051117 - "One-time stressors" in early childhood

In this email of November 17, 2005, I provide FSU's medical school's dean and the President and over 150 other FSU medical and law school personnel with new scientific informationabout the detrimental effects on adolescents of "one-time stress" in infancy and early childhood, its significance for the issue of infant and early childhood circumcision, and I continue to call for an urgent conference at FSU on circumcising infants and children. - VL

-------------------------------

Dr. Ocie Harris, Dean
School of Medicine
Florida State University

Dr. Thomas Wetherell, President
Florida State University

Dr. Lawrence G. Abele, Provost
Florida State University

Dear Dean Harris, President Wetherell, and Provost Abele:

Please read and understand this new and important scientific research (copied below this email) on ”one-time stress” in infancy and early childhood and its negative impact on mental health in adolescence. Here is the url.

http://www.ohsu.edu/ohsuedu/newspub/releases/111605stress.cfm

or

http://tinyurl.com/azffv

I believe this important scientific research is telling us that anyone who will submit a human male infant to the one-time stress of medically unnecessary, nontherapeutic, elective infant circumcision is asking for potentially serious emotional, intellectual and social trouble during the adolescence of that male child and probably later in his life as well.

Do “school shootings” ring any bells here? Do high rates of US domestic violence by adolescent and adult men against women and children, and violence against each other, ring any bells here?

The USA is the ONLY NATION IN THE WORLD where the medical profession circumcises the majority of infant males. Infant circumcision is where sex and violence first meet, and marry. Infant circumcision IS sexual violence, of the grossest kind, but it goes beyond most sexual violence into permanent sexual mutilation as well. http://research.cirp.org

Please get literate on this subject ASAP. Our society’s and this planet’s future human health and happiness depend utterly upon adults taking adult responsibility to protect all children from all unnecessary trauma and mutilation in childhood, especially early childhood and infancy, and especially sexual/genital trauma and mutilation. Dean Harris, President Wetherell, Provost Abele, do your important parts.

In general, the earlier in the lives of children one-time traumas and mutilations occur the more serious the negative consequences for human brain development and future mental health. This is not new information. Sigmund Freud knew it and said so explicitly early in the 20th century.

It is also common sense that early trauma in the life of any organism is potentially more damaging than later trauma, as evidenced by expressions in our language that you have known since childhood, aphorisms such as, “As the twig is bent so grows the tree”, but the neuroanatomical brain development involved is just beginning to be explicated and understood scientifically. Read additional modern science about developmental brain damage from trauma - physical or emotional - during infancy and early childhood:

"Brain Damage Linked to Child Abuse..."
http://mcleanhospital.org/PublicAffairs/20001214_child_abuse.htm

"Male neonatal circumcision and brain damage"
http://cirp.org/library/psych/brain_damage/index.html

"How Culture Shapes the Developing Brain"
http://MontaguNOCIRCpetition.org/pdf/culture_brain-ttf_spring_2002.pdf

That the scientific neuroanatomy lags behind common human understanding is not surprising, and is no excuse for adults not taking up the vitally important cause of protecting ALL children and infants from medically unnecessary trauma and mutilation of ALL kinds.

Please respond appropriately to this new science. I ask you three again to call a local review at the FSU Medical School of the information, scientific and otherwise, now available on unnecessary human genital cutting, trauma and mutilation of children by adults. This conference should be wide-ranging and welcome all viewpoints on this issue. No one with anything to say about it should be excluded.

When I was arrested and jailed 35 years ago in Tallahassee for protesting peacefully on the public sidewalk outside Tallahassee Memorial Hospital against infant circumcision, ignorance of these matters was perhaps a (barely) credible excuse for not taking responsible adult action to protect human babies and children from medically unnecessary genital cutting, trauma and mutilation. That is no longer the case. No excuse for unnecessary, elective child sexual abuse is good enough today.

Please get back to me as soon as possible about the upcoming FSU Medical School local conference on infant circumcision. Killing children, and unnecessarily amputating and thereby killing any healthy, normal, living body part of any child, is unacceptable adult misbehavior. Standing back and doing nothing about other adults killing children or any healthy, normal, living body part of any child unnecessarily is also unacceptable adult misbehavior. I do not accept either of these adult misbehaviors in any of you three or in any other adult. No excuse is good enough for anyone to kill any child or to amputate and kill unnecessarily any healthy, living body part of any child or to sit silently by while other adults misbehave in this potentially lethal and always damaging way.

Van Lewis
P.O. Box 323
Panacea, Florida 32346
850-697-3857
vanlewis@post.harvard.edu

PS – For important scientific research preceding this new research and going all the way back to the 1950s, see http://violence.de. The gross irresponsibility of the US medical community, including you, Dean Harris, on this issue is not a new thing. It has been going on for many decades. Some people accept it as normal medical behavior. I do not. There is something seriously wrong with medicine in its unwillingness and apparent inability to correct its own mistakes, even when they become glaring. Study Ignaz Semmelweis MD and the medical history surrounding purpureal fever aka “childbed fever” for a classic example of what we are up against in US medicine with the extremely serious infant and child circumcision issue. A book was recently published by a US physician that blamed SEMMELWEIS for medicine’s refusal for 50 years to institute simple hygienic procedures that prevented childbed fever. Doctors refused for over 50 years to wash their hands between patients, and thereby unnecessarily killed tens or hundreds of thousands of women and children, rather than listen to Semmelweis. And now doctors say this unnecessary and tragic delay was all Semmelweis’s fault! The same thing is happening again with infant circumcision, only it’s taken over 150 years so far with no end yet in sight. I have no doubt whatever that when it’s all over circumcisers will blame the people who objected to this insanity for the unnecessary and tragic delay in medically unnecessary circumcision’s long-overdue abolition. Responsibility for that delay belongs to US medicine, among others, including FSU’s School of Medicine, as does responsibility for adopting this stone-age insanity as medicine in the first place. It’s called “irresponsibility” and US medicine runs on it.

cc: Broad public dissemination

------ Forwarded Message
From: Van Lewis
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:50:33 -0800
To: , ,
Subject: "One-time stressors" in early childhood


Judy Cameron, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist - Oregon Regional Primate Research Center
Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology
Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience
Oregon Health & Science University

Jim Dahl, M.D.
Staunton Professor, Pediatrics & Psychiatry
University of Pittsburgh

Jim Newman
OHSU

Dear Professors Cameron, Dahl, and Jim Newman:

Please try infant circumcision as the “one-time stress” in your important experiments with rhesus macaque monkeys.

Van Lewis
P.O. Box 323
Panacea, Florida 32346
850-697-3857
vanlewis@post.harvard.edu


http://www.ohsu.edu/ohsuedu/newspub/releases/111605stress.cfm

or

http://tinyurl.com/azffv

News and Information 

November 16, 2005
Contact: Jim Newman
503-494-8231
Email Jim Newman


OHSU Research Reveals Likely Connection Between Early-Life Stress And Mental Health Problems During The Teenage Years (November 16, 2005)

Research to be presented Wednesday, Nov. 16, at the Society for Neuroscience Meeting in Washington, D.C.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Research conducted at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University and at the University of Pittsburgh suggests a strong link between significant stress early in life and the increased incidence of mental health problems during adolescence. The research strengthens the case for proactive treatment or counseling of children who undergo a significant early-life stress. The research is being presented during the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, D.C., Nov. 12-16. The meeting is one of the largest and most respected gatherings of neuroscientists in the world.
Both past research and human observation reveal that children who experience early-life stresses such as abuse, neglect, or loss of a parent have an increased risk of developing attachment disorders. Later in childhood, these same children show an increased incidence of manifesting some types of behavioral and emotional disorders, including attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorders, anxiety, depression, suicide, drug abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder. Both genetic factors and life experiences appear to play a role in the causes of these mental health disorders.
"Until now only human observation and theories have suggested that early-life stresses can also lead to problems as far away as the teenage years," said Judy Cameron, Ph.D., a senior scientist in the divisions of Reproductive Sciences and Neuroscience at the OHSU Oregon National Primate Research Center. Cameron also is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. "By studying a species that has responses to early-life stresses that are very similar to young children, we can get a developmental picture that is much clearer than in humans."
 
Interpretation of human epidemiological studies are often difficult because children experiencing early-life stresses frequently have exposure to many other situations, such as ongoing mental or physical abuse or neglect, both of which can increase the incidence of mental health problems. In contrast, for this study researchers were able to rear rhesus macaque monkeys with a one-time stress exposure, followed by rearing in a very stable social environment. The findings provide strong evidence that stress exposure early in life can have dramatic, long-lasting effects that persist into the teenage years and perhaps even adulthood, even in the face of an otherwise stable rearing, such as would be recommended for children experiencing early life stresses.
"Some of the most important clinical questions targeting early intervention for behavioral and emotional problems in youth will require a deeper understanding of the unique vulnerabilities linked to neural changes at puberty and adolescence - and more specifically, how these adolescent changes interact with earlier vulnerabilities such as major life stressors and social adversity early in life," said Ronald E. Dahl, M.D., the Staunton Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh. "This line of study by the Cameron lab is providing unique insights into these developmental interactions in ways that can not be achieved in controlled studies in humans."
The researchers studied 16 small social groups of monkeys for a three year period. Because monkeys mature at a much more accelerated pace than humans, a monkey 2 to 4 years old would correspond to a human teenager in regard to mental and physical development. To ascertain the impacts of an early-life stress, certain monkeys had their mothers removed from the social group at various stages early in life. These monkeys continued to be raised in the stable social groups with other monkeys - similar to a human child that loses a parent but continues to be raised in their family. Some infant monkeys had their mothers removed from the social group when they were 1 week old. These infants went on to be alert and active, but to show less than normal interest in social interactions. Their behavior looked similar to children who develop a form of attachment disorder characterized by withdrawal from social interactions. Some infant monkeys had their mothers removed from the social group when they were 1 month old. These infants went on to show increased clinginess and seek social comfort more than normal. Their behavior looked similar to children who develop a form of attachment disorder characterized by indiscriminate clinginess.
 
In adolescence, one-week separated monkeys continued to spend less time in social contact with other monkeys, and showed more time displaying self-comforting behaviors, such as snuggling a toy or even sucking their thumb, especially when they were placed in mildly stressful situations. In adolescence they also showed less inclination to explore novel, interesting situations - this has been taken as a marker of anxiety in human studies. In contrast, adolescent monkeys who had experienced maternal separation at 1 month old continued to show significantly more time in social contact compared to monkeys not experiencing the stress of early maternal separation. However, they also developed several new behavioral characteristics in adolescence. Like one-week separated monkeys they, too, developed a reduced inclination to explore novel, interesting situations. And, they also developed "freezing" behavior in response to fearful stimuli - again a characteristic of increased anxiety in humans.
"Why there is an increase in the expression of anxious behaviors in individuals experiencing early-life stress during puberty remains unknown," said Cameron. "However, we now know this occurs both in humans and in nonhuman primates. We hope that the increased ability to study behavior and pubertal development in nonhuman primates will allow us to more thoroughly address this issue. We can speculate that hormonal changes that occur with puberty interact with the neural circuits whose function is modulated by early-life stress, but identifying such potential mechanisms will take further work. We are encouraged that the nonhuman primate model will allow this type of study."
Another issue that has been raised in clinical studies of children experiencing early life stress, is whether the timing of puberty is affected by such stress exposure. Girls experiencing sexual abuse early in life have been reported to go through puberty at earlier ages than non-abused girls. However, in this report, the researchers tracked reproductive hormones and the incidence of menstrual bleeding in female monkeys throughout puberty and found that there were no differences in the timing of puberty onset in animals that had experienced early-life stress compared to control animals. This finding suggests that early puberty onset may not be a response to all types of early-life stress, but may be more specific to girls experiencing early sexual abuse.
 
Support for this research was contributed by the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The ONPRC is a registered research institution, inspected regularly by the United States Department of Agriculture. It operates in compliance with the Animal Welfare Act and has an assurance of regulatory compliance on file with the National Institutes of Health. The ONPRC also participates in the voluntary accreditation program overseen by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC).
 
------ End of Forwarded Message

051115 - Re: Special Conference FW: Mini Symposium on Circumcision

In this email of 15 November, 2005, I provide FSU's President, Dean of the medical school, and over 150 other FSU medical and law school personnel with information on the kind of conference that FSU could and I believe should hold at the medical school, based on an example to be held in South Africa on Thursday, 24 November, 2005. - VL
------------------------------------------

Dear Dean Harris, President Wetherell and Provost Abele,

Since writing to you last I have received information from South Africa about exactly the kind of conference on circumcision I have in mind for FSU’s Medical School. Every English-speaking country in the world is far ahead of the USA on this issue. Why can’t FSU Medical School lead the way in the US? Children’s lives are at stake. What is it that is stopping you? Please figure it out and tell me.

Perhaps in South Africa there is added urgency because the newspapers there print accurate information on how many children are killed by circumcision. Our newspapers don’t.

It is completely unacceptable to me that the FSU medical and nursing schools would continue to ignore this ongoing offense and tragedy in our community. You and others in our community will continue to hear from me from time to time on this subject at least until you begin to take responsible adult action on it.

President, Wetherell, would you please expand your reach on this issue into the FSU nursing school as well. This is an urgent issue for nurses as well as physicians, hospitals and medical schools. They can be sued by the victims as well as the physicians doing the circumcisions and the hospitals permitting it and medical schools teaching it.

http://nurses.cirp.org/

Van Lewis
MINI SYMPOSIUM ON CIRCUMCISION

Tygerberg Children's Hospital has thankfully put together a mini symposium entitled,
THE PAINFUL DILEMMA OF CIRCUMCISION
(see attached word document for programme information)

Date: 24th of November 2005, from 12.00 – 18.00 hours
Venue: Lecture Theatre 4, Clinical Building, Medical School Tygerberg Campus, Cape Town.

All are welcome and encouraged to attend. Please RSVP as soon as possible to dawn@sun.ac.za indicating that you would like to be there.
Please distribute as widely as possible to medical practitioners, parenting organisations, children's and human rights groups, nurses, childbirth educators, newspapers, health care facilities and beyond....

051107 - Re: Special Conference

This is my response of November 7, 2005, to the email I received from the Dean of FSU's medical school on November 3, 2005. - VL
---------------------

Dean Ocie Harris, FSU Medical School
President Thomas Wetherell, Florida State University
Provost Larry Abele, Florida State University

Dear Dean Harris, President Wetherell, and Provost Abele,

Many thanks for your reply, Dean Harris. I would like to go over it with you and those two copied on it in some detail, while providing copies to the broader community.

On 3/11/05 17:25, "Harris, Ocie" wrote:

> Dear Mr. Lewis,

> Your request for a special conference at FSU College of Medicine has been forwarded to me by our President. The topic you are concerned with is not one the College of Medicine would chose if it had the resources to hold a nation-wide event to discuss a medical subject.

OK. Then how about a local event to discuss this unmentionable subject?

> This is a patient care/ health services issue that should be pursued with the medical community and provider groups that recommend and provide this medical service.

Please tell me ONE medical community, tell me just ONE medical organization in the WHOLE WORLD, that RECOMMENDS “this medical service”. Please. I don’t know of one.

Wait just a minute. Maybe I do. Does the FSU Medical School teach young medical students how, and require them as an act of initiation into medical practice, to violate baby boys’ inalienable human right to bodily integrity by cutting off the business end of their healthy penis, including its ridged band, its “sexual eye”, containing the highest density and quantity of nerve endings yet discovered in the human penis?

> The Centers for Disease Control would be an appropriate agency to validate your claims

Dean Harris, the scientific neuroanatomy of the human male foreskin is not a “claim” of MINE. It is peer-reviewed, published, uncontroverted, scientific human neuroanatomy, published in the British Journal of Urology in 1996 with a confirming article in 1999. This is not my claim. It is today’s accepted scientific human neuroanatomy. You should read it. As Dean of one of America’s important medical schools, you should know it:

http://research.cirp.org
http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/taylor/
http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/cold-taylor/

> and influence the delivery or withholding of such services.

Your suggestion is all too typical of the responses I have been getting from US medical people and others for over 40 years now: “We have no interest in and no responsibility for your unmentionable subject. Go talk to those guys over there.” The AAP says “Go talk to the obstetricians. They do most of them.” The OBs say, “Talk to the parents. We’re just doing what they ask us to.” The parents say, “My doctor told me he thinks maybe it’s cleaner, and my neighbors told me maybe the boy would feel better if he looks like his dad, and I myself surely wouldn’t want him ever to be embarrassed in a locker room full of clueless, cruel, genitally mutilated boys by having the misfortune of being stuck and exposed in public with a perfectly normal human penis. HORRORS!”

And the babies just keep on screaming and vomiting. Nobody understands a “word” they’re saying.

Dean Harris, we have ALREADY approached the CDC. Their irresponsible response is basically the same as your irresponsible one: “Not us: Them.” When you point one finger at others you have three pointed back at yourself.

With over a million baby boys every year in the USA (maybe that’s the problem: it’s only boys being subjected to this madness; who cares?) still screaming and vomiting their guts out and an unknown number still dying from this stone-age barbaric insanity, your message is the grossest kind of irresponsibility. I believe you should be fired and replaced with a responsible physician, assuming one can be found, and if not, then with an honest, responsible human being. Surely one exists somewhere in this world who would welcome the opportunity to lead the FSU Medical School into the last quarter of the 20th century. (And then, who knows, maybe even into the 21st sometime before we get to the 22nd! There’s always hope!)

> Sincerely,

> J. Ocie Harris, M.D.
> Dean, College of Medicine
> Florida State University
> Tallahassee, FL 32306-4300
> (850) 644-1346

President Wetherell, Dean Harris, Provost Abele, please get literate on this unmentionable subject ASAP. You will be SHOCKED by what you learn. Author Robert Darby’s website is a GREAT place to start:

http://HistoryOfCircumcision.org

Read these two exceptionally fine books published this year, one by Oxford University Press and the other by University of Chicago Press:

Marked in Your Flesh:
Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America
by Leonard Glick, Ph.D and M.D., Oxford University Press
(June 2005) http://tinyurl.com/86mcs

A Surgical Temptation:
The Demonization of the Foreskin & the Rise of Circumcision in Britain
by Robert Darby, BA, B Litt, Ph.D., University of Chicago Press
(August 2005) http://tinyurl.com/cjl6k

You cannot consider yourselves literate on the subject if you have not read them. You can find them in the FSU Library. Strozier already has both books and the Medical School Library also has a copy of the first.

The Dirac Science Library at FSU has a copy of Flesh and Blood: Perspectives on the Problem of Circumcision in Contemporary Society, published in 2004 by Kluwer Academic Publishers. Concluding it is my essay, “George Wald: A Personal Reminiscence of a Nobel Laureate”. Dr. Wald came to FSU in February, 1975, to give a lecture on life. I attended and went to the Q&A and reception in Longmire afterward, and he agreed to let me take him to the airport the next morning. (In the early sixties, I had been his enthralled student in his beginning college biology course, “The Nature of Living Things”.) On the way to the airport, I asked this Jewish, Harvard, Nobel laureate biologist, “George, have you ever thought much about circumcision, from a biological point of view?” You should have seen his eyes almost pop out of his head. “No” he said. “I never have. I’ll have to go home and do that.” When we got to the airport we discovered that his plane was to be two hours late. We talked in the airport for the next two hours about circumcision; male, female and otherwise.

Six months later, in August, 1975, I got a 39-page typewritten manuscript from him in the mail, later expanded to 42 pages, entitled “Circumcision”. He tried for the rest of his life, 27 years, to get his essay published, and failed. It resides today in his box 103 in the Harvard Archives. This was a man who could publish almost anything almost anywhere. He was the first human being to discover vitamin A in the retina of the eye and the first to understand on a molecular level how visual pigments work with light to form the molecular/energetic basis of vision. You can see a longer version of my Flesh and Blood essay, including extensive quotes from Wald’s, at http://sicsociety.org/crick-wald.htm

When will SOMEBODY in Tallahassee take some ADULT RESPONSIBILITY for this madness?

For years I have been trying to find ONE Tallahassee physician who would request a Continuing Medical Education course on the unmentionable subject I am “concerned with”. Haven’t found one yet. Dr. Ed Carney, who was the COO at TMH for years (now retired) and a valued classmate of mine at Leon High School many decades ago, told me if I could find ONE he would provide the course. I NEVER FOUND ONE.

Florida Medicaid used to provide this unmentionable “service” to any Medicaid parents who any medical circumciser could convince to approve the amputation of their child’s healthy, normal, necessary foreskin for ANY reason, or NONE.

NO MORE! On 1 July 2003, Florida became the 12th US state to end funding for “medically unnecessary, elective circumcision”. There are now 16 such states, 32%, nearly one third.

Why did Florida defund?

Because I devoted four years of my life to teaching the Florida legislature that Florida law - written by them - prohibits Florida Medicaid from funding medically unnecessary, experimental or cosmetic procedures; that medically unnecessary, elective circumcising IS such a proscribed procedure; and that cutting funding for medically NECESSARY services so that Florida Medicaid could go on funding a medically UNNECESSARY and HARMFUL one to the tune of over $2.5 million a year, with this illegal expenditure growing at over 49% a year!, was harming poor people, and very irrational, not to mention STUPID. Stopping it, they finally realized after four years of despicable intransigence, was a “no-brainer”. Two-thirds of US states STILL haven’t caught on. I say if Florida legislators can understand this, ANYBODY can, even medical school deans, and university presidents and provosts.

Fortunately, in Florida the greedy Republicans were in charge. Only took them four years to realize that they could save some money this way. Smart cookies. On average, Americans demonstrate by their actions that they actually care more about saving money than they do about saving their own children’s lives. If it had been kindly, clueless Democrats deciding, 15,000+ baby Florida boys lives would still be at risk of death-by-Medicaid-paid-circumcision every year in Florida, for nothing.

I ask you three, why is this MY job? I AM A CLAM FARMER, for Christ’s sake! My clams NEED me! Getting medical people and others to be adults about this and do their jobs competently is like pulling TEETH! It is the hardest job I’ve ever undertaken.

President Wetherell, MANY thanks for forwarding my earlier email to Dean Harris. It’s not just he who won’t act. US Medicine as a whole is still paralyzed with terror at what they’ve done to the large majority of living US males. They’re like deer caught in the headlights of an onrushing train. The only thing they know to do about it is try to foist responsibility for this unnecessary and harmful sexual trauma and mutilation onto parents, and by all means keep circumcising as long as parents and society in general will put up with it – today’s wholly unnecessary circumcising “justifies” yesterday’s, and prepares the way for tomorrow’s which will then be used to “justify” today’s; circumcisers continue circumcising in order to prove that circumcising was, is and always will be right; the problem is it never was in the first place - as if the scientific discovery of the neuroanatomy of the male foreskin had never even happened.

President Wetherell, MEDICINE started this medical madness. Medicine must end it. Yet they will accept NO responsibility for doing so. If Dean Harris won’t act locally - won’t even say the unmentionable name in his email to me! - that leaves YOU in charge at FSU. You are the President. You lead this great university. Please accept your responsibility to REQUIRE that the FSU Medical School DO SOMETHING to EDUCATE first ITSELF and then its STUDENTS and TALLAHASSEE and FLORIDA about, and that it start IMMEDIATELY responsibly protecting boys from this barbaric, stone-age insanity. (I would be just as concerned for girls if it weren’t already a FEDERAL FELONY to do much less damage to a girl’s sex organs – ANY AT ALL, in fact – than is done to another boy’s sex organs every 26 seconds in this very sexist, very sexually sick country.)

Physician Harris, heal thyself, and then our medical school.

WE ARE INJURING AND KILLING HEALTHY BABIES AND HEALTHY CHILDREN FOR NOTHING! DO YOU HEAR ME?

WHERE ARE THE ADULTS?

WHAT GOD/EVOLUTION HAS JOINED TOGETHER – the penis and its integral, highly sensitive, highly functional foreskin – LET NO ONE PUT ASUNDER.

Van Lewis
P.O. Box 323
Panacea, Florida 32346
850-697-3857

CC: Marilyn Milos
George C Denniston
George Hill
Leonard Glick
Robert Darby
FSU Medial School and Law School personnel
John Howard, Bishop, Episcopal Diocese of Florida and other Episcopal and Anglican friends
Mary Ann Lindley and others at the Tallahassee Democrat
etc.

"How many deaths will it take ‘til we know that too many children have died?"

with apologies to Bob Dylan

IN MEMORY OF ALL CHILDREN, MALE, FEMALE AND INTERSEXED,
WHO HAVE BEEN KILLED BY CIRCUMCISING THEM:
TO THE ONES WE KNOW, THE ONES WE DON'T,
AND THE ONES ONLY GOD KNOWS.

Aleck, Native American Baby Boy
June 10, 1910      
Island County, WA

Roland Albert McCarty  (my friend, retired Jacksonville Episcopal priest the Rev. Barnum McCarty’s baby brother)
1932
Jacksonville, FL, USA

Baby Boy Lebeau
April, 1942
Quebec, Canada

Christopher Dolezal (Infant boy)
November, 1982
Des Moines, IA, USA

Steven Christopher Chacon (Infant boy)
November, 1986
San Francisco, CA,

Allen A. Ervin (Infant boy)
July 8, 1992
Spartanburg, SC, USA

Demetrius Manker (Infant boy)
June 26, 1993
Carol City, FL, USA

Jeremie Johnson (Infant boy)
July 18, 1995
Houston, TX, USA

Dustin Evans (Infant boy)
October, 1998      
Cleveland, OH, USA

Amina Jumanne (Female child)
July, 2002
Takwa Village, Tanzania

Ryleigh Roman Bryan McWillis (Infant boy)
August 22, 2002
Vancouver, BC, Canada

Zola Mjamba (adolescent boy)
November 19, 2002
Umtata, South Africa

Sifiso Kobo (adolescent boy)
November 21, 2002
Umtata, South Africa

Callis Osaghae (infant boy, 2 months)
August 18, 2003
Waterford, Ireland

Myolisi Mayekiso, 18
December, 2003
Whittlesea, South Africa

Thamsanqa Mnyaka, 19
December, 2003
Whittlesea, South Africa

Andile Masabalala, 21
December, 2003
Tsomo, South Africa

George Kgomogadi, 17
December, 2003
Jan Kempdorp, South Africa

Bennett Ntazini (adolescent boy)
December, 2003
Jan Kempdorp, South Africa

Justin William Rumberger (3 months, 5 days; sick with Zellweger's Syndrome,
circumcision hastens death)
December 28, 2003
Ellensburg, Washington

David Reimer (38, by suicide. He lost his penis to circumcision as a toddler
and was raised as a girl until teen-age, when he discovered the truth and
decided to live the rest of his life as a male. See "As Nature Made Him: The
Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl", by John Colapinto.)
May 4, 2004
Winnipeg, Canada

Sabelo Marotya, 17
Mdantsane, South Africa
July 4, 2004

An infant twin boy (by herpes virus, circumcised by Rabbi Yitzhok Fischer who has herpes and performed metziza by mouth [sucking the blood] on the baby's circumcised penis)
New York, New York
October, 2004

30 day old infant boy
Kermanshah, Iran
November, 2004

Dontsa Lwane, 19 (by suicide after botched circumcision of Dec 11, 2004)
Gqebenya, Lady Frere, South Africa
January 8, 2005

Wandile Lwane, 21 (Dontsa's brother, by suicide after learning of Dontasa's
death)
Ezibeleni, Queenstown, South Africa
January 9, 2005

Muyoddin Khan, 5
Indrapur, Nepal
February 10, 2005

Infant boy
Abou Quir, Alexandria, Egypt
February 15, 2005


On 28/10/05 00:29, "Van Lewis" wrote:


Dear President Wetherell and other friends at FSU and beyond:

This warning from Doctors Opposing Circumcision should be cause enough to call a special conference at the FSU medical school to review the outdated practice of circumcising healthy children and develop strategies to end the nontherapeutic, elective circumcising of children in our community. ...

051103 - Special Conference

This is a copy of an email sent to me by the Dean of FSU's medical school on November 3, 2005, to which I responded extensively on November 7, 2005 (see next posting). - VL
-----------------------------

Dear Mr. Lewis,

Your request for a special conference at FSU College of Medicine has been forwarded to me by our President. The topic you are concerned with is not one the College of Medicine would chose if it had the resources to hold a nation-wide event to discuss a medical subject. This is a patient care/ health services issue that should be pursued with the medical community and provider groups that recommend and provide this medical service. The Centers for Disease Control would be an appropriate agency to validate your claims and influence the delivery or withholding of such services.

Sincerely,

J. Ocie Harris, M.D.
Dean, College of Medicine
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4300
(850) 644-1346

051028 - Dramatically Increased Risk for Circumcised Newborn Boys

This email of October 28, 2005, calls on President Wetherell of FSU to call a special conference at the FSU Medical School on medically unnecessary, elective circumcising of minors. - VL
-------------------------------------------


Dear President Wetherell and other friends at FSU and beyond:

This warning from Doctors Opposing Circumcision should be cause enough to call a special conference at the FSU medical school to review the outdated practice of circumcising healthy children and develop strategies to end the nontherapeutic, elective circumcising of children in our community. We are putting children’s lives at risk for no good medical reason, essentially for nothing. This is unconscionable. It is unacceptable for responsible adults to go on pretending that unnecessarily risking human lives by amputating normal, healthy sexual body parts from innocent, healthy human babies is normal human activity. It is not normal. It is grossly abnormal behavior and we must end it if we are to have any respect for ourselves as a decent human community.

I am asking you, President Wetherell, to call on those in charge at the medical school to call a community-wide, state-wide, nation-wide conference at the FSU medical school to review the current science and medical ethics on the subject of circumcising healthy children. FSU’s medical school should help lead the way in this urgent matter.

If not, why not? What would prevent you and FSU from taking responsible action to protect innocent, unconsenting children from unnecessary, unproven, risky, cosmetic surgical intervention in the absence of any medical indication therefor?

Please read this urgent warning from Doctors Opposing Circumcision and act. We are all adults here. We do not have to pretend that we have no responsibility to these children and that there is nothing we can do about this ongoing tragedy in our community. Protecting children from unnecessary harm and danger is our job. Please fulfill your adult responsibility to these children. Get this important conference scheduled and organized.

If you do, the children of the future will thank you when they get old enough to understand.

Van Lewis, Administrator
Ashley Montagu Resolution
http://MontaguNoCircPetition.org

The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason to hope.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

 
http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/DOC/mrsa.html

Special Statement

Epidemic Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus:
Dramatically Increased Risk for Circumcised Newborn Boys
Recent reports indicate that community methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (C-MRSA) now has reached epidemic proportions in many areas1-6 and is a worldwide problem.4-6 Circumcision long has been known to increase the risk of Staphylococcus aureus (SA) infection in newborn boys. The advent of epidemic C-MRSA dramatically worsens the risks associated with Staphylococcus infection because:
• the presence of C-MRSA in epidemic proportions increases the chance of an infant being infected with MRSA by caregivers.
• the threat to health is escalated beyond that posed by methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) if an infant should be infected.
The circumcision wound is a known portal-of-entry for the pathogen and significantly increases circumcised boys' risk. Sauer (1943) reported fatal Staphylococcus broncho-pneumonia after ritual circumcision.7 Thompson et al. (1963,1965) reported that boys have about twice the infection rate of girls, and circumcised boys have twice as much SA disease as non-circumcised boys (26 percent compared to 13 percent).8,9 Annunziato & Goldblum (1978) reported staphylococcus scalded skin syndrome (SSSS) from infected circumcisions.10 Enzenauer et al. (1985) reported the incidence of Staphylococcus aureus (SA) infection on follow-up among the circumcised males to be more than twice as high as among the non-circumcised males and 5.5 times higher than the females.11 Boys already are at greater risk of SA infection than girls and neonatal circumcision worsens that disadvantage.9,11
The strictest aseptic surgical technique may not prevent infection of the circumcision wound with SA because the circumcision wound may be infected while the infant patient is in the newborn nursery or in the community after leaving the hospital. SA spreads rapidly through hospital nurseries and newborn boys quickly become colonized with SA.4,9,11-18 Infection frequently affects the diaper and groin area.9,11,18 Gooch & Brit (1978) reported that 24 percent of newborns are colonized at time of discharge and, of these, 2 percent have an infection.16 Enzenauer et al. (1984) commented, "Circumcision, by its very nature, requires more staff-person 'hands-on' contact, both during the procedure and during preoperative and postoperative care," so circumcised boys are more likely to be infected.17 Boys may also become infected in the home environment after leaving the hospital.15,18
Isaacs et al. (2004) report that osteomyelitis and/or septic arthritis occurs in connection with MSSA, but more skin infection and cellulitis occurs in connection with MRSA.4 In a paper presented to the American Academy of Pediatrics describing the effects of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in newborns, Fortunov et al. (2005) report heavy outbreaks of pustulosis in the diaper area along with invasive infections including bacteremia, urinary tract infection, musculoskeletal infections, and empyema (pus in a body cavity).18 Fortunov et al. report MRSA in boys peaks at 7-12 days of age, which would be 6-11 days after non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision.18 The incubation period reported by Fortunov et al.18 is similar to that reported by Cohen (1992).20 No peak was observed in girls.18 Boys had 73 percent of all infections.18 Ten of 12 invasive infections were in boys.18
If the SA is methicillin-resistant, mortality increases,1,19 and death is a possible outcome of MRSA infection. Thompson et al. report a higher mortality rate for males.9 Isaacs et al. (2004) report a mortality rate of 24.6 percent for MRSA infected newborn babies as compared with 9.9 percent for MSSA infected babies.4 Fortunov et al. report one male infant death.18 The CDC reports four pediatric deaths in North Dakota and Minnesota.21 The New Scientist reports 800 deaths a year from MRSA in England and Wales.22
There are reports of outbreaks of SA among circumcised boys in hospital nurseries. Zafar et al. (1995) reported an outbreak of MRSA in a Virginia nursery.23 Hoffman et al. (2000) reported an outbreak of erythromycin-resistant methicillin sensitive Staphylococcus aureus among circumcised boys in a newborn nursery in North Carolina.24 Newsday reported an outbreak of MRSA among circumcised boys in the St. Catherine’s Hospital nursery on Long Island.25

Existing circumcision policy statements by medical societies do not consider the impact of MRSA, so their recommendations may no longer be appropriate.26-30 A recent cost-utility study, which found non-circumcision to be the better choice for optimum health and well-being, also did not consider MRSA.31 Non-circumcision was the preferred medical choice prior to the arrival of MRSA in epidemic proportions.26 30 31 The advent of MRSA in epidemic proportions increases risks associated with male neonatal circumcision beyond those previously contemplated and further increases the desirability of the non-circumcision option. MRSA and other antibiotic-resistant varieties of SA, such as vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA), increase risk, including death, to newborn circumcised boys. In view of this increased risk, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists should review their policy (2002) of offering elective medically unnecessary non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision at parental request.32
Action Required
Hospital administrators must respond to this new threat to all newborn infants and especially circumcised male infants by limiting circumcisions to those for which there is a clear and present immediate medical indication and by increasing aseptic protocols in newborn nurseries.
Medical practitioners must consider the epidemic status of MRSA and exercise their independent judgment regarding the performance of non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision. There is an ethical duty to not perform scientifically invalid medical treatment, especially when it puts the patient at risk.33 Doctors must act in the best interests of their child-patients regardless of parental requests.34,35 Doctors may conscientiously object to the performance of non-therapeutic circumcision of children.36
References:
1. Khairulddin N, Bishop L, Lamagni TL, et al. Emergence of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteraemia among children in England and Wales, 1990-2001. Arch Dis Child 2004; 89:378-9. [Full Text]
2. Gray JW. MRSA: the problem reaches paediatrics. Arch Dis Child 2004;89:297-8. [Full Text]
3. Dietrich DW, Auld DB, Mermel LA. Community-Acquired Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus in Southern New England Children. Pediatrics 2004;113: e347 - e352. [Abstract]
4. Isaacs D, Fraser S, Hogg G, Li HY. Staphylococcus aureus infections in Australasian neonatal nurseries Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed 2004;89:F331 - F335. [Full Text]
5. Gonzalez BE, Martinez-Aguilar G, Kristina G. Hulten KG, et al. Severe staphylococcal sepsis in adolescents in the era of community-acquired Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Pediatrics 2005;115(3):642-64.[Abstract]
6. Purcell K, Fergie J. Epidemic of Community-Acquired Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Infections: A 14-Year Study at Driscoll Children’s Hospital. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2005;159:980-5. [Abstract]
7. Sauer LW. Fatal staphylococcus bronchopneumonia following ritual circumcision. Am J Obstetr Gynecol 1943;46:583.
8. Thompson DJ, Gezon HM, Hatch TF, et al. Sex distribution of Staphylococcus aureus colonization and disease in newborn infants. New Engl J Med 1963:269;337-41.
9. Thompson DJ, Gezon HM, Rogers KD, et al. Excess risk of staphylococcus infection and disease in newborn males. Am J Epidemiol 1965;84(2):314-28.
10. Annunziato D, Goldblum LM. Staphylococcal scalded skin syndrome. A complication of circumcision. Am J Dis Child 1978;132(12):1187-8. [Abstract]
11. Enzenauer RW, Dotson CR, Leonard T, et al. Male predominance in persistent staphylococcal colonization and infection of the newborn. Hawaii Med J 1985;44(10):389-90, 392, 394-6.
12. Cook J, Parish JA, Shooter RA: Acquisition of Staphylococcus aureus by newborn babies in a hospital maternity department. Br Med J 1938;1:74-8.
13. Gillespie WA, Simpson K, Tozer RC. Staphylococcal infection in a maternity hospital. Lancet 1959;2:1075-80.
14. Hurst V. Transmission of hospital staphylococci among newborn infants. Pediatrics 1960;25:204-14. [Abstract]
15. Payne MC, Wood HF, Karakawa W, Gluck L. A prospective study of staphylococcal colonization and infections in newborns and their families. Am J Epidemiol 1966:82:305-16.
16. Gooch JJ, Britt EM. Staphylococcus aureus colonization and infection in newborn nursery patients. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 1978;132(9):893-6. [Abstract]
17. Enzenauer RW, Dotson CR, Leonard T, et al. Increased incidence of neonatal staphylococcal pyoderma in males. Mil Med 1984:149:408-10.
18. Fortunov RM, Hulten KG, Hammerman WA, et al. Community-Acquired Staphylococcus Aureus Infections in Term and Near Term Previously Healthy Neonates. Presented at American Academy of Pediatrics Annual Conference, Washington, DC, Sunday, October 8, 2005.
19. Cosgrove SE, Sakoulas G, Perencevich EN, et al. Comparison of mortality associated with methicillin-resistant and methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia; a meta-analysis. Clin Infect Dis 2003;36:53-9. [Medline]
20. Cohen HA, Drucker MM, Vainer S, et al. Postcircumcision urinary tract infection. Clin Pediatr 1992;31(6):322-4. [Medline]
21. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Four pediatric deaths from community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus—Minnesota and North Dakota, 1997-1999. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 1999;48(32):707-10. [Full Text]
22. Vince G. MRSA deaths up 15-fold in a decade. New Scientist, London, February 26, 2004, [Full Text]
23. Zafar AB, Butler RC, Reese DJ, et al. Use of 0.3% triclosan (Bacti-Stat) to eradicate an outbreak of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in a neonatal nursery. Am J Infect Control 1995;23(3):200-8. [Medline]
24. Hoffman KK, Weber DJ, Bost R, Rutala WA. Neonatal Staphylococcus aureus pustulous rash outbreak linked by molecular typing to colonized healthcare workers. Presented at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 4th Decennial International Conference on Nosocomial and Healthcare-Associated Infections. Atlanta, Georgia, March 5-9, 2000.
25. Rabin R. Mysterious crop of staph: newborns, moms infected after stay at St. Catherine. Newsday, Long Island, New York, October 9, 2003.
26. Fetus and Newborn Committee, Canadian Paediatric Society. Neonatal circumcision revisited. Can Med Assoc J 1996; 154(6): 769-80. [Full Text]
27. American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on Circumcision. Circumcision Policy Statement. Pediatrics 1999;103(3):686-93. [Full Text]
28. Council on Scientific Affairs. Report 10: Neonatal circumcision. Chicago: American Medical Association, 1999. [Full Text]
29. AAFP Commission on Clinical Policies and Research. Position Paper on Neonatal Circumcision. Leawood, Kansas: American Academy of Family Physicians, 2002. [Full Text]
30. Beasley S, Darlow B, Craig J, et al. Position statement on circumcision. Sydney: Royal Australasian College of Physicians, 2004. [Full Text]
31. Van Howe RS. A cost-utility analysis of neonatal circumcision. Med Decis Making 2004;24:584-601. [Abstract]
32. American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Guidelines for Perinatal Care, Fifth Edition, November 2002: p.111.
33. Opinion E8.20. Current opinions. In: Code of Medical Ethics, Chicago: American Medical Association, 1998. [Full Text]
34. Committee on Medical Ethics. The law & ethics of male circumcision - guidance for doctors. London: British Medical Association, 2003. [Full Text]
35. College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia. Infant Male Circumcision. In: Resource Manual for Physicians. Vancouver, BC: College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia, 2004. [Full Text]
36. Denniston GC, Geisheker JV, Hill G. Conscientious Objection to the Performance of Circumcision of Children. Seattle: Doctors Opposing Circumcision, 2005. [Full Text]
Doctors Opposing Circumcision
Suite 42
2442 NW Market Street
Seattle, Washington 98107-4137
USA
Sunday, October 23, 2005.

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
-------------------------

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.
...

050809 - Journal of Medical Ethics 2005: A covenant with the status quo? (Re: Conscience? Ethics?)

This email to FSU's President and Medical and Law Schools followed up the the previous one. - VL


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.

I write to you today trying to prevent unnecessary pain and trauma, and unnecessary physical, emotional and mental damages and harms, and further unnecessary risks, including death, that we adults ignorantly, unthinkingly, unnecessarily, and unethically still impose on the majority of male babies and additional male children in the United States of America.

I am also trying to save lives.

If this were anything less important than life-and-death I would not be sending this message to any of you, let alone all of you. In the name of the thousands of children whose lives we unnecessarily and recklessly endanger every day, I ask you all to read it, and, given the gravity of these realities, to respond to it appropriately, despite possibly intense external and maybe considerable internal pressure not to. (I know about both. I was arrested and jailed with my brother, Ben, in Tallahassee on 17 December 1970, simply for speaking out peacefully in public on this issue. Punishments today usually are less overt, but no less real. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

I look forward to hearing from you, and to seeing you and FSU’s medical and law schools taking action where action is obviously needed.

Silence gives consent. Please do not give your consent any longer to subjecting innocent, healthy babies and children to our daily, unnecessary, obscene child death lottery. (I can email anyone who wants it a steadily growing list of names of babies and children that I already know about, dead from circumcising.)

It is important for you to understand that this view is not unsupported. It is becoming mainstream now. Science and scientists at the highest level support it, including Francis Crick and George Wald, Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine. See http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1962/index.html
http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1967/index.html and
http://StopInfantCircumcision.org/crick-wald.htm

Today you can join Nobel laureates Crick and Wald, physicians Jonas Salk and Benjamin Spock, and thousands of others in declaring your opposition to the genital mutilation of children worldwide by endorsing the Ashley Montagu Resolution and Petition at http://MontaguNoCircPetition.org . Please do.

Please educate yourselves competently on this scientifically and ethically simple (young children can understand it; I know four-year-olds who get it) but often emotionally difficult-because-tragic subject. Then educate your students, whether they like it or not. That is what we Florida taxpayers pay you for. We work hard for our money, it’s expensive for us to keep paying your salaries, and we need to get our money’s worth out of public education.

Babies’ and children’s lives are riding on your ability and willingness to respond to this information sanely and effectively. For their sake and for yours, I wish you well with your thoughts, feelings and actions on this subject, if any. Please let me know if I can help in any way.

Finally, shooting the messenger will not solve the problem. I would appreciate it very much if you would refrain from doing so. I’ve had enough of that and don’t need any more.

CUT CLAMS, NOT BABIES!

Van Lewis
P.O.Box 323
Panacea, Florida 32346
vanlewis@post.harvard.edu

cc: Florida House of Representatives
Florida Senate
Governor Jeb Bush
Tallahassee Democrat
Bishop John Howard, Episcopal Diocese of Florida
Broad public distribution


On 10/4/05 20:54, "Van Lewis" asked:

FSU Physicians and related persons,

Does FSU’s physician and health care community have any conscience at all, or any sense of medical ethics?

Van Lewis, Administrator
Ashley Montagu Resolution
http://MontaguNoCircPetition.org
...
------------------------------------------------------------------
I provided information last April in the email indicated above to individuals in the FSU Medical School community concerning medically unnecessary, elective (by others but involuntary on the part of the person cut) genital cutting and mutilation of minors, without the mutilated minors’ informed consent (which they are legally incapable of giving). I will be happy to forward the entire email to any who may be interested in seeing it.

Having received only negative responses (and very few of those; two, if I recall correctly; one only mildly negative, one of different character) from the over 100 FSU Medical School personnel addressed in the earlier email to my sincere efforts to help (both them and through them the people they are charged with teaching and caring for), this message is sent as well to persons associated with the FSU Law School in the (foolish?) hope that FSU’s lawyers will prove themselves capable of understanding more clearly and responding more effectively and more expeditiously to the relevant issues than FSU’s doctors have so far.

Copies are also provided to Florida’s legislators (the funders of these two public educational institutions), JEB!, the local newspaper, Episcopal Bishop John Howard, my priest, mission board, some local physicians, and others.

What IS a penis, anyway?

For those of you who may not already know it, in the earlier 1990s, barely ten years ago, a highly complex, highly evolved, highly vascularized, highly innervated human sense organ, new then to science and containing, among other things, tens of thousands of highly specialized nerve endings, was discovered within the mucosal skin encircling the inner male foreskin. Named the “ridged band” by its scientific discoverers (I’m sure they weren’t the first to know anything about it, just the first known to have looked for and found it scientifically), it is a highly structured human sense organ - like an eye, an ear, a tongue – its complex and exquisite structure enabling it to perform it’s complex and important human survival functions. It contains the highest density of nerve endings yet discovered in the human penis. These nerve endings and the nerve plexus they connect to and serve are “hard-wired” via the spinal cord to a vital center in the human male brain the location of which, I read the other day, has only just recently been discovered.

I call the ridged band the male’s “sexual eye” in honor of my magnificent college biology professor, Nobel laureate George Wald, and his intelligent 1975-1997 efforts to end medically unnecessary, non-therapeutic, “elective” circumcising of children of both sexes. (See http://StopInfantCircumcision.org/crick-wald.htm ) George won the Nobel prize in 1967 for his discovery of Vitamin A in the retina of the visual eye and how it works with light to form the molecular/energetic basis of vision. See http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1967/index.html

George didn’t get to – he died in 1997 – but you can still read the original articles reporting and confirming the important scientific discovery of the male sexual eye in the British Journal of Urology of 1996 and 1999 at:
http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/taylor/
http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/cold-taylor/
A discussion by one of the authors is available at http://research.cirp.org

This complex, normal, necessary human sense organ is the exact target of male circumcision, first adopted as medicine in England and the US beginning in the mid-1800s. The pre-germ-theory genital-mutilation-initiating doctors of the day (quacks, by our standards) said (and wrote, fortunately) that by circumcising children (and, not much later, babies) they were trying to stop them from masturbating. Males AND females, by the way. They said they thought masturbation caused insanity. (Circumcising is far more likely to achieve that undesirable result, through iatrogenic post-traumatic genital cutting-and-mutilation stress disorder.)

Over the decades since this inauspicious beginning, the US medical profession has claimed in writing that masturbation causes and/or circumcising prevents and/or cures club foot, diarrhea, curvature of the spine, bed-wetting and over 200 other diseases, not one of which has ever been proved to be caused by masturbation or prevented or cured by circumcising. (Circumcising them doesn’t stop children from masturbating, either – if anything it tends to increase masturbation, not decrease it [Laumann http://www.cirp.org/library/general/laumann/] – but it does stop them from masturbating normally.)

These nineteenth-century quacks said they hoped they could stop children from masturbating by causing them as much genital pain as possible (thus anesthesia was discouraged until 1999), and by destroying for life as much sexual pleasure as possible, with amputation of healthy sexual body parts in childhood and infancy. Only later, after the turn of the century with the maturation of a second, less forthright generation of medical mutilators, were the reverse medical myths/lies invented that “babies can’t feel circumcision” (scientific investigations indicate that they probably feel it more acutely than adults do), and that “circumcising doesn’t harm, and probably helps adult male sexuality and pleasure”.

These poor, clueless men apparently were convinced that they could improve on God/evolution’s complex design/result for the human sex organs and organism as a whole with simple, blundering, genitally mutilative, finally inexplicable amputations.

Astonishing. And in my view, pitiful.

This is literally why circumcising was adopted in medicine in Anglophone countries. I still find it hard to believe. Can you tell? I didn’t make it up, though. I couldn’t have. I read the medical history. Have you? Truth here is definitely stranger than any fiction I could have imagined.

Ever since then medical circumcising has been a vicious circle, a criminally insane cure in search of an even more vicious disease. It has never found one (although circumcised and circumcising evangelists are now trying to force AIDS to play that role as they have with so many other diseases in the past), but the uncontroverted modern scientific neuroanatomy of the foreskin proves that circumcising is highly efficient at accomplishing exactly what it’s original medical proponents said they intended to do with it; sexually blind and sexually debilitate children and the adults they may become, if they survive this mad “criminal assault”. (Margaret Somerville, Founder and Director, Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, McGill University: http://intact.ca/canary.htm )

Circumcising healthy babies and children today is clearly criminal activity.

Why is medicine so incompetent and so slow at correcting its own obvious, deadly errors?

Why do most doctors depend on lawyers (and mere clam farmers like me, for God’s sake?) to correct their insanities?

And where are all the lawyers, anyway?

You’d think with the inconceivable amounts of money to be made out of this massive national tragedy lawyers would be already as thick on this issue as molasses in January at the pre-global-warming North Pole – the USA is the only country in the world where the medical profession mutilates the genitals of the majority of the male babies, and this despite the fact that no national or international medical body in the world recommends circumcising healthy people, let alone children, and most of them are recommending more and more strongly as time goes on that circumcising not be done – but US lawyers are nearly as scarce as US doctors when (for males, anyway) it comes to defending the firmly established human and legal rights to bodily integrity, including genital integrity, from 3,300 gross violations of them every day in the USA, one totally unnecessary lifetime sexual mutilation every 26 seconds. (I know a few, doctors AND lawyers, who actually do defend children from this evil. God bless them all.)

How did it ever come to this?

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
- Albert Einstein

Going sane on the subject appears to be nearly impossible for genitally mutilated populations, for families within such societies, and for individuals; male, female and otherwise, doctors, lawyers or Indian chiefs.

Why can’t FSU’s law and medical schools lead the nation on this life-and-death issue? What is holding you back? Is it your father’s circumcision? Your own? Is it your spouse’s? Your son’s?

Whatever it is, it’s not worth taking one additional child’s life to protect. It’s not even worth risking one child’s life, let alone over a million of them every year.

No adult has any right to subject healthy, normal children to the totally unnecessary death lottery that circumcising them is. Deciding to continue circumcising children is deciding to kill some of them. Essentially for nothing. It’s crazy. If it’s not crazy there’s no such thing.

Is there even ONE FSU employee who would kill a child for nothing?

If so, I want to meet that person. Who is it? Stand up in public now and be counted.

I offer to debate anyone on this subject, in public, anytime, anywhere.

And preferably before we kill another child with our cowardly and despicable silence on this issue.

Debate me in public anyone?

Responsible, vigorous action that leaves me out of the picture entirely? (Fine with me! I don’t need to spend my time this way if people with more voice and more respectable authority will take over the thankless job. My clams need me.)

Or just more cowardly silence? More business as usual? More vile, child-killing insanity?

IS ANYONE actually ALIVE out there?

I’m listening for your reply, hoping to find some life, somewhere in outer space, which this obviously is.

CUT CLAMS, NOT BABIES!

Van Lewis
vanlewis@post.harvard.edu
http://CastrateCircumcising.blogspot.com

--------------

http://tinyurl.com/cfzt8

LAW, ETHICS, AND MEDICINE
A covenant with the status quo? Male circumcision and the new BMA guidance to doctors
M Fox and M Thomson
School of Law, Keele University, Staffordshire, UK

Correspondence to:
Michael Thomson
School of Law, Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG, UK; m.o.thomson@keele.ac.uk

ABSTRACT
This article offers a critique of the recently revised BMA guidance on routine neonatal male circumcision and seeks to challenge the assumptions underpinning the guidance which construe this procedure as a matter of parental choice. Our aim is to problematise continued professional willingness to tolerate the non-therapeutic, non-consensual excision of healthy tissue, arguing that in this context both professional guidance and law are uncharacteristically tolerant of risks inflicted on young children, given the absence of clear medical benefits. By interrogating historical medical explanations for this practice, which continue to surface in contemporary justifications of non-consensual male circumcision, we demonstrate how circumcision has long existed as a procedure in need of a justification. 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.

------------------------

On August 9, 2005, sixty years to the day after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki by the US government, Doctors Opposing Circumcision at http://DoctorsOpposingCircumcision.org has responded to the paper indicated above and attached, with a letter to the Journal of Medical Ethics at http://jme.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/31/8/463#345
or
http://tinyurl.com/ayu27

Circumcision Bioethics: A Proposal for Reform
9 August 2005

George Hill,
Executive Secretary
Doctors Opposing Circumcision, Suite 42, 2442 NW Market Street, Seattle, Washington 98107-4137, USA,
John V. Geishker, JD, LL.M
Send letter to journal:
Re: Circumcision Bioethics: A Proposal for Reform
Email George Hill, et al.

To the Editor:
We at Doctors Opposing Circumcision (DOC) are gratified by the publication of this paper by Fox and Thompson.1 They confirm the position previously taken by the Norwegian Council for Medical Ethics that male non-therapeutic circumcision violates important principles of medical ethics.2 Their findings also are consistent with Articles 1, 2, and 20 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Bioethics.3
DOC concurs with their criticism of the British Medical Association (BMA) statement. As previously reported, we think it is deficient in that it fails to recognize 1) the probable unlawfulness of the circumcision of male children, 2) the lack of medical value, 3) the complications, risks, and other disadvantages, 4) the functional value of the prepuce, 5) the inherent violations of human rights, and 6) the clearly unethical nature of child circumcision.4
Lawfulness
We also believe that non-therapeutic circumcision of children is already unlawful, because the mutilative nature of circumcision makes it a violation of existing child protection laws. For example, a man from Clark County, Washington, USA currently is in gaol for three years for child assault because he attempted to perform a religiously motivated non-therapeutic circumcision on his son.5 Without medical justification, may a parent do by proxy consent what he cannot legally do himself?
We think that, in England and Wales, the circumcision of children is a misdemeanour under the Children and Young Persons Act (1933). The continued performance of non-therapeutic circumcision on children in Britain and elsewhere depends on the failure of public prosecutors to enforce existing law.
Where do we go from here?
Doctors have a clear duty to decline all inefficacious or unethical operations on minors. DOC has prepared a guidance on conscientious objection to the performance of non-therapeutic circumcision on children that provides justification and authority for refusing to perform a non-therapeutic circumcision on a child.6 We recommend that all doctors who may be asked to perform a non-therapeutic circumcision of a child download a copy from our website so they may be acquainted with their ethical rights and duties.
Certainly, the Medical Ethics Committee of the BMA has more work to do. A revision to the 2003 statement already is needed because of its original inadequacies.
The General Medical Council needs to grasp this nettle firmly. It is time to cast out its temporizing 1997 policy. A new guidance for doctors that is consistent with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and Articles 1,2, and 20 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Bioethics (1997) is needed.
In a case involving caning, the European Court of Human Rights ruled:

Children and other vulnerable individuals, in particular, are entitled to State protection, in the form of effective deterrence, against such serious breaches of personal integrity.7
We believe that this should apply at least as forcefully to cases of bodily mutilation as to cases of caning. Action by Parliament may be necessary to provide effective deterrence.

Medical societies world-wide have an ethical duty to inform their members of the unethical status of non-therapeutic circumcision of children. Medical Licencing Boards have a duty to issue regulations regarding the non-therapeutic circumcision of children to ensure that medical practice in their jurisdiction complies with the highest standards of medical ethics.
These actions will usher in a new era in which doctors respect the legal right of children to genital integrity.
George Hill, Bioethicist
Executive Secretary

John V. Geisheker, J.D, LL.M.
General Counsel
Doctors Opposing Circumcision
Suite 42
2442 NW Market Street
Seattle, Washington 98107-4137
USA
Web: http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org
References
1. Fox M, Thomson M. A covenant with the status quo? Male circumcision and the new BMA guidance to doctors. J Med Ethics 2005;31(8):463-9. [Full Text]
2. Gulbrandsen P. Rituell omskjæring av gutter. [Ritual circumcision of boys.] Tidsskr Nor Lægeforen [Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association] 2001;121(25):2994. [Full Text] (In Norwegian)
3. Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine: Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine. Adopted at Oviedo, 4 April 1997. [Full Text]
4. Hill G. BMA circumcision guidance has significant omissions. BMJ; Rapid Response: 14 April 2003. [Full Text]
5. Stephanie Rice. Circumcision Attempt—Father sentenced to three years. The Columbian, Vancouver, Washington, Thursday, December 16, 2004.
6. Denniston GC, Geisheker JV, Hill G. Conscientious Objection to the Performance of Non-Therapeutic Circumcision of Children. Seattle: Doctors Opposing Circumcision, 2005. [Full Text] (PDF)
7. A. v United Kingdom. [1998] 2 FLR 959. (In the European Court of Human Rights)

050410 - Conscience? Ethics?

I sent this to Florida State University Medical School personnel on April 4, 2005, and have continued to provide them and others with information on the subject of importance of human genital integrity and to ask the President of thte University and the Dean of FSU's Medical School to call a conference there to review the current scientific and ethical knowledge about medically unnecessary, nontherapeutic, "elective" infant and child circumcision.

Van Lewis

FSU Physicians and related persons,

Does FSU’s physician and health care community have any conscience at all, or any sense of medical ethics?

Van Lewis, Administrator
Ashley Montagu Resolution
http://MontaguNoCircPetition.org


... circumcision, an archaic ritual mutilation that has no justification whatever and no place in a civilized society.

Ashley Montagu (1905-1999), Anthropologist
http://nocirc.org/symposia/second/montagu.html


The human penis is designed correctly the way it normally comes into
the world, with its foreskin intact; a male's possession of his own
penis - including his foreskin - is his inviolable birthright; and a
child's chances for health and happiness throughout his life are
greater - by far - if he is allowed to keep all of the penis he is
born with.

George C. Denniston, M.D., Founder and President
Doctors Opposing Circumcision
http://DoctorsOpposingCircumcision.org


We now know that infant male circumcision is harmful in itself and has
harmful consequences. Circumcision removes healthy, functioning, erogenous
tissue that serves important protective, sensory and sexual purposes. The
surgery also involves risks of further damage - ranging from minor to
serious damage to the penis or even its loss or death (of the child) ... Consequently, to
summarize, routine infant male circumcision cannot be ethically and legally
justified on the grounds that it is medically required.

Without medical indication, the circumcision of minors of both
sexes constitutes criminal assault.

Dr. Margaret Somerville, Founder and Director
Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law
McGill University
Montreal, Canada
"Altering Baby Boys' Bodies - The Ethics of Infant Male Circumcision"
http://www.intact.ca/canary.htm
A chapter from
The Ethical Canary:
Science, Society, and the Human Spirit

MARGARET SOMERVILLE is the founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University, where she holds the Samuel Gale Chair in the Faculty of Law and is a professor in the Faculty of Medicine. As a consultant to numerous government and non-governmental bodies, she has worked with the World Health Organization, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNESCO. She Has received a number of honorary doctorates in law and is the recipient of many awards, including the Order of Australia. She lives in Montreal.


... it is a barbarous thing to meet a newly born infant with the knife, with a deliberate mutilation.  And the part that is removed is not negligible; it has clear and valuable functions to perform.  Not circumcising a boy will not only spare him a brutal violence as he enters life; it will promise him a richer existence.  And that not only because the possession of a foreskin will increase his genital sensitivity and make possible more satisfactory and pleasurable sexual activity; but also because of the consideration with which this essay began: that the foreskin is the female element in the male.

To be sure, that is only a primitive insight, and has no standing in science.  Yet that is hardly a criticism.  What we consider to be male or female is largely cultural in any case; many of our conventional notions in this regard are now in flux and being challenged.  This one has more basis in reality than most.  Also unlike many unscientific interpretations of reality that are misleading and dehumanizing, this one can sustain, enrich and illuminate.  It offers some redress where it is most needed, in a world increasingly devastated and threatened with destruction by a rampant machismo, a mindless exercise of organized aggressive maleness. ...

...  The circumcised organ is only the beginning of it, and kept hidden.  What are displayed, like so much male plumage, are the penis surrogates and aggrandizements: the guns; the cars, named for predatory beasts, driven to and from work like PT boats; the flaunting of power and status; the devastation of the earth and the cultivation of a technology of death and destruction beyond any former imagining, all in the pursuit of an obsessive accumulation of wealth far beyond any possibility of use –– all the brutal, gaudy, pretentious and infinitely dangerous panoply of male aggression that now envelopes and threatens our lives.

This is no time to circumcise males.  They need all the female element they can get.

For every child is born into the world with much of one sex and a little of the other.  The mistake is by a mutilation to take that little of the other sex away.  It should be left as nature evolved it, as in the child, so that all our lives we can go on being much of one sex, and always a little of the other.

George Wald (1906 – 1997), Nobel laureate in Physiology and Medicine (1967)
http://www.sicsociety.org/crick-wald.htm
http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1967/index.html


We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark;
the real tragedy of life is when adults are afraid of the light.

Plato


http://www.nyspirit.com/Issue131/article5.html

Under the Knife
The Medical Myths of Infant Male Circumcision
by Angela Starks

Published April & May '05
------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The public is generally unaware of the controversy about circumcision, because circumcision has never had the full and open debate that many believe it deserves.” - - Ronald Goldman, Ph.D.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

No one can say exactly why or when infant male circumcision originated, but it is an ancient practice that has been connected with ritual, identity and even punishment. It first appeared in this country during the puritanical Victorian era as an attempt to curb masturbation. When this failed, other reasons to circumcise came into vogue in a society that did not understand the causes of disease. Doctors mistakenly claimed that it could prevent everything from bed-wetting to polio.

Today, circumcision is one of the most commonly performed surgeries in the United States. Many parents take it for granted that they will have their son circumcised and that it is the normal, perhaps the healthiest, thing to do. Many people fear that their child will feel out of place among his circumcised peers, and circumcised fathers often resist the idea of a son who does not resemble him. Parents are also led to believe that they are saving their sons from having to undergo the procedure later in life, but that scenario is unlikely to occur: for example, infants in Finland are almost never circumcised and only about 1 in 16,700 are deemed to require it when they are older.

The medical rationale for circumcision includes the rumor that foreskin makes a penis difficult to clean and subject to disease. Moreover, most people imagine circumcision to be a minor procedure attended by very little discomfort and no side effects. It is understandable, therefore, that we think it prudent to get it over and done with in infancy, especially if we presume that the foreskin is a mistake of nature that serves no useful function.

What most people do not know, however, is that the rate of infant male circumcision in the United States has plummeted in recent years, from 85 percent in the 1980s to about 55 percent today, and only 23 percent in the western states. And the rate continues to shrink. In all likelihood, babies circumcised today will be in the minority when they are older, which rules out ‘conformity’ as an incentive for non-religious circumcision.

Why are increasingly fewer parents choosing circumcision for their sons? Perhaps, in this age of information, parents are becoming aware of the medical facts. Some doctors and parents are also heeding the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which after analyzing almost 40 years of research has concluded that the supposed benefits are not sufficient justification for routine circumcision. In fact, the AAP questioned routine circumcision as early as 1971, and in 1983 the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology also expressed concerns. Many eminent doctors and scientists go so far as to declare that it should be completely discontinued on the grounds of pain, trauma and complications. Famous pediatrician Benjamin Spock did a u-turn from his original support of circumcision; he says it is “at least mildly dangerous. I also believe there is a danger of emotional harm.”

Almost 90 percent of the world’s male population remains uncircumcised. America is the only country that still performs non-religious male circumcision on a large scale. In Britain, the rate has fallen from a high of about 40 percent in the 1930s to virtually zero. Circumcision is an incongruity in Europe, South America, and non-Muslim Asia. Canada, Australia and Britain all have official position statements opposing it. The prestigious BMA (British Medical Association) describes routine circumcision as ‘unethical and inappropriate.’

Young men are starting to file claims against their circumcisers, and the first cases have already entered the courts. One settled in 2003 for a substantial sum. By the time your son is a teenager, these lawsuits may be common. What do these men, the rest of the world, official medical associations, a growing number of doctors, and parents of uncircumcised boys know?

Most parents who choose circumcision for their baby do so without knowing what the procedure entails.

All normal males are born with a protective sheath of skin called the prepuce, or foreskin, that covers the glans (head) of the penis. Circumcision is the surgical amputation of the foreskin. Most circumcisions are performed in the hospital by the obstetrician within 48 hours of birth. The baby is strapped down, spreadeagled, to a plastic restraining device called a Circumstraint. In one popular method, the doctor first inserts pliers into the orifice at the end of the foreskin then applies a clamp to crush the blood vessels. Next, a probe is pushed between the foreskin and glans. The doctor forces the probe around the glans several times until the foreskin is torn away from it. A bell-shaped device is placed on the open wound and a thumbscrew device or a suture is applied to squeeze off the blood supply. The foreskin is then cut away. (A different method involves tying the remaining foreskin tightly around a plastic devise with a piece of string so that the skin necrotizes and falls off in a few days). The entire procedure lasts from five to fifteen minutes. Anesthesia is not usually given because 1) there are concerns about its safety in newborns, 2) it is not very effective in circumcision, and 3) some doctors think babies do not feel intense pain.

Circumcision is extremely painful and traumatic for the infant.

The above description of the procedure contradicts our perceived notions that circumcision is ‘just a snip,’ a view that has understandably caused us to minimize its painfulness. However, a cursory examination of penile anatomy illustrates that it must be excruciating.

The amputated foreskin is not a mere flap of skin at the end of the penis nor a loose appendage that can easily be removed. It is a continuation of the penis itself that extends from the base to beyond the tip and folds back in upon itself. Circumcision thus removes up to 80 percent of the penile skin system.

The site of surgery is extremely sensitive. The foreskin is highly innervated, and the glans is a sensitive internal structure. In virtually all newborns, the foreskin and glans are attached to each other, therefore circumcision necessitates literally tearing the foreskin off like tearing a fingernail from a finger. This leaves the entire glans as a raw wound. In addition, a sensitive ligament called the frenulum is often completely or partially cut away.

The pain does not end with the procedure. The wound takes one to two weeks to heal, during which time urination stings, contact with diapers and changing of diapers is uncomfortable, and being held closely can be painful.

Sadly, many people still learn that infants barely experience or remember pain. Science has now proven (as if proof were needed) that infants do feel pain, and that their responses can be more intense than adults’. They also remember a trauma, and the circumcision experience leads to symptoms that are consistent with the official definition of post traumatic stress disorder. The AAP recently confirmed: “infants undergoing circumcision suffer severe trauma and pain.” Indeed, medical writers have frequently compared an infant’s experience of circumcision to torture.

A baby nearly always emits piercing screams in response to circumcision. He will usually struggle frantically to the limited extent that he can beneath the straps. Some babies defecate and vomit, and some lapse into a coma. A common reason that some do not cry during circumcision, or cease to cry halfway through, is that they can’t because they enter a state of shock. Also, if the mother received anesthesia for labor – especially general anesthesia for a cesarean – this would have entered the baby’s bloodstream and while not reducing the pain of circumcision, it may dull his responses. Scientific observation has proven that babies who exhibit quieter responses are nonetheless suffering, as evidenced by a heart rate of up to 200 beats per minute and up to a fourfold elevation in blood cortisol whether the baby was crying intensely or not. In one study, researchers concluded: “This level of pain would not be tolerated by older patients.”

Circumcision carries the risk of side effects and permanent complications.

There are numerous immediate surgical risks and at least 20 documented side effects that may become apparent days, weeks or even years later. There may be additional risks that have not yet been documented or understood. The rate of complications is almost certainly under-reported, but one study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal revealed a rate of 55 percent (www.cirp.org/ library/procedure/patel/). Dr George Denniston maintains that the complication rate is 100 percent because circumcision always results in a loss of natural function.

Some problems are relatively minor. Some require further surgery. Others are irreparable, leading to permanent damage. Death from circumcision is rare, but does occur (estimated at 230 per year), and is usually caused by uncontrolled bleeding or systemic infection.

Complications that have been observed include, but are not limited to:
- Slow or painful urination when scar tissue partially obscures the urinary opening.
- Local infection at the site of surgery, leading to ulceration. (Occurs in half of all circumcised babies, and almost never in the uncircumcised).
- Systemic infection such as tuberculosis and meningitis.
- Excessive bleeding.
- A bowed or twisted penis resulting from uneven skin removal.
- A shortened penis resulting from contracted scar tissue; in rare cases, the penis completely retracts into the body.
- Loss of entire penis due to infection.
- Adhesions resulting from the body’s attempt at repair.
- Skin tags from shreds of foreskin left behind.
- Permanent pits and scars from segments of glans being removed with the foreskin. In rare cases, the whole glans is lost.
- Breathing difficulties and injury to internal organs from prolonged, intense crying.
- Painful swelling of the penis, because the circumcision severs lymph vessels and lymph flow is disrupted.
- Failure to breastfeed and interrupted parent-infant bonding when shock causes the infant to withdraw and pain affects his mood.
- Long term psychological and nervous system damage from the pain and trauma.
- Sexual complications when older: Tight, painful erections and / or difficulty ejaculating.

An intact penis is easy to care for and is not dirtier than a circumcised penis.
Many doctors and parents are unfamiliar with an intact penis, which leaves them confused about how to care for it. There are no complicated rules: just bathe the infant in the normal way, allowing the genitals to become immersed in water. Just as you would not lift the eyelid to clean beneath it, you should never retract a baby’s foreskin for cleaning or examination. Besides causing pain and injury, doing so can lead to irritation and disruption of the natural antibiotic environment beneath the foreskin. At some point during childhood the foreskin will be retractable, at which time a boy may choose to gently rinse beneath it. Soap is not necessary. In the meantime, the infant foreskin’s secure attachment leaves just a tiny opening at the tip for urine to escape, reducing the entry of bacteria.
According to the prestigious British Journal of Urology, “Not only do circumcised boys require more care, they are also more likely to develop penis problems.” Of course, a circumcised penis can be kept clean. It should not be implied that circumcised penises are ‘dirty’, but extra vigilance is warranted because the unnaturally externalized glans and urethral opening will always be more exposed to contaminants. In infancy, this takes the form of contact with urine and feces in the diaper, which is particularly problematic while the circumcision wound is still raw. In addition, wrinkles and folds that often form around the scar can harbor dirt and germs.
The white emollient under the foreskin is called smegma. Pediatrician Paul M. Fleiss describes it as “the most misunderstood, most unjustifiably maligned substance in nature.” Far from trapping dirt or being unclean in itself, as the physicians of the 1800s supposed, this natural secretion with its cleansing and antimicrobial properties helps to keep the penis clean and healthy, in the same way that tears clean and lubricate the eyes. Smegma appearing beneath an infant’s foreskin is a normal indication that dead cells are being sloughed off in preparation for the day that it will retract. You can simply wipe the smegma away. As the boy matures, he will learn that keeping his penis clean is much simpler than brushing his teeth.

Circumcision does not prevent cancer of the penis or cancer of the cervix in partners of circumcised men.
The theory that smegma might be carcinogenic has been disproved. The American Cancer Society states that it “does not consider routine circumcision to be a valid or effective measure to prevent cancers” and that “penile cancer rates in countries which do not practice circumcision are lower than those found in the United States.” Besides, penile cancer is very rare; a man has a higher chance of dying of breast cancer or from the circumcision itself.
It used to be imagined that circumcision also helped to prevent cervical cancer because it was once found to be rare in Jewish women. However, non-Jewish partners of circumcised men do not have a lower rate of cervical cancer. Also, European women do not have a higher rate than American women, even though European men are rarely circumcised.

Circumcision does not prevent sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs) or urinary tract infections (UTIs).
It has never been proven that circumcision reduces the rate of STDs and UTIs. The studies that supported the claims have been discredited by the AAP as flawed. The AAP also found that circumcised men actually have a higher risk of gonorrhea, genital warts, chlamydia, and certain types of herpes.
UTIs occur in only about one percent of baby boys and are not related to circumcision status. Most cases are due to congenital abnormalities of the urethral tract. As for the Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that is purported to be the cause of AIDS, it is said to be passed on via body fluids having nothing to do with the foreskin. The United States has the highest percentage of sexually active circumcised men in the Western world and one of the highest rates of AIDS and an epidemic of STDs.

A foreskin that is attached to the glans, or a non-retractable foreskin, does not necessitate circumcision in infancy.

Doctors should be expected to know that a newborn’s foreskin is meant to be attached to his glans. This is neither a defect nor an abnormal ‘adhesion’. It protects the penis during infancy, and will separate as the boy grows. The foreskin should never be forced apart prematurely. Doing so causes pain and injury, possibly resulting in true adhesions which may require further surgery.

Phimosis -- a condition whereby a tight foreskin will not retract -- cannot possibly be diagnosed at birth because the foreskin is not even meant to retract until between three years of age and puberty. In childhood, tightness of the foreskin is a safety mechanism that protects the glans and urethra from exposure. Even if the foreskin does not completely retract for the first twenty years of your son’s life, there may be no cause for alarm. Some men’s foreskins never fully retract and they often have no problems. As long as he can urinate, he is fine. If genuine phimosis is diagnosed in adulthood, a man may choose to be circumcised, but there are non-surgical treatments available. Paraphimosis, whereby the retraced foreskin remains trapped behind the glans, can be resolved manually in virtually all cases.

Sometimes a boy’s penis naturally retracts early in childhood, only to become tight again. This is often caused by exposure to chlorinated pools, chemicals in toiletries, a high-sugar diet, or taking antibiotics, all of which disturb the natural bacterial balance beneath the foreskin. It becomes chapped and less mobile. This can be remedied with a barrier cream and acidophilus ointment.

A foreskin should not require amputation just because it becomes reddened.

The tip of the foreskin sometimes becomes reddened as a result of being in contact with diapers for so long. Commonly known as diaper rash, this occurs when normal skin bacteria and feces react with urine to produce ammonia which irritates the skin. If the foreskin were amputated, the rash would occur on the glans instead and could spread into the urethra. The reddened foreskin is doing it’s protective job, acting as the first line of defense.

Most infections of the foreskin are actually caused by washing it with soap which should not be applied to the foreskin. A red foreskin can also be a normal reaction to artificial perfumes and chemicals in diapers and ointments.

The foreskin has important functions.

As a protective covering, the foreskin maintains the glans as the internal organ that it was designed to be, shielding it – and the urinary opening – from abrasion, foreign materials, and germs. Even if the glans and foreskin separate naturally in infancy, the foreskin lips will dilate only enough to allow for the passage of urine. This feature protects the developing glans from premature exposure.

The foreskin’s inner surface is a mucous membrane similar to the underside of the eyelid or inside of the cheek. It produces lubricants, cleansing secretions and antimicrobial proteins (such as lysozyme, also found in tears and breast milk). It also maintains ideal pH balance and temperature.

In adulthood, the foreskin plays a role in sex. It’s specialized design as a movable sheath allows the penis to move unabrasively in and out of the vagina within its own sleeve. This makes intercourse more comfortable for both partners and is less likely to dry up the female’s natural lubrication. The movement of the foreskin is also a means by which the entire penis is stimulated, leading to greater sensory pleasure for the male.

The foreskin is the major erogenous zone on the male body, containing more specialized nerve receptors than any other part of the penis. Its removal results in the loss of 240 feet of nerves, and over 20,000 sensitive nerve endings. Circumcision may also result in the loss of the highly erogenous frenulum. Since the foreskin maintains the glans as a moist internal organ, the glans is more sensitive in an intact male, not having been subjected to constant abrasion from clothing which toughens the skin.

But surely there must be some benefits to circumcision, or why else would so many doctors still do it?

Despite the proven disadvantages of routine circumcision and the misgivings of medical organizations, many doctors and hospitals continue to sanction it. Some go so far as to ardently recommend it and may exert very strong pressure on undecided parents. This is a confusing situation: we want to have faith in our doctor and we want the best for our children.

Thomas J. Ritter, a doctor and surgeon, says to his colleagues who still perform circumcisions: “It should interest you to know that you are violating the….major tenet of medical care, First Do No Harm; and all seven Principles of the American Medical Association Code of Ethics.” Ronald Goldman, PhD, adds that these doctor’s are breaking the Hippocratic Oath that says the patient’s welfare shall be the doctors first consideration. So why does it continue? The issue is a complex and sensitive one, but it needs to be part of the debate, otherwise many parents will automatically assume that doctors condone circumcision only for sound medical reasons. Therefore, I would like to leave you with these additional thoughts to take into account:

- Some doctors are genuinely unaware of the latest research.
- Most of today’s doctors were circumcised themselves and may not be familiar with how to care for an intact penis or the importance of the foreskin.
- Doctors who were circumcised themselves may understandably be reluctant to highlight circumcision’s inappropriateness.
- After doing something hundreds of times and teaching that it is necessary, it is only human to defend your actions.
- Doctors always risk denigration by their establishment and colleagues if they challenge customary practice.
- A doctor may do it only because the parents insist and not because he believes in it. Especially, he may not want to offend parents who request it for religious reasons.
- A doctor is not just a doctor: he has his own philosophical and religious beliefs which may dampen his tendency to question circumcision.
- An doctor charges between $100 and $300 per circumcision. In a busy practice, this may garner an average of $30,000 a year.
- Human foreskins are in great demand for various commercial enterprises in research, medicine and cosmetics. It is a billion-dollar-a-year industry.