European doctors: U.S. colleagues support circumcision out of bias
Thirty-eight physicians from Europe have written a paper
alleging that “cultural bias” was behind the pro-circumcision stance of the
American Academy of Pediatrics.
The commentary, published on March 18 on the website of
the U.S.-based Pediatrics journal, disputes a report which the American academy
on children’s health published in August, which states that “benefits of
newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks but the benefits are not great
enough to recommend universal newborn circumcision.”
The European reply, titled “Cultural Bias in the AAP’s
2012 Technical Report and Policy Statement on Male Circumcision” states that
“seen from the outside, cultural bias reflecting the normality of
nontherapeutic male circumcision in the United States seems obvious. The
report’s conclusions are different from those reached by physicians in other
parts of the Western world.”
The benefits attributed in the American report to
circumcision -- including protection against HIV, genital herpes, genital warts
and penile cancer -- are "questionable, weak, and likely to have little
public health relevance in a Western context and they do not represent
compelling reasons for surgery before boys are old enough to decide for themselves,”
the European authors wrote.
In the U.S., a large percentage of non-Jewish males are
circumcised, whereas in Europe the custom is limited almost exclusively to Jews
and Muslims.
The European physicians found only one argument put
forward by the American Academy of Pediatrics to have “some theoretical
relevance”: The possible protection circumcision offers against urinary tract
infections in infant boys, but this “can easily be treated with antibiotics
without tissue loss,” they wrote.
About half of the European physicians are from
Scandinavian countries, where several political parties have stated their
opposition to circumcision as a form of “child abuse,” or unwanted phenomenon
of immigration by Muslims.
Comments
Post a Comment