Canadian Children's Rights Council

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http://www.canadiancrc.com/circumcision/circumcision.aspx



The Canadian Children's Rights Council considers circumcision to be genital mutilation of children.

The statistics show more Canadians parents are not having their infant sons circumcised ( genitally mutilated ). The rate for male infants in Canada has dropped from about 50% in 1998 to about 20% in 2000. The overall incidence of male circumcision for all of Canada declined to about 13.9 percent for the year 2003.

Rates of male infant circumcision in the province of Quebec dropped from about 30% in 1971 to a current rate of less than 3%. The rate in the province of Ontario, Canada's most populous province dropped from about 60% in 1971 to about 18% in 2003. Western provinces generally have dropped the same rate to about 20-25%. Newfoundland had a 1971 rate of about 7% and has dropped to about .6% at most in 2001. Nova Scotia had a 1971 rate of approximately 53% and has dropped to a 2001 rate of 1.5%.

In 2003, the rate of male circumcision in the United States of America was about 55.9% with a rate of about 77.8% in the midwest.

In South Korea, boys 10-13 years old are routinely circumcised mistakenly "for medical reasons".


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Jim

Notebook: What happens when we realize a vaccine isn't possible?

Notebook: What happens when we realize a vaccine isn't possible?


The HIV/AIDS research community has finally come to the conclusion that a vaccine will likely never come. More than one expert has said this in the last year. A few elder statesmen of long experience in the infectious disease research community have come out and said that HIV/AIDS is a disease easily avoided with a long period of incubation, usually past the years of child-bearing and most of those of child-rearing, that in most countries affects a small number of people engaging in very specific contagious behavior. Nature and evolution simply do not find this disease to be a major problem. Hence, it is less a threat to world humanity than a personal tragedy to individuals and those countries hardest hit.

We have entered a new period in the development of the HIV/AIDS era. The emphasis will now be on prevention. The HIV/AIDS research world is awash in money. If the donor community accepts that a vaccine is not possible, billions of dollars will flow elsewhere. Economics dictates that the recipients of donor largesse will have to shift their research and activities to continue receiving these huge sums of money, recipients being institutions rather then individuals. Hence, we saw the World Health Organization endorse male circumcision. Then we saw the United Nations add their voice as well.

More than a few people were perplexed at the apparently bizarre interest the vaccine activist community had in male circumcision. The AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative both became positively giddy at the prospect of male circumcision. I now question whether they have concluded privately that the vaccine effort's days are numbered. Closer than anyone to the effort and more dependent on donors than even the research institutions, which usually have more than one focus, they perhaps see an opportunity for continued viability in the promotion of genital surgeries.

The evidence for male circumcision is weak. Its efficacy in a clinical setting is unclear. Its effectiveness in the general population is negligible. No one seems ready to acknowledge that all the players in the male circumcision push have vested interests. Yet, the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) appears ready to endorse it, falling in line with the United Nations and the World Health Organization. Given the condescending attitude of most US government institutions, I suspect the CDC is more than a little annoyed that they were beaten to the punch.

The CDC condemned the new Swiss guidelines on HIV+ infectiousness almost immediately. More than eight years of evidence went into the formulation of the new guideline. In prevention terms, why support male circumcision so quickly and condemn the proven prevention value of ARV therapy? The CDC will eventually come around to support the Swiss viewpoint. Right now, the new guidelines are an uncomfortable, counterintuitive change in direction. But it is fundamentally a technical question of prevention. Male circumcision on the other hand is an American cultural norm that evokes a fierce commitment to its continued practice in the United States. However, it is new to the HIV/AIDS scene. Hence it has attracted interest as it involves the creation or expansion of new organizational structures and materials, and provides a new opportunity for advocacy and the allocation of resources.

So where is the world now viz HIV/AIDS and male circumcision?

If the experts have concluded both that a vaccine is not possible and that HIV is little more than a personal tragedy for individuals in the developed world, I think we can expect a mad scramble for prevention funds. This will likely involve all sorts of new and innovative efforts, of which more than a few will involve genital mutilation. We can likely look forward to continued forced circumcisions of children and scaremongering to induce submission in adults. Much like the early period of HIV/AIDS, ethics and human rights will take a hit.

hi i am thankful of receiving an award from The Human Pacifier blog
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check out this video

Ashley Montagu on Circumcision

More parents choosing to skip circumcision

More parents choosing to skip circumcision

Majority of boys don't get surgery, but some doctors still doing it
Katherine Dedyna, Times Colonist
Published: Thursday, January 31, 2008

Victoria mother Kira Antinuk has a motto she wishes parents and doctors would adopt for the baby boys of B.C.: "May the foreskin be with you."

When she was pregnant with her son Dante, now four, she saw a video clip of a circumcision that changed her life -- galvanizing her into working against the removal of healthy tissue in normal babies.

Along with caring for Dante and newborn daughter, Kiana, Antinuk devotes up to three hours daily to posting on family-oriented websites based in the U.S., where the circumcision rate is higher than in Canada.

The majority of babies in B.C. are no longer routinely circumcised. The provincial health plan stopped paying for the procedure years ago, and Victoria hospitals provide only medically necessary circumcisions. In 2006, that totalled two babies at Victoria General Hospital.

But there are still three MDs performing circumcisions in Victoria. Two of them interviewed by the Times Colonist estimate they perform more than 300 circumcisions between them in a year while a third could not be reached for comment.

"That's hundreds too many," Antinuk, 27, says. Without religious or medical reasons "doctors should not be allowed to do it."

Dr. Catherine Stubbs of Oak Bay says by doing circumcisions, she's providing a service for parents who feel shamed by other parents, prenatal educators and even doctors in doing what they think is best for their sons.

"Doctors lie to patients right now," Stubbs says. "They tell them it's not available; they tell them it's going to cost them $500; they tell them it will scar their children for a lifetime. There are many, many circumcised men in this world that are perfectly enjoying their penises, and their wives are."

She performs one to four circumcisions per week. Retired physician Chorkie Chan says he has been circumcising about three infants a week, filling in for another physician on maternity leave. Both charge about $75 for the procedure.

University of Victoria medical ethics expert Eike Kluge agrees with Antinuk that circumcisions should stop, except when medically necessary.

"It's mutilation," says Kluge, a former director of ethics for the Canadian Medical Association. "For physicians to engage in this is, in fact, to act ethically inappropriately."

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C., the regulatory body for doctors, is upfront about calling circumcision of baby boys a "medically unnecessary intervention" without therapeutic value, but would not comment on the allegation that circumcision is mutilation.

Registrar Dr. Morris VanAndel won't be pushing for a ban, saying "a degree of discretion" is appropriate for doctors. Moreover, because the majority of physicians, especially younger ones, want no part of circumcision, the practice will run its course without "thou shalt not" edicts, he expects.

Doctors are required to get informed consent, meaning parents must be made to understand all the drawbacks.

The college's 2005 position paper notes many ethical concerns and the possibility of babies bleeding to death -- the fate of Vernon infant Ryleigh McWillis in 2002.The idea that doctors accede to parents who want their sons circumcised to "be like daddy" strikes Antinuk as a cruel deprivation of boys' rights to intact bodies.

But Stubbs maintains she will not circumcise a boy only for that reason. Both she and Chan say their most common request is from parents who knew of uncircumcised men who suffered urinary tract infections or tight foreskins.

Kluge says the research does not support the infection notion. "People come down with appendicitis. Are you therefore going to give an appendectomy to everybody?"While religious arguments could trump security of the person provisions of the Charter of Rights, Kluge notes that the Jewish and Islamic religions, which require circumcision, have persons trained to do them, negating the need for physicians to be involved.

Trained mohels do "a better job," claims Victoria Rabbi Meir Kaplan, who disagrees that circumcision is mutilation.Kaplan defends the infant practice, saying that Jewish males would not be happy undergoing a more painful procedure under general anesthetic in adulthood instead of a 10-second tradition at the age of eight days.

Antinuk hopes a B.C. man will launch a lawsuit over his own infant circumcision -- a tough decision to take.

"You would have to bare your genitalia, symbolically, in public," Kluge says. That man would have to sue his parents for their decision.

The B.C. college has been approached by men circumcised as infants, but the complaints went nowhere because the doctors were retired or dead.

Female genital mutilation has been against the law in Canada since 1997 and Antinuk says the college should extend the same protection to boys.

Meanwhile, Stubbs has had only two circumcised baby boys who have had late bleeds in her 35 years of practice and once in a while, a baby requires a stitch or silver nitrite.

She uses both topical and local anesthetic. Many of the babies she circumcises nurse or even sleep during the procedure. "The majority of babies can be done totally pain-free."Last year, the World Health Organization hailed circumcision as a way to combat HIV in ravaged areas, citing evidence showing a 60 per cent drop in infection rates in circumcised men in South Africa, Uganda and Kenya. Circumcision removes specialized Langerhans cells in the foreskin that readily attach to viruses, including HIV.

But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently concluded circumcision did not affect susceptibility among American black and Latino men, whose HIV rate is several times higher than for whites. In the U.S., men having sex with men is the major cause of HIV; in Africa it is male-female intercourse.

PROS AND CONS

According to the Canadian Pediatric Society, of every 1,000 circumcised boys:

- 20 to 30 will experience too much bleeding or infection

- two to three will have more serious complications such as too much skin removed or more serious bleeding- 10 will need a second circumcision because of "poor result" in the first

Of every 1,000 uncircumcised boys:

- seven will be hospitalized for a urinary tract infection before they reach age one- 10 will have a later circumcision for medical reasons, such as a scarred opening of the foreskin because of recurrent infections and will require general anesthetic.

VICTORIA STATISTICS

About 2,000 boys were born in Greater Victoria last year. The circumcision rate has slipped from 22 per cent a decade ago, to about 15 per cent, judging by estimates made by two local physicians doing the procedure.Seventy circumcisions were done at the Victoria General and Royal Jubilee hospitals during 2006-07.

Of those, 30 were done on boys under 15 (including two under age one) and 40 on males over age 15.

Circumcision and HIV: Harm Outweighs "Benefit"

Circumcision and HIV: Harm Outweighs "Benefit"



Two American-sponsored studies in Africa claim that adult male circumcision significantly reduces the risk of acquiring HIV.(1) Researchers then take the leap of recommending adult male circumcision as an HIV prevention strategy. Publishing such a report in the United States appears to support the American cultural practice of circumcision. Such judgments are dangerous.

The Kenya report spotlighted a 53% reduction of HIV acquisition in circumcised men relative to genitally intact men. However, only 47 of the 1,391 (one in 30) genitally intact men in the study contracted HIV, compared to 22 of the 1,393 (one in 63) circumcised men. These figures showed that about 56 circumcisions were needed to prevent one HIV infection, and 55 out of 56 circumcised men received no benefit. In the Uganda study, investigators estimated that 67 circumcisions were needed to prevent one HIV infection while the rate of moderate and severe circumcision complications was about 4%. Therefore, the chance of such a complication was more than 2.5 times greater than the chance of protection from an HIV infection, not including complications that would appear years later. In addition, an association between circumcision and HIV infection does not prove a cause and effect relationship. There could be confounding variables. For example, the study does not account for cultural bias on the part of researchers.(2) We recommend using the common sense test: if any other healthy body part (e.g., finger, toe, ear) were recommended for removal to prevent an unlikely disease, would American observers respond with equal approval?

The Cochrane Collaboration is an international independent source of reliable evidence-based reviews of healthcare information. It reports, "Circumcision practices are largely culturally determined and as a result there are strong beliefs and opinions surrounding its practice. It is important to acknowledge that researchers’ personal biases and the dominant circumcision practices of their respective countries may influence their interpretation of findings.”(3) The lead researchers of the African studies are known American circumcision advocates.

Claims that circumcision reduces the risk of acquiring HIV infection have been made for 20 years. Other studies have found no significant effect of circumcision status on HIV acquisition.(4) Publication bias in favor of positive results makes it more difficult to bring attention to studies with negative outcomes. The fact is that the United States has a high circumcision rate and the highest prevalence of HIV infection in the developed world.(5) Other countries have lower rates of HIV infection than the United States and do not practice circumcision. National medical organizations unanimously find no proven medical benefit for circumcision and do not recommend it.(6) Furthermore, in a previous study published on the effectiveness of condoms in preventing HIV acquisition, heterosexual couples that included an HIV-infected partner used condoms consistently in a total of about 15,000 instances of intercourse. None of the uninfected partners became infected.(7) That’s why the American Medical Association states that “behavioral factors are far more important risk factors for acquisition of HIV and other sexually transmissible diseases than circumcision status, and circumcision cannot be responsibly viewed as ‘protecting’ against such infections.”(8) Using or promoting unnecessary surgery when much less invasive, much less costly, and much more effective methods are available (e.g., condoms) raises ethical concerns. The African study investigators also advise circumcision for treating phimosis (nonretractable foreskin) when other less invasive and less costly methods are available.(9) Furthermore, the studies recommend the use of condoms in addition to circumcision. Because of the superior effectiveness of condoms, circumcision adds little additional protection.

Unlike Africa, America circumcises males in infancy. Because sexually transmitted diseases obviously cannot be transmitted until an individual engages in sexual activity, a male may make a decision to be circumcised when he is older without losing this claimed “benefit.” If you were an adult male and had the option of using a condom and getting virtually assured protection or having part of your penis cut off to get a one in 56 chance of protection, the choice is clear. Furthermore, by the time today’s newborn boys become sexually active, HIV vaccine may be available.

American circumcision studies have found dozens of “benefits,” from treating epilepsy and masturbation in the late 1800s to preventing sexually transmitted diseases today.(10) Though such claims generally do not withstand scrutiny by medical policy committees, their continued publication over the years has led to medical myths while raising questions about some researchers’ motives. American researchers tend to avoid studying or acknowledging the sexual and psychological harm associated with circumcision.(11) This pro-circumcision bias in American medicine reflects the pro-circumcision bias in American culture. The United States is the only country in the world that circumcises most (56%) of its male infants for non-religious reasons.(12) When Europeans learn about this, they think we’re crazy.

Knowledge of studies on circumcision harm is important to properly evaluating advisability. There is strong evidence that circumcision is overwhelmingly painful and traumatic.(13) Some infants do not cry because they go into shock. Infants exhibit behavioral changes after circumcision. Changes in pain response have been demonstrated at six months of age, evidence of lasting neurological effects and a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder.(14) Anesthetics, if used, do not eliminate circumcision pain.(15)

The common American belief is that the foreskin has no value. That’s because most American circumcised men (and doctors) do not know what they are missing. Based on recent reports, circumcision removes up to one-half of the erogenous tissue on the penile shaft, equivalent to approximately twelve square inches on an adult.(16) Medical studies have shown that the foreskin protects the head of the penis, enhances sexual pleasure, and facilitates intercourse. Cutting off the foreskin removes several kinds of specialized nerves and results in thickening and progressive desensitization of the outer layer of the tip of the penis, particularly in older men.(17) In a survey of men who were circumcised after they became sexually active, there was a reported decrease in sexual enjoyment after circumcision.(18) One described it as like seeing in black and white compared to seeing in color. If you have less, you feel less. Circumcision removes the five most sensitive parts of the penis.(19) (For this reason, many circumcised men are reluctant to use condoms because it contributes to further decreased sensation. Reduced condom usage adversely affects the HIV infection rate.) In a survey of those with comparative sexual experience, women preferred the natural penis over the circumcised penis by 6 to 1.(20)

Surveys of circumcised men and clinical reports show that when men recognize their loss due to circumcision and experience associated decreased sexual sensitivity, they report wide-ranging psychological consequences.(21) Most circumcised men seem satisfied because they may not understand what circumcision is and the benefits of the foreskin, they may not be aware of certain feelings and their connection to circumcision, or they may be afraid of disclosing these feelings.(22)

For American society, circumcision is a solution in search of a problem, a social custom disguised as a medical issue. Beware of culturally-biased studies on circumcision posing as science, and take your whole baby home.

Circumcision and Moses

Circumcision and Moses
By Sigismond for Salem-News.com

"I AM A JEALOUS GOD WHO PUNISHES THE CRIME OF FATHERS UPON CHILDREN UP TO... GREAT-GRANDFATHERS..." (Second Commandment)
Salem-News.com

(PARIS, France) - In the middle of the 19th century, a movement of German Reform rabbis was the first Jewish movement in modern times to refuse circumcision, on Biblical grounds: the Ten Commandments do not prescribe it, it was not practiced during the Exodus (circumcision was set back into practice after Moses's death, in Gilgal) and Moses was opposed to his son's circumcision, were their main arguments (Encyclopedia Judaica. Keter publishing house limited; 1972. t. V, p. 571).

Previous to Moses, worshipers of the masculine phallus and contemptuous of the feminine one, the Egyptians practiced the mutilation of the specific organs of autosexuality of girls and boys, and had imposed it on the Jews as a token of slavery.

Having freed the Jews, Moses could not tolerate that some would perpetuate the barbarous pagan custom. Thinking that the denudation of the glans makes the phallus a fetish and an idol, and that a "jealous" God cannot admit idolatry of the phallus, he denounces chapter 17 of the Book of Genesis through the Second Commandment.

Deeming circumcision an attempt against the child ("a barbarous and bleeding rite" [quoted by the Dictionnaire encyclopédique du judaïsme. Paris: Editions du cerf; 1993. p. 433]) and that the custom isolates the Jews, Rabbi Abraham Geiger and his movement decided to follow Moses and abandon circumcision.

This provoked an outcry in the Jewish community, the rabbinical authorities answered their arguments and, at the end of twenty years, the Reform rabbis came back to circumcision. But the "heresy" gained the USA where several rabbis practice a non mutilating ceremony of nomination.

The reformists had perfectly understood that Moses was opposed to circumcision but, unfortunately, they had not made our discovery of the falsification of the meaning of the Second Commandment by the orthodox reading, from antiquity until now. This falsification hides that this commandment forbids circumcision, through interpreting the Biblical text:

"For I, the Eternal, your God, I am a jealous God, who punish the crime of fathers upon children up to the third and fourth generation..." (Exodus, 20: 5, literal translation of the French Rabbinate translation [Paris: Les éditions Colbo; 1966]), as if it said: "… who punish children for the crimes of fathers…", which it does not;

- first, God does not express himself in an ambiguous way; if the sentence had the meaning given by the rabbis, its construction would have been the one above,

- second, the text does not say "the crimes" but "the crime", which involves a definite, well-known crime upon children, which can only be sexual mutilation,

- third, asserting that God punishes children for the crimes of fathers, the orthodox interpretation gives the term "jealous" the aberrant meaning of suspicious till the injustice of condemning children and grand-children irresponsible of paternal criminality. This is extreme and unlikely,

- fourthly, it would illogically make the Second Commandment redundant with the Sixth: "Thou shall not kill",

- fifthly, at the contrary, the Second Commandment brings out mutilator paedo-sexual criminality as very particularly reprehensible. Moses was aware of the gravity of crimes striking a whole part of the population (children). Considering sexual mutilation as crime against creation (humanity), through which man usurps God's place, he puts it apart from ordinary crime. God (The Koran) did not prescribe circumcision to Mohamed. At the contrary, The Koran (30: 30 and 4: 118-119) shares this both theological and humanitarian argument of respect of the physical integrity, dignity, privacy and modesty of the child,

- sixthly and consequently, for the first time in history, an imprescriptible penalty strikes the elderly years after their crime,

- seventhly, since the alleged punishment of criminality in general would tyrannically and blindly extend to the whole family, why does it abate at the fourth generation rather than apply to all descendants? On the other hand, it is only natural that the punishment of circumcising criminals must stop with great-grandfathers; beyond them, it's true, there is nobody alive to punish,

- eighthly, this interpretation is confirmed by the expression "a jealous God", which simply mean jealous of his own creation that man may not alter,

At last, just a few lines below the 2nd Commandment, the Bible enlightens it saying: "If however you build a stone altar for me, do not build it with carved stones for by touching them with the iron, you made them lay." (Exodus, 20: 21-22).

Therefore God - or Moses - did not wrongly word the Second Commandment. The rabbis – very likely deliberately – did ill interpret it through introducing a nonexistent double meaning, in order to conceal that "the crime of fathers" is sexual mutilation perpetrated upon children.

We owe the great Jewish liberator and legislator, enemy of slavery and barbarity, the invention, against infantile sexual mutilation, of the juridical concept of crime against humanity, with penalty out of the statute of limitations.

You can write to Sigismond at oldsigismund@hotmail.com

You can also visit groups.msn.com/circabolition

This text is a summary; read the entire article at intactwiki.org