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July 31, 2010
Genital Autonomy for an Intact World!
A new umbrella group to unit all genital integrity causes was announced at the closing session of the Eleventh International Symposium on Genital Integrity today. The group, called Genital Autonomy or GA, will be based in England.
ICGI
July 31, 2010
Conference tells AAP, CDC: “Don’t cut babies”
An international conference has delivered a clear message to US medical bodies not to recommend any infant genital cutting that is not strictly necessary, organizers say. The 11th International Symposium on Genital Integrity ended at the University of California at Berkeley this evening.
“We learned how circumcision does much more harm and less good than most people imagine,” co-organizer Marilyn Milos said, “and how circumcision instruments have particular risks—as we were reminded last week when a boy was awarded $10 million for a tragic botch.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control are both considering revising their currently neutral advice about neonatal circumcision in the United States, following claims from trials in Africa that it reduced the rate of HIV transmission from women to men by 1.8%. Over three trials, the rates were 2.49% of non-circumcised men and 1.18% for circumcised men.
“We heard how the African trials are irrelevant to the US, where HIV is mainly transmitted by sharing IV drug needles and sex between men,” Milos said.
“The AAP should have learned from its recent experience with female cutting, that even a token nick is not acceptable, and male circumcision and intersex reassignment are much more extensive than a token nick,” Milos said.
Tomorrow the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC), one of the conference organisers, marks 25 years in existence.
July 31, 2010
Surprize! Circumcision makes the penis smaller
Circumcising babies in America always causes disfigurement in men, a family physician told an international conference this afternoon.
“By any cosmetic or surgical-outcomes criteria, their penises are harmed—twisted, bent, or scarred,” Christopher Fletcher MD of Santa Fe said, “And though it is counter-intuitive, they are smaller and skinnier than those of intact men.”
Assistant clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Dr Fletcher’s conclusions arise from a study of men 18 years and older seeking medical care. The vast majority of the circumcisions had been done soon after birth for non-medical reasons.
Dr Fletcher told the 11th International Symposium on Genital Integrity at the University of California, Berkeley, that these men are almost universally unaware of their disfigurements and think of their penises as completely normal.
“This obvious physical damage is universally ignored by the patient, his parents, and physicians,” he said.
Another study found that the adult penis of men circumcised as children is 8mm (3/8?) shorter.
Dr Fletcher has delivered more than a thousand babies and dissuaded the parents of all but 10 of the boys from having them circumcised.
July 30th, 2010
Hospitals risk legal action over circumcision
Hospitals and medical providers face special legal risks when they allow healthy newborn babies to be circumcised, a conference on genital cutting was told today.
Zenas Baer, a Hawley, Minnesota lawyer with extensive experience in circumcision cases involving informed consent, says our society is morally and legally committed to the principle of self-determination, which implies the right of every person of sound mind to determine what shall be done with his or her own body.
He told the 11th International Symposium on Genital Integrity in Berkeley today that patient self-determination is only meaningful if the patient receives sufficient information, and the information that must be disclosed is a standard set by law for physicians — not one they may, or may not, impose upon themselves.
Baer said a hospital’s corporate duty of care to a patient is separate and distinct from its duty of care to a medical practitioner.
The conference includes presentations about the human rights and legal issues involved in female genital cutting and the surgical re-assignment of intersexed babies and children.
July 30, 2010
“Concerted effort” to promote circumcision
A secretive lobby group of physicians, researchers, and others is making a concerted effort to promote neonatal circumcision world-wide, an international conference on genital cutting was told this morning.
Atlanta, Georgia, attorney David Llewellyn told the 11th International Symposium on Genital Integrity this morning that since the mid-1980s they have been looking for “medical” reasons to cut off baby boys’ foreskins. And that they want to have circumcision approved as a public health measure by national and international medical organizations.
“Their latest efforts seem to have resulted in the recent circumcision trials in Africa,” he said. “These have been erroneously labeled as the ‘gold standard’ in medical research, and have formed the basis for suggesting a revision of medical organization statements to favor universal male circumcision.”
Llewellyn won a $10.7 million lawsuit last week from the manufacturer of the Mogen circumcision clamp for a boy whose circumcision was botched by the clamp. The firm has now gone out of business. He has been litigating wrongful circumcision, circumcision damage and related cases for 15 years, and it now makes up the majority of his practice.
He discussed the pro-circumcision lobby in detail, with particular reference to their journal publications and their involvement with pro-circumcision and circum-fetish websites. “The urge to circumcise boys has some deep and sometimes murky roots, and those who promote it for ‘medical reasons’ are not necessarily immune to those influences,” he said.
July 30, 2010
Don’t foreclose kids’ options with surgeries
Children are entitled to an “open future,” with no options foreclosed that could not wait for the child’s expressed preference, a conference on genital cutting was told this morning.
Seattle attorney John Geisheker successfully argued the case of a 14-year-old Oregon boy who did not want to be circumcised after his father’s religious conversion.
Geisheker, Executive Director of Doctors Opposing Circumcision, said courts pay undue deference to parental discretion - cultural and religious – at the expense of the child’s human rights. He suggests the best guiding principle is the “open future” articulated by philosopher Joel Fienberg.
The Feinberg Principle, Mr. Geisheker argues, should apply even more strongly where the child is subject to irreversible and non-therapeutic bodily alterations of any kind, which include many other interventions than male circumcision, though that is easily the commonest. They include operations to flatten the ears, Europeanize Asian eyelids, assign gender to intersexed children and “normalize” boys’ and girls’ genitals.
July 29, 2010
African circumcision experiments “like Tuskegee”
Health care in Africa is a risk for HIV transmission, a conference at Berkeley was told today.
The World Health Organisation and UNAIDS warn UN employees of this, but it has been kept from ordinary Africans for 25 years, Dr David Gisselquist said.
He told an International Symposium on Genital Integrity at Berkeley, California, the current push for circumcision is an example of the distracting emphasis on sex alone as the cause of Africa’s AIDS disasters.
“The key to stopping AIDS in Africa is to trace and investigate suspicious infections in children and adults to find their source,” he said. “When Africa’s medically-caused HIV outbreaks have been investigated and uncovered, it will be possible to have a rational discussion about circumcision in Africa.”
Dr Gisselquist compared experiments in Africa, where HIV researchers followed HIV-positive adults who did not know they were infected in order to study sickness, death, and transmission, to the infamous 40-year Tuskegee trial of black Americans infected with syphilis.
“The health-aid industry needs distractions to keep people from seeing that unsafe health care spreads HIV in Africa,” he said “Among Americans, the health-aid industry hides behind pervasive racial stereotypes of African sexual behavior. In Africa, it spends billions of dollars to blame the victim for unwise sexual behavior.”
Medical Anthropologist Dr Gisselquist of Hershey, Pennsylvania, has worked on HIV in Africa and Asia and has assisted field research on HIV in India and Kenya.
Speakers have come to the symposium from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, England, Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand. It includes presentations about the human rights and legal issues involved in female genital cutting and the surgical re-assignment of intersexed babies and children.
July 29, 2010
Intersex surgery not for parents or doctors to decide
Whether to operate on an intersexed child is not a simple clinical decision, an international conference on genital cutting was told this morning.
An official Australian children’s advocate said the decision was not one to be taken by doctors, nor by frightened parents following clinical advice, nor the dictates of culture or religion
Paul Mason told the 11th International Symposium on Genital Integrity that children are children first and girls and boys second.
“If genital surgery on an intersex child is not necessary to preserve the child’s life, or to treat or prevent a likely and serious illness, the decision whether and how to operate can be put off until the child is old enough to express an informed view about the options, and in a forum that addresses any conflicts of interest,” he said. “That age depends on the intervention and the risks.”
In 2005 the San Francisco Human Rights Commission called for an end to medically unnecessary interventions on intersex children – those born with genitals not typically male or female. About one child in 100 has some degree of intersexuality, but only about one in 5000 is fully intermediate.
Paul Mason is Commissioner for Children for the Australian island state of Tasmania, a state appointment independent of the elected government, responsible for advising the government about all matters concerning the health, welfare, development and education of children and their protection from all forms of abuse and neglect.
July 29, 2010
Circumcision device ‘like BP in Gulf’
Many devices have been invented for circumcising boys and men, but none overcomes all its problems, a researcher from New Zealand told an international conference on genital cutting today.
“No device takes full account of the actual structure it is designed to remove,” Hugh Young said. “Only one even acknowledges that the cut is not exactly circular.”
He was particularly scathing of the Accu-circ, a new single-action disposable chopper that resembles a cork-puller, works like a stapler and conceals the penis when it cuts.
“In poor countries, if it can be dismantled, it will be re-used, raising the risk of cross-infection - including HIV,” he said.
“If it fails to cut completely, or sticks part-way, the operator is left like BP in the Gulf of Mexico, but perhaps with blood leaking out instead of oil. A newborn baby is in danger after losing only two tablespoons of blood."
The Accu-circ has been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration for use in the US on babies up to ten days old, on the basis that it is “substantially equivalent … to legally marketed … devices” but Young says in fact it is radically different.
Speakers came to the symposium, at the University of California at Berkeley, from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, England, Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand, as well as all parts of the United States.
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