Media Contact: Bob Liff at 917-438-4628, bliff@mrss.com
M+R Strategic Services
INTACT AMERICA LAUNCHES CAMPAIGN TO CHANGE THE WAY THE NATION THINKS ABOUT MALE CIRCUMCISION
SORAYA MIRÉ, SOMALI WOMAN WHO FIGHTS TO END FORCED FEMALE CIRCUMCISION, JOINS CAMPAIGN TO PROMOTE INTACT BODIES FOR INFANT BOYS
PAINFUL, RISKY REMOVAL OF HEALTHY FUNCTIONING TISSUE VIOLATES HUMAN RIGHTS OF BABY BOYS WHO CANNOT GIVE INFORMED CONSENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JUNE 22, 2009
A group of parents, pediatricians, health activists, and human rights
attorneys today announced the launch of a nationwide campaign to change
the way America thinks about male circumcision, arguing that painful
and medically unnecessary surgery to remove healthy genital tissue from
non-consenting baby boys violates medical ethics and human rights.
Intact America – which unveiled its informational and advocacy website (www.intactamerica.org)
at a Manhattan press conference – was joined by Soraya Miré, the Somali
filmmaker and activist who has become a global leader in the fight
against forced female circumcision.
"The same universal human right to an intact body that I have fought
for on behalf of women and girls must apply to boys as well, especially
those who are too young to make an informed decision about the
integrity of their bodies," said Miré. "We need to ask ourselves: How
can it be wrong to surgically alter the genitals of a baby girl without
her consent but okay to surgically alter the genitals of a baby boy?"
The Intact America campaign kickoff comes at a time when the Centers
for Disease Control is reviewing studies of adult African male
circumcision in the context of the HIV epidemic in Africa, with the
goal of developing a recommendation to be released here in the United
States.
"Studies of adult men in Africa cannot be used to justify subjecting
non-consenting American baby boys to irreversible surgery that will
remove healthy tissue from their genitals for the rest of their lives,"
said Georganne Chapin, Executive Director of Intact America. "Let young
men make decisions about their own bodies, when they reach an age to
make that decision for themselves."
"Before subjecting their newborn sons to painful, risky and
irreversible genital surgery that is medically unnecessary, parents
should ask themselves if they would do the same to their daughters,"
said Chapin.
Chapin was also joined at the press conference by two physicians –
Dr. Robert Van Howe, a pediatrician, from Marquette, MI, and his wife
Dr. Michelle Storms, a family practice physician and Assistant
Professor at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine.
"Physicians have an obligation to look after the well-being of their
patients. The child is the patient, not the parent. Neonatal
circumcision is definitely not in the patients' best interest," said
Dr. Van Howe, noting that the surgery yields more harm than benefit for
the baby boy who cannot give informed consent. "It is a violation of
the child's most basic human rights, and a violation of a physician's
oath to do no harm."
"As an adult, I can say yes or no based on informed consent," said Dr. Van Howe. "An infant obviously cannot do that."
Dr. Storms, who is also Research Director in the Family Medicine
Residency Program at the MSU medical college, said she stopped
performing circumcisions in 1988 when she could not ignore the fact
that there was no medical justification for the surgery.
"I realized I was cutting off healthy tissue from a baby that
couldn't say no," said Dr. Storms. "I wasn't treating or diagnosing
disease. It violated my sense of ethics and everything I was taught in
medical school about my obligation to heal the sick and do no harm."
"Clearly, circumcision is harming these infants," Storms said. "Physicians should just say no to neonatal circumcision."
Dean Pisani, a Texas businessman, made a $1 million commitment to
assist Intact America's campaign after he and his wife, who did not
know the gender of their children before their births, were pressured
by his wife's obstetrician and doctors in Illinois hospitals to perform
a circumcision if they had a son.
"My wife and I did our research and could find no rational or
persuasive argument to subject a baby to surgery that had no medical
benefit," said Pisani. "We came under pressure from doctors prior to
the birth of both of our children, but none could substantiate the
medical necessity to perform the surgery. The pressure from doctors was
both inappropriate and indefensible."
Male circumcision is the most commonly performed surgery on infants in the nation, and one that is medically unnecessary.
The United States is the only industrialized nation (other than
South Korea, which was influenced by the United States in the 1950s)
that continues to circumcise a majority of baby boys for non-religious
reasons, and it also has a higher rate of HIV infection than other
industrialized nations.
If circumcision were an effective means to prevent potential HIV
infection, logic would suggest that the U.S.'s high rate of male
circumcision would yield a lower rate of HIV infection, but it does
not. The only reliable means of preventing sexual transmission of HIV
remains abstinence or use of a condom, not circumcision.
Approximately 75% of the men in the world are not circumcised and
remain intact throughout their lives. Even in America, which continues
to lead the industrialized world in male circumcision of infant boys,
the rate of circumcision has dropped from 85 percent to less than 60
percent as parents learn facts that for years have gone unexamined.
Intact America is working to promote awareness about the normal, intact
body and the value of the male foreskin as a normal, sensitive and
functional part of the body. The foreskin serves to protect the penis
from injury and contamination, and also has a role in sexual pleasure,
due to its specialized nerve endings and its natural lubricating
function.
Doctors began routinely circumcising infant boys in the last decades
of the 19th century, when it was viewed as a means to discourage
masturbation, and the evils that were believed to be associated with
masturbation. Claims over the years that circumcision prevents various
diseases – including, in recent decades, sexually transmitted diseases
– have been found to be mistaken or exaggerated.
The most common method of circumcision involves the infant being
strapped to a board. In some cases, an analgesic is applied to the
baby's pubic area to somewhat lessen the pain, but many circumcisions
are performed with no pain control at all. A metal instrument is used
to forcibly separate the foreskin from the head of the penis, and the
foreskin is then cut off. The surgery takes up to 15 minutes. The open
wound it creates is exposed to urine and feces for several days as it
heals. In addition to pain, the baby is subjected to the potential
complications that accompany any surgery including, as occurs more than
100 times annually, complications leading to death.
Lesser but more common complications include abnormal bleeding,
infection of the penis, scarring resulting from the removal of too much
skin or, in rare cases, removal or subsequent loss of the entire penis.
A case in point occurred recently in Georgia, where a family won a $2.3
million judgment after a botched circumcision accidentally removed a
third of their son's healthy penis.
No professional medical authority recommends routine circumcision as
a medical procedure, including the American Association of Pediatrics,
which has said there are no benefits associated with male circumcision
to justify recommending it.
Sixteen states refuse to cover non-medically-necessary circumcisions
under Medicaid. Nationally, costs related to circumcision exceed $1
billion annually.
Link: INTACT AMERICA LAUNCHES CAMPAIGN TO CHANGE THE WAY THE NATION THINKS ABOUT MALE CIRCUMCISION
Recent Comments