Medical Ethicists--what do American ones say?

[baybee]

This is a story that was published in a Canadian paper. I know we have two women medical ethicists in Canada who speak out strongly against circumcision of both boys and girls. . . this one and one at the University of Victoria. I've never heard of an American one speaking up and wondered if anyone else has???
Baybee

<<Circumcision is Assault, Ethicist Says

Sharon Kirkey
Montreal Gazette, p. A9, October 18, 1997 (originally from Ottawa Citizen)

Cutting away the healthy foreskin of baby boys is a painful wounding
that's medically unnecessary, according to a prominent Montreal medical ethicist.

Ottawa - One of the country's leading medical ethicists says circumcision of baby boys if criminal assault and that doctors should stop doing it.

"It's a bodily wounding on a tiny infant that has given no consent itself, and it is not a medically necessary (procedure)," say Margaret Somerville, founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law.>> exerpt from full article.

[Frankly Speaking]

Please don't get me wrong here because I am in no way saying anything negative about Somerville, just that she has her issues a little muddled.

A ban against medicalized circumcisions will have no effect on ritualized circumcisions. They are performed by different disciplines. And I call it "medicalized" because circumcision is not a medical procedure, it is a procedure that has been adopted by the medical industry and medicalized when it is nothing about modern medicine and never was. For the industry to police themselves and put an end to medicalized circumcisions will not effect ritualized circumcision one iota except that some of those who consider it a religious requirement might give it second thoughts and some may decide not to.

The real impediment to ending circumcisions of neonates is the billion dollars a year that the profession makes on the procedure, not the parents. If a law were passed tomorrow that limited the compensation for a neonatal circumcision to $50.00, (approximately $5.00 a minute or $300.00 an hour) circumcision of neonates would be dead by the end of the year. Unfortunately, at current rates, physicians are compensated at a rate up to $116.00 per minute or $7,000.00 per hour. It's no wonder that they keep pushing it! Take the profit motive out of it, and the practice will end.



Frank

[dnr3301]

I don't know that that is true though. My mom is a L&D RN (anti-circ). Minnesota just stopped paying for them (Yay us). I was being excited about it right when it passed, and she said that the hospital would likely still do them, just write them off. She says they often do for people with no insurance. I really hope that's not true, but if it is, it sucks big time.

[baybee]

There will always be cases of circs being done for no money but, in my experience, cutting insurance funding of circ helps soooooo much to reduce the number being done. Doctors, nurses, and parents start to question the practice. They wake up and wonder why it's unnecessary instead of doing the same thing they've always done. Cutting insurance causes a jolt that drops the statistics down with surprising rapidity. Let's get 100% of the U.S. states and Manitoba, Canada to come into the modern age.

If you want to participate in your state, send me a p.m. Baybee