to make tough decisions about many things concerning the health of their children, this is the only routinely made choice that involves an irreversible amputation that is not medically necessary. Why is this one body part of newborns of this one gender OK to forcibly amputate?

Not only is circumcision’s harm permanent, the traumatizing event takes place in early infancy, when the baby is most vulnerable and sensitive to pain. With enough therapy and personal growth work, most forms of verbal, physical, and even sexual abuse can be overcome. But circumcision leaves a man disfigured for life.

Lerner claims, “there is little evidence that circumcised men have less sexual pleasure than uncircumcised men.” In fact, circumcision throughout history has been motivated by a drive to reduce men’s sexual pleasure. In the twelfth century of the Common Era, revered scholar and sage Rabbi Moses Maimonides wrote, “One of the reasons for circumcision is to bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a weakening of the organ in question, so that this activity be diminished and the organ be in as quiet a state as possible.”

Christian puritans such as Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (co-inventor of the corn flake) promoted circumcision in the nineteenth century as a means to curb masturbation and reduce male sex drive, which led to its widespread adoption among non-Jews in the United States. Female circumcision was widely practiced in institutional settings in this country until the mid-twentieth century for the same reasons, and is still performed on a limited basis today, despite being illegal.

Infant Died After Contracting Herpes Through Circumcision

March 9th, 2012 Posted in Medical | No Comments »

The Gothamist.com

A two-week old infant died last fall in a Brooklyn hospital from herpes contracted from a religious circumcision. According to the Daily News, the unidentified infant died last September at Maimonides Hospital—the cause of death was listed as “disseminated herpes simplex virus Type 1, complicating ritual circumcision with oral suction.” The case sounds eerily similar to that of Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, a Rockland County mohel who was found to have given three babies herpes through the ritual.

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Family stonewalling authorities after newborn dies from herpes contracted in ritual circumcision

Sources in Orthodox Jewish community say baby’s parents were related to herpes-infected rabbi who did circumcision

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By Simone Weichselbaum And Reuven Blau / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, March 7, 2012, 11:16 AM

Authorities are being stonewalled by the family of a newborn boy who died after contracting herpes through a controversial religious circumcision ritual, the Daily News has learned.

Multiple sources in the Orthodox Jewish community said the 2-week-old boy’s parents were related to a herpes-infected rabbi who conducted the circumcision according to tradition — using one’s mouth to remove blood from the wound.

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office is investigating the death and trying to identify the rabbi, or mohel, but family members have not been cooperative, sources said.

“You guys are barking up the right tree,” a law enforcement source said of word that the mohel was related to the boy. “But we don’t know yet who did what.”

City health officials have criticized the religious practice, saying that putting the open wound into contact with the mouth of the rabbi carries “inherent risks” for the infant.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/family-stonewalling-authorities-newborn-dies-herpes-contracted-ritual-circumcision-article-1.1034585#ixzz1of36Azk6

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CBS News

March 7, 2012 2:38 PM

Controversial circumcision ritual led to infant’s death from herpes, says death certificate

By: Michelle Castillo

(CBS News) The New York District Attorney’s office is reportedly investigating the death of a 2-week-old boy who underwent metzizah b’peh, a controversial Orthodox Jewish ritual that involves orally sucking the blood from the circumcised baby’s penis. According to the unidentified boy’s death certificate, he contracted herpes simplex virus type 1 from the ritual, and passed away at a Brooklyn hospital in September 2011, the New York Daily News reported.
“We are looking into the circumstances surrounding the death of this child,” said Brooklyn DA spokesman Jerry Schmetterer told the Daily News.

It is important to note that the metzitzah b’peh, also known as mezizah or oral suction, is not a commonly practiced part of the Jewish circumcision ceremony. In the uncommon ritual, the mohel (or rabbi performing the circumcision) uses his mouth to draw blood away from the circumcision wound. While in the past this has helped limit complications from the procedure, the danger of passing diseases orally, such as herpes, has led many to use a sterilized glass tube as a barrier or a straw to clean the wound.

According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, most adults have oral herpes but don’t show symptoms, and the disease is spread easily from saliva to a cut or wound. Because the immune system of newborns is not developed enough to fight serious infection, herpes infections pose grave risks to infants.

The department does not recommend infants undergo this ritual because there is no proven way to reduce herpes transmission risk. The department suggests parents speak to their mohel before a circumcision, since some parents might not know whether or not he’ll perform the ritual.

This isn’t the only documented case of a child contracting herpes during the ceremony. In 2005, twin boys died after contracting the virus from their mohel. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he was banned from performing the ritual.

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Swedish Doctors Protest Circumcision

February 24th, 2012 Posted in Medical | No Comments »

From www.thelocal.se

Sweden edition

Swedish docs in circumcision protest

Published: 19 Feb 12 13:07 CET | Double click on a word to get a translation
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/39200/20120219/

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Circumcision of young boys for religious and non-medical reasons ought to be banned in Sweden, urged the Swedish Paediatric Society (Svenska barnläkarföreningen, BLF).

Man jailed for illegally circumcising young boys (14 Dec 10)
Sweden set for first circumcision law trial (29 Oct 10)
Doctors refuse to perform circumcisions (29 Apr 10)

In a statement submitted to the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen), the society called the procedure an assault.

“We consider it to be an assault on these boys,” Staffan Janson, chairman of BLF’s committee for ethical issues and childrens’ rights, said to newspaper Göteborgs-Posten (GP).

Removing small boys’ foreskin for reasons other than medical is controversial in Sweden.

After discussing the matter for several years, BLF has now concluded that the procedure ought to be banned on the grounds that the children are unable to form a decision in the matter.

According to BLF and Staffan Janson, circumcision is an attack on boys’ integrity.

“It’s such a complicated and difficult question, but even so, we’ve decided that this is a procedure to be done away with,” Janson said.

“It’s a mutilation of a child unable to decide for himself.”

Not everyone agrees that circumcision is an assault, however.

“Parents decide things for their children all the time,” Omar Mustafa, head of the Islamic Association in Sweden, said to GP.

“Allowing parents to decide over this matter isn’t stranger than allowing them to decide whether their child is to be vaccinated or not,” he continued.

TT/Clara Guibourg (news@thelocal.se)

New Zimbabwe: Circumcision is a “Dangerous Distraction” in the AIDS battle

February 24th, 2012 Posted in Medical | No Comments »

MALE circumcision is a dangerous distraction in the fight against HIV/AIDS, researchers have warned insisting that contrary to widespread claims the procedure only reduces transmission rates by no more than 1.3 percent.

Zimbabwe is among several countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have launched mass male circumcision campaigns after the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAIDS recommended the procedure in 2007 as an effective HIVAIDS preventive measure.

The WHO/UNAIDS recommendation was based on clinical trials carried out in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda which suggested that circumcision could reduce female-to-male HIV transmission by up to 60 percent.

Thousands of men have undergone the surgical nip and tuck since Zimbabwe launched the campaign in 2009 with promoters enthusiastically claiming that if at least 80 percent of the adult male population was circumcised about 750,000 cases of HIV infections could be prevented.

But new research has cast doubt on the supposed efficacy of the procedure with an article in the December Australian Journal of Law and Medicine citing numerous flaws in the Kenya, South Africa and Uganda studies.

Researchers Gregory J. Boyle and Gregory Hill claimed the 60 percent reduction in transmission was only relative with the absolute reduction rate actually no more than 1.3 percent.

Boyle and Hill said: “What does the frequently claimed ‘60 percent relative reduction’ in HIV infections actually mean?

“Across all the three female-to-male trials, of the 5,411 men subjected to male circumcision, 64 (1.18 percent) became HIV positive while among the 5,497 controls 137 (2.49 percent) became HIV positive.

“So the absolute decrease in HIV infection was only 1.31 percent, which is statistically not significant.”

The authors of the article insisted that the WHO/UNAIDS recommendation “uncritically accepted” the findings of the Kenya, South Africa and Uganda trials, in the process ignoring a vast body of contradictory evidence.

“Examination of epidemiological data shows that male circumcision does not provide protection against HIV transmission in several sub-Saharan African countries including Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania all of which have higher prevalence of HIV infection among circumcised men,” they said.

“In Malawi, the HIV prevalence rate is 13.2 percent among circumcised men and 9.5 percent among those who are intact. (Again) in Cameroon prevalence among those circumcised is 5.1 percent compare to 1.5 percent for those who are intact.

“If male circumcision reduces HIV transmission as the trials claim 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 (such as Europe, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia)?”

The article warns that relying on male circumcision in the fight against HIV/AIDS is especially dangerous for sub-Saharan Africa women because circumcised men could still acquire and transmit the virus to their sexual partners.

“Evidence suggests that mass circumcision programs may exacerbate the HIV epidemic among women (and) under these circumstances it would be irresponsible and unethical to advocate mass circumcision programmes in southern Africa,” the article concludes.

“Male circumcision is a dangerous distraction and a waste of scarce resources that should be used for known preventive measures (such as condoms which are 80 percent effective.”

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