German physicians and lawyers: Religious freedom cannot be an excuse for violence.
July 28th, 2012 Posted in MedicalUndue Suffering Circumcision for Non-Medical Reasons Is Wrong
A Commentary By Dr. Maximilian Stehr
07/26/2012
In July 2011 a mother took her 2-year-old son to a pediatric clinic in Munich. Up to that point he had been the picture of health. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him. His parents simply wanted him to be circumcised at a medical facility on religious grounds.
But something went wrong when the boy was anesthetized, and the surgical team suddenly couldn’t ventilate him anymore. The oxygen levels in his blood dropped, and his heart stopped beating. A dramatic scene unfolded in the minutes that followed, as the doctors tried to reanimate him, eventually calling in the emergency pediatric specialist. By the time the specialist arrived, the boy’s body had been starved of oxygen for at least 10 minutes. The team finally managed to resuscitate the boy, and he was taken to our hospital by ambulance. But the child never regained consciousness. The lack of oxygen had caused too much damage to his brain.I’m not telling this story to be sensationalist. I’m telling it because it moved me deeply. A healthy child that had probably happily crawled out of his bed that very morning had been anesthetized unnecessarily a few hours later, and by midday he lay in our intensive care unit, severely disabled for the rest of his life.
This shocking tale makes one thing absolutely clear: We doctors must never unnecessarily endanger the patients entrusted to our care. After all, had this boy not been circumcised, there would have been no emergency during his anesthetization. Every surgical intervention and every anesthesia is associated with a certain amount of risk. In this case the risk is not very great, but should nevertheless be taken only when justified. Under no circumstance should the dangers be overlooked because we think “It’s only a minor operation.” It’s not.
‘First, Do No Harm’
Munich’s university hospital, the Klinikum Grosshadern, stopped circumcising boys without medical indication back in 2001. Many renowned pediatric hospitals had taken similar steps even before the Cologne Regional Court recently declared religious circumcision of children illegal. The medical community has been debating the issue for almost a decade. It’s only thanks to the judges in Cologne that the matter has been brought to the attention of the public.
One of the fundamental principles of medical ethics is that no one should be harmed. The oath formulated by Hippocrates (approx. 460-370 BC) and sworn by all doctors includes the following statement: “I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.” Another key idea lies at the heart of all ethical behavior by medical personnel: “Primum nihil nocere,” or “First, do no harm,” a phrase coined by Scribonius Largus, a doctor at the court of the emperor Tiberius Claudius. The treatment of patients must be with their welfare in mind, and must therefore have priority over other interests, such as science, financial gain or profit.
Medically unnecessary circumcision causes damage because it results in an irreversible loss of healthy bodily tissue. Some people may consider it insignificant because the foreskin serves no discernible purpose. But the foreskin does indeed have a number of functions, although very few of the people engaging in the debate are aware of them.
No Medical Benefit
After birth, the foreskin protects the head of the penis (the glans) and prevents the external urethral orifice from abrasion and drying out. Following circumcision, the surface of the glans regularly thickens and calluses. This can lead to a constriction of the opening of the urethra, the most common complication associated with circumcision in infancy, occurring in up to 30 percent of cases. It’s not unusual for several operations to be required before affected children can empty their bladder properly.
The foreskin also plays a role in arousal. In contrast to the glans, which has deep sensitivity, the foreskin has what are known as tactile corpuscles which can only be found in similar density in the tips of the fingers, the lips and the eyelids. It’s therefore hardly surprising that the foreskin is considered a male erogenous zone. A significant majority of men who are circumcised in adulthood, and are therefore in a position to make comparisons, say they are less sensitive in this area after surgery. But that’s not the only reason why circumcision affects sexuality: Couples in which the man is circumcised uniformly report a loss of male secretions during sex and therefore greater friction and resulting pain. It can therefore be assumed that circumcision can indeed have a negative impact on sexuality and the sex life of both circumcised men and their partners. These findings are not new. Major studies and surveys have been conducted and published as far back as the 1990s.
But the direct consequences of an operation must also be considered. Post-surgical complications occur in between 0.19 and 2 percent of circumcisions, but rise to 11 percent for patients circumcised in infancy. These complications primarily involve secondary bleeding or infection. In rare cases the urethra or the glans may be damaged or even need to be amputated. I see such complications time and again at our clinic, even though they occur in less than one percent of medical procedures. They mean painful surgery for the child.
Often enough, circumcision is deemed to be of medical benefit, for instance in preventing infectious diseases or cancer. But it’s worth taking a closer look at the figures and the findings of related studies: Circumcised infants may have only a tenth as many urinary tract infections in their first year, but these infections generally occur so rarely that 100 circumcisions would be needed to prevent a single urinary tract infection. This doesn’t make sense in otherwise healthy babies. There is no medical benefit to routine circumcision.
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