*IF* the AAP recommends RIC...

[2boyzmama]

...will those of us who choose not to eventually have to sign "bad parent" forms like they make us do with vaccines? Because honestly, that might be enough for me to go hermit.

I just got the vaccine exemption form from my son's school and it also has a "bad parent" section to it. I crossed it out of course, only agreeing to the mandated "kick my kid out of school if there's a breakout of a disease". But can you see something similar happening with circ if the AAP does end up endorsing it?

[tennisdude23]

No because schools have no say about the status of your son's genitals, and the AAP won't recommend circumcision. Also, there is a big difference between circumcision and vaccines. This is not a fair comparison in my opinion.

[2boyzmama]

Oh I know the schools won't, but I can see peds requiring it.

I wish I could as sure as you are that the AAP won't recommend it. I am really losing more and more trust

[brant31]

The CDC is already on record as saying that they believe it is already a problem that American parents are not "fully informed" about circumcision, and 2 CDC epidemiology officers told me to my face that the CDC is "concerned" about parents getting their information about circumcision from the internet. The agency is studying how to implement a strategy to ensure that all new parents receive essentially the same briefing about the multiple benefits and very low risks of circumcision, viewed not only as a personal benefit but as a public health measure. I have no further information about how doctors or hospitals will come on board, just sayin' what they told me.

[AFWife]

Originally Posted by brant31

The CDC is already on record as saying that they believe it is already a problem that American parents are not "fully informed" about circumcision, and 2 CDC epidemiology officers told me to my face that the CDC is "concerned" about parents getting their information about circumcision from the internet. The agency is studying how to implement a strategy to ensure that all new parents receive essentially the same briefing about the multiple benefits and very low risks of circumcision, viewed not only as a personal benefit but as a public health measure. I have no further information about how doctors or hospitals will come on board, just sayin' what they told me.

Public health measure?? Because having a foreskin is contagious?? /sarcasm

[tennisdude23]

Originally Posted by 2boyzmama

Oh I know the schools won't, but I can see peds requiring it.

I wish I could as sure as you are that the AAP won't recommend it. I am really losing more and more trust

My entire point in the past several posts is that the AAP cannot go too far one way or the other. To me, this is pretty obvious. Seriously, some of the stuff that is said on these forums sometimes is so sensationalist, it's no wonder that people have a hard time sifting through the all fluff to get at the hard facts.

[syd'smom]

Seriously?? and :Puke

I really don't understand this push from the cdc. Doesn't the rest of the world prove them wrong?? (I'm in Canada with a slightly lower circ rate, but it still seems the norm around here. In fact I just saw a 2mo old the other day and I wanted to cry - I haven't seen a new baby circ'd since ds was born )

Originally Posted by brant31

The CDC is already on record as saying that they believe it is already a problem that American parents are not "fully informed" about circumcision, and 2 CDC epidemiology officers told me to my face that the CDC is "concerned" about parents getting their information about circumcision from the internet. The agency is studying how to implement a strategy to ensure that all new parents receive essentially the same briefing about the multiple benefits and very low risks of circumcision, viewed not only as a personal benefit but as a public health measure. I have no further information about how doctors or hospitals will come on board, just sayin' what they told me.

[prothyraia]

If they DID, then no, you still wouldn't have the same sort of nonsense that you do with vaccines. Vaccines are a special case.

There's all sorts of recommendations that you don't have to fill out paperwork for not following- breastfeeding, starting solids, length of TV watching. etc. etc. etc.

[Dave2GA]

The CDC is filled with pro-circ fanatics as far as I can tell. They never once mention the function of the foreskin. Daniel Halperin of Harvard ( of "my granddad was a part-time mohel and I am "destined" to bring this benefit to others" fame) appears to me from correspondence placed on the internet to have communicated with Peter Kilmarx of the CDC, who sat at the Nat'l HIV conference last year here in Atlanta [along with Katherine Kretsinger of the NHS and CDC] and said nothing as Inon Schenker of Operation Abraham from Israel derided the intact male by displaying a photo of a naked male with an elephant drawn on him so that his intact member looked like the trunk with "Yes, A Circumcision Please" drawn in a white cartoon balloon. I am still awaiting an apology from Kilmarx and Kretsinger. The medical literature is now filled with pro-circ "studies" by a small group (20-30) of pro-circ advocates who seem to me to have made pushing universal circumcision their careers. Among those are Robert Bailey, Bertrand Auvert, Ronald Gray and his wife M. Wawer, Brian Morris, Malcolm Potts of PSI, Catherine Hankin of WHO/UNAIDS, Helen Weiss from London, Stephen Moses from Canada, Edgar Schoen, Thomas Wiswell, Inon Schenker, Daniel Halperin, and others. Halperin gave a lecture at UNC's medical school in May entitled "Moyels Without Borders." Just Google "Daniel Halperin UNC medical school moyels without borders." His resume is on the internet and it is very instructive. Look through it and become enlightened. Go to Morris' website www.circinfo.net and look at who reviewed the brochures he has on there. Check out the Gilgal Society's website too. And for real entertainment check out the WebMD interview with Halperin at http://www.circumcisioninformation.c..._home_new.html where he recommends circlist. You will find it by clicking on "Circumcision in the Media" and then on "General News and Interviews About Circumcision" and then on "WebMD Interview with Dr. Daniel Halperin." Circlist is mentioned in the body of the interview. Click on the circlist site there [yes, check on it there; it has since been changed and you won't find the same thing at the site now] and then peruse it. [Warning - very graphic]. Wow! Would a dispassionate individual recommend such a site?

As to the AAP, the task force is headed by an apparent circumcision advocate from NY, its urologist circumcised his own son himself, the ethicist appeared recently as an expert witness for parents who let their son die rather than get medical care, and Peter Kilmarx is the liaison with the CDC and sits on the committee. Want to bet that there is no intact male on the committee and that all of the women have circumcised husbands and sons? [BTW this has been pointed out to the AAP's outside counsel, so they must be aware we are aware of it]. Can such a committee really look at the facts objectively? No wonder Dr. Brady, also on the committee, has recently been quoted as predicting that this statement will be more positive toward circumcision than the last one.

So don't be surprised at what is going on. It looks like a very well coordinated campaign to me. Doesn't it to you?? And don't you know they are desperate now that the circumcision rate is below 50% (or so they apparently believe).

[luvmybaby333]

I thought the AAP was steadily moving away from RIC...? Many insurance companies no longer cover it, as it has been deemed an elective procedure.

[brant31]

It is this perception that they don't "endorse" male infant circumcision, the gradual interpretation of the 1999 statement, that they are setting out to correct with this next statement. Expect a lot of dictum about the African RCTs (randomized controlled trials) and page after page about how safe and easy infant circumcision is.

It will certainly scare some parents into choosing circumcision, but more importantly it will lay the groundwork for lobbying state legislators to reinstate Medicaid circumcision. The language will be carefully chosen for precisely that purpose.

Oh, how much easier it would just be to let circumcision die out on its own!

[luvmybaby333]

Well, that's unfortunate indeed.

[tennisdude23]

Originally Posted by luvmybaby333

Well, that's unfortunate indeed.

Again, I think it's best to see what they actually say. I hate sensationalism and conspiracy theories, and I wish we could stick with the hard facts on this blog. In the world of medicare, when procedures are being cut left and right, it's doubtful that circumcision will be reinstated by any state in the near future, if at all. The best thing to do is to keep up with the message and take solace in the fact that it's spreading. Circumcision rates are declining across the board, and honestly, most parents who get through the sensationalist fluff of both sides understand that circumcision is unnecessary and something that should be left to the child.

[Dave2GA]

Tennisdude: While I know that conspiracy theories sound ridiculous, Halperin himself has referred to his confederates as "a cabal, a mafia of nerds." Today comes the news that Halperin, Schenker, Helen Weiss and Natasha Larke have just published a study that contends that complications of newborn circ are very low and that there are higher rates of complications in circumcisions in older boys and men! The implication is "circumcise in infancy." You may view the article at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2490/10/2. This comes on the heels of the CDC presentation in Vienna purporting to show the same thing. So in this case I must disagree. There is clearly a concerted effort to fill the literature with pro circ pieces.

BTW as many of you know I am a trial lawyer. I am now on my sixth penile ablation case involving the Mogen clamp. No more than one of these cases would have been picked up by a review of the discharge face sheets. None of the other shaft stripping cases, buried penis cases, etc. I have seen were noted on the discharge sheets. So any study that relies on a review of face sheets is unworthy of respect in my estimation. At the 11th International Symposium on Circumcision, Genital Integrity and Human Rights at UC Berkeley a couple of weeks ago Christopher Fletcher, M.D. from New Mexico presented a paper on his physical examination of a large number of circumcised men. Almost all, if not all, had some adverse physical consequence from circumcision. In fact, he found about 20% had had too much shaft skin removed. So this new "study" just doesn't ring true.

[brant31]

IIRC, Dr. Fletcher's study was of both intact and neonatally circumcised men. He found that something like 86% of the neonatally circumcised men had some form of iatrogenic complication, including skin bridges and tags, induced curvature, meatal stenosis and excessive tissue removal (where the circumcision scar was closer to the base of the penis than to the glans, causing pain and intercourse difficulty).

His conclusion was that there were essentially no standards for circumcision and effectively no follow-up. Tens of millions of men experience circumcision-related changes to the penis that are never explained to them, in many cases severe enough to adversely impact basic life functions like urination or intercourse.

[Yulia_R]

Originally Posted by AFWife

Public health measure?? Because having a foreskin is contagious?? /sarcasm

it's because if we stop circ-ing americans are all going to die from AIDS much like Europeans and Asians...oh wait a minute rates of HIV in USA is much higher than they are in intact Europe and Asia...

[Ron_Low]

Originally Posted by brant31

IIRC, Dr. Fletcher's study was of both intact and neonatally circumcised men. He found that something like 86% of the neonatally circumcised men had some form of iatrogenic complication
...
essentially no standards for circumcision and effectively no follow-up.

Did Dr. Fletcher get accepted for publication anywhere yet? It would be perfect timing if his paper was fresh news at the same time both the CDC and AAP are going mental on us.

The AAP has really shot itself in the foot when it tried to recommend mild FGM and then had to back-pedal. From Circumstitions.com:

"[T]he ritual nick suggested by some pediatricians is ... much less extensive than routine newborn male genital cutting."
- AAP FGC Policy, April 26, 2010

"This minimal pinprick is forbidden under federal law and the AAP does not recommend it to its members."
- retraction of AAP FGC Policy, May 27, 2010

How then can the AAP condone its members doing "routine [non-therapeutic] newborn male genital cutting"?

It's crystal clear. B is worse than A. We could NEVER recommend A. BUT, we now recommend B?

[jennybean0722]

I know its asinine and immature, and probably lends itself more to a picket line in front of the AAP office, BUT, if I am ever approached by a pro circ individual I tell them that I am pro choice when it comes to circumcision; for boys OR girls. Once they hear that I am "pro" female circ they start to think about their own decision to circ their boy and how ridiculous it is. (Of course you guys, you know I'm not pro female circ!!!)

[K703]

Originally Posted by jennybean0722

I know its asinine and immature, and probably lends itself more to a picket line in front of the AAP office, BUT, if I am ever approached by a pro circ individual I tell them that I am pro choice when it comes to circumcision; for boys OR girls. Once they hear that I am "pro" female circ they start to think about their own decision to circ their boy and how ridiculous it is. (Of course you guys, you know I'm not pro female circ!!!)

You mean pro-choice for the owner of the genitals, don't you?

[knitted_in_the_wom]

Originally Posted by brant31

IIRC, Dr. Fletcher's study was of both intact and neonatally circumcised men. He found that something like 86% of the neonatally circumcised men had some form of iatrogenic complication, ...

Has this study been published anywhere?