050810 - Homework - "Marked in Your Flesh" - Re: Journal of Medical Ethics 2005: A covenant with the status quo? (Re: Conscience? Ethics?)

This post of August 10, 2005, followed by one day the previous one, and calls on FSU's President and Medical and Law School personnel to educate themselves about the history of circumcising. VL
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Dear President Wetherell, FSU Medical and Law Faculty and Associates, et al,

You cannot consider yourselves literate on the subject of circumcision of children if you have not read this book written by Leonard B. Glick, Ph.D., and published by Oxford University Press in June, 2005.

Van Lewis


http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/Judaism/?view=usa&ci=019517674X

or

http://tinyurl.com/86mcs


Marked in Your Flesh
Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America
Leonard B. Glick

019517674X, Hardback, 384 pages
Jun 2005

Description
Why do American physicians, unlike those in any other country but Israel, circumcise more than half of all newborn boys? How did an ancient sacrificial rite created by temple priests attain its current status as a routine American medical procedure? Leonard B. Glick answers these questions by tracing the history of infant circumcision from its origins in ancient Judea, through centuries of Christian condemnation and Jewish defense, to its current role in American culture and medical practice. A chapter of the book of Genesis, composed by priests around 500 BCE, says that God made a covenant with Abraham, promising him a glorious posterity on condition that he and all his male descendants be circumcised. Eventually the practice of infant male circumcision would become a key element in the separation between Judaism and Christianity. While Christians rejected circumcision as spiritually irrelevant, Jews held unwaveringly to the belief that being a Jewish male meant being physically circumcised. The situation changed dramatically in the nineteenth century, Glick shows, when progressive German Jews argued that ritual circumcision was anachronistic and inappropriate for members of a modern society. Some German-Jewish physicians declared that the surgery itself was so dangerous that it should be either reformed or eliminated. At the same time, however, British and American physicians began claiming that, despite the acknowledged dangers, circumcision cured all sorts of afflictions and protected against cancer and genital infections. Although support for circumcision eventually declined sharply in England, in America it has endured with remarkable tenacity. Glick shows that Jewish American physicians have been especially vocal and influential champions of the practice. Informed medical opinion is still divided, but most physicians now agree that circumcision confers no significant medical benefits; yet the practice is still routine in most American hospitals. At the same time, determined opposition has grown among those who recognize its significant adverse effects and the ethical and legal implications of imposing reductive surgery on the genitals of nonconsenting persons. Moreover, Jewish opponents maintain that this disfiguring practice makes no positive contribution to modern Jewish American life. Marked in Your Flesh offers a challenging perspective that will engage readers on all sides of this multifaceted controversy.
Features
• Surveys the entire history of circumcision
• Questions the necessity of infant circumcision
Reviews
"Marked in Your Flesh is an ambitious study of the ancient rite of circumcision, which has been central to the demarcation of Jewish identity from biblical times to the present. There have been many studies of circumcision, but Leonard Glicks is distinguished both by its impressive historical range and its sophisticated commingling of anthropological and textual methodologies. Through painstaking analysis the author has unmasked many of the socio-cultural and religious underpinnings of circumcision. Marked in Your Flesh should appeal to anyone interested in this practice."--Elliot R. Wolfson, Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University
"Marked in Your Flesh shines as the rarest of beasts-a book that is learned yet accessible, deeply serious yet profoundly entertaining. Glick writes with one eye carefully checking footnotes while the other eye compassionately keeps watch over the precious newborn babies that are his ultimate subject. This engagingly written book contains lessons applicable to all of us concerned with protecting human rights and human well-being against encroachment by cultural and social forces."--J. Steven Svoboda, Founder and Executive Director, Attorneys for the Rights of the Child
Product Details
384 pages; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; 0-19-517674-X
About the Author(s)
Leonard B. Glick is a cultural anthropologist with a medical degree and a doctorate in anthropology. He is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Hampshire College and is the author of Abraham's Heirs: Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe (1999).

On 9/8/05 19:10, "Van Lewis" wrote:


Thomas Kent Wetherell, President
Medical and Law Schools
Florida State University

Dear President Wetherell, FSU Medical School personnel and associates, and FSU Law School personnel and associates:

Copied below my email message to you here, is the abstract of an article published recently in the Journal of Medical Ethics, which ends with the following sentence:

“We conclude that it is ethically inappropriate to subject children—male or female—to the acknowledged risks of circumcision and contend that there is no compelling legal authority for the common view that male circumcision is lawful.”

A full text pdf copy of the paper may be downloaded from
http://jme.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/31/8/463
or
http://tinyurl.com/cfzt8
and a copy is attached for your convenience.
...