Radio 4 on male circumcision

Antony Lempert, head of the Secular Medical Forum, spoke on Broadcasting House this morning on Radio 4 (listen right at end of programme). The programme broadcast the cries of a 8 day old infant being circumcised (under anaesthetic).  

A Muslim boy cries as a doctor performs a circumcision on him. Photograph: Stoyan Nenov/Reuters. Picture from guardian.co.uk detailing the charity Norm-UK who, addressing a conference on the physical and psychological consequences of male circumcision at Keele University, encouraged parents to wait to circumcise their children until they were old enough to give consent.

Over 30,000 male circumcisions are performed in the UK each year (in a ritual ceremony 8 days after birth for children of Jewish parents, and at approximately 7 years of age for children of Muslim parents) with complications ranging from severe bleeding, urethral scarring, infection, and in rare cases, death (see Williams, N & Kapila L. Complications of circumcision British Journal of Surgery Volume 80, Issue 10, pages 1231–1236, October 1993 DOI: 10.1002/bjs.1800801005).

Dr. Lempert spoke on the programme about this study in the BJU International which shows that 'circumcision ablates the most sensitive parts of the penis'; indeed, in circumcised males, the circumcision scar is the most sensitive part left of the penis.

The programme noted that the procedure does not have to be carried out by a doctor, or indeed with any anaesthetic. I blog here about a research paper in the Journal of Public Health which found 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. They were conducted by non-doctors (local religious leaders and others) in the library of a faith school.

The BMA still refuses to tackle this issue. There is going to be a demonstration Monday 27th June 2011 outside the BMA Annual Representatives Meeting who refuse to debate Motion 310 and encourage representatives to choose it as one of five additional motions for debate. Motion 310 asks the BMA to endorse the 2010 position of the Royal Dutch Medical Association which calls non-therapeutic genital surgery on male minors a violation of the boy's rights to autonomy and to physical integrity.

I find our differential attitudes to male circumcision and female genital mutilation peculiar, as if the less severe injury to males somehow makes us ignore the fact we are still cutting a child's genitals. Mutilating the genitals of non-consenting children as a result of their parent's faith is not something with which doctors should collude.

Summer holidays: Peak time for female genital mutilation of UK schoolgirls

According to this Guardian report and video (warning: shocking images), up to 2000 British schoolgirls will be taken abroad to undergo female genital mutilation this summer. Summer holidays are the peak time as the girls have to have their legs bound together for several weeks afterwards.

Like any 12-year-old, Jamelia was excited at the prospect of a plane journey and a long summer holiday in the sun. An avid reader, she had filled her suitcases with books and was reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when her mother came for her. "She said, 'You know it's going to be today?' I didn't know exactly what it would entail but I knew something was going to be cut. I was made to believe it was genuinely part of our religion."

Perhaps it's insensitive of me to criticise this practice, and it's about time I became a convert to ethical anti-universalism.

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.