British Medical Journal's 'Lobbywatch' puts the UK Islamic Medical Association under the microscope.

Last month the BMJ ran a rather damning expose of the Christian Medical Fellowship (an organisation which appears to have been hijacked by conservative Christians and used as a vehicle for pushing their increasingly extreme points of view on medical matters). This month it targets the UK's Islamic Medical Association who have equally wacky ideas on issues like vaccination. Their spokesman states:

...that he wants to promote a debate on the practice of vaccination in general. He has also urged British Muslims not to give their children vaccines such as that for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), because they contain substances that make them un-Islamic. He alleged that almost all vaccines contain “haraam” (forbidden) derivatives of animal or human tissue and that Muslim parents were better off letting children’s immune systems develop on their own.

Other medical practices are apparently not to be encouraged by Muslim doctors, such as giving condoms to unmarried persons, and the organisation sees its mandates as "joining actively the Pro-life campaign in Britain" and "Joining the campaign against the adding of Fluoride to our drinking water" (see http://www.islamicmedicine.org/imaUK.doc). 

The article notes that the British Medical Association and GMC have learned of Muslim students who are refusing to learn about alcohol related illness or sexually transmitted disease as it offends their religious beliefs and that "A small number were also reported to be refusing to treat patients of the opposite sex."

I guess that would at least shorten ward rounds by about half. Makes the Christian Medical Fellowship look almost moderate in its views. (OK, not really).

Genital mutilation of boys in Oxford for religious reasons

A research paper in the Journal of Public Health finds that 13 of 32 genital mutilations ('circumcisions') carried out for religious reasons on teenage boys by the Oxford Islamic community led to complications, including infections, urethral scarring and severe bleeding.

For these reasons, the NHS is urged to conduct mutilation under controlled circumstances, by well trained doctors in sterile conditions (rather than in the library of a faith school as some of these coerced and botched operations were performed).

Perhaps other health endangering practices of religion would benefit from controlled medical supervision. Female genital cutting, by which 8000 clitoridectomies, labial excisions or vaginal inibulations conducted throughout the world everyDAY (WHO report) should perhaps be conducted by doctors rather than by untrained mutilators who generally do not use sterile technique or anaesthetic. Stonings would no doubt be more humane if conducted under general anesthetic or at least victim sedation; medical checks on the child bride victims of public floggings (caution: link contains graphic violence) for running away from their husbands would certainly help safety of such events. As it's in the news, would not the Srebrenica massacre (perpetrated by Christians against Muslims for the VERY REASON that they were Muslims) have been far more palatable if 7000 lethal injections had been used instead of the far less clinical method of tearing up bodies with machine guns?

Benefits to the person (an 8 year old boy not having to be held down whilst his penis is mutilated under local anaesthetic which is a method of anaesthesia suitable only for Jewish newborn circumcision) whilst admittedly persuasive, are far outweighed by upholding the principle and practice of a faith-blind socialised health service that does not conspire to give respectibility to inherently unrespectable practices and ideas. That health services should assist in genital mutilation, or indeed assist in or mitigate the perpetration of any religious atrocity, is a notion as obscene as the acts themselves.