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News
Male Circumcision 'Risky' say Doctors
Sunday 6th September 2009With another inquest about to begin, leading medics are calling for a wider awareness of the risks of circumcision, and for the protection of boys’ safety and their personal autonomy.
16-day-old Amitai Moshe died in 2007 following a painful ritual circumcision in North London and his inquest will begin at Hornsey Coroner’s Court on Monday 7th September. A previous inquest in Windsor this year found that baby Celian Noumbiwe had bled to death within hours of his circumcision.
"A minor operation is surgery done on someone else" [Biologist Steve Jones]Many parents who consider circumcision necessary for ritual reasons believe that the operation is harmless in early infancy, and that it will bring benefit to the child. This position is not supported by experts, who also point to the psycho-sexual effects of genital reduction surgery which is botched or bitterly regretted.
Gordon Muir, Consultant Urological Surgeon at King's College Hospital commented: "There is no evidence that circumcising children has lower risk than carrying out the same procedure in adults and no medical benefit can be shown for baby boys in the UK having this procedure unless there are significant abnormalities of the foreskin." He added, "While the risk of major tragedies such as this is very low, I see many men who have suffered years of trauma and anxiety due to badly performed circumcisions they never needed for medical reasons, or consented to".
Dr John Warren, founder of men’s health charity NORM-UK said: "Circumcision related deaths in the West are rare but not as rare as the public think.... as well as the two deaths investigated in England this year and another in 2006, two baby boys bled to death in Italy in Summer 2008, and one in Ireland in 2003. We believe there are other cases which have passed under the radar due to the political sensitivity of the issue."
He added, "New Labour seem to wish to turn a blind eye to the issue of male ritual genital cutting, both its immediate risks and its intrinsic sexual harms. After baby Moshe died in 2007 we asked to have a list of other deaths and received a response that there were none on record. This is plainly untrue as there are several cases which have been reported in the press including Boma Oruitemeka and Raju Meha in the 1990s. The government have also persisted with the line that male and female genital cutting cannot be compared, despite the fact that in some communities the female cut targets only her foreskin and this tradition has been banned. Apparently her hood is sacrosanct but his is fair game!"
Based on a census analysis, it appears that around 19,000 male children are at risk of forced circumcision each year in the UK. NORM-UK made a series of freedom of information requests to hospitals in England to find out the number of serious complications resulting from circumcision operations. This revealed that serious complications are being treated in hospitals across England, in boys from babies to teenagers, and child protection reports have been filed in some cases.
Some hospitals have proved reluctant to release the data, and Great Ormond Street is one of these. After some pressing, the hospital revealed that over the last five years it has treated, on average, almost two boys each week for complications of circumcision in the community. Yet no child protection reports are on record since 2005, despite the fact that in one case NORM-UK has heard of, a child of six had his injuries photographed by the police while at the hospital.
The Mental Health Charity MIND comments on its website that circumcision has been shown to be ‘overwhelmingly painful and traumatic’ and points to a research paper by prominent Jewish circumcision campaigner and Psychologist Ron Goldman which details the evidence of post traumatic stress disorder following circumcision.
Child protection experts now also recognise male circumcision as a potential source of significant harm to a child and the official London Child Protection procedures state that "if a professional in any agency becomes aware, through something a child discloses or other means, that the child has been or may be harmed by circumcision, a referral must be made to [the Local Authority] children’s social care."
[ Full Press Release from NORM-UK ]
Image © Stoyan Nenov/Reuters. Used under licence.
