Dear Editor, Thank you for publishing an informative and
awareness-raising article about medically-unnecessary,
non-therapeutic male infant circumcision.
Dear Editor,
Thank you for publishing an informative and awareness-raising article about medically-unnecessary, non-therapeutic male infant circumcision.
Dr. Hudson, who hails from Australia, has retold a story about circumcision to prevent balanitis caused by sand, which is a medical myth. Actually, it is a story manufactured for home consumption. In the 1930s and 1940s, military doctors held the opinion, unsupported by medical evidence, that circumcision would prevent the contraction of sexually transmitted disease. The British and Anzac soldiers who fought in the western desert frequently were circumcised to prevent contracting disease in Egyptian brothels.
A story was necessary to tell the family at home why the male came home from the war circumcised. The German and Italian soldiers fought in the same desert, but their military doctors did not find it necessary to circumcise them.
A recent cost-utility study found that non-therapeutic male neonatal circumcision has an overall adverse effect on health.
The statistics reported in your story are accurate for 1999, but the incidence of circumcision has continued to decline across America.
New figures derived from raw data from the National Hospital Discharge Survey show that in 2003 (the most recent available year) the incidence of circumcision in the four census regions was as follows:
Northeast 64.7%
North Central 77.8%
Southern 57.7%
Western 31.4%
All Regions 55.9%
The popularity of circumcision is declining everywhere and non-circumcision has become the norm in the western U.S., and in Florida and North Carolina. One anticipates further declines in popularity throughout the U.S. Non-circumcision (or intactness) may already be the norm among the newborn, but we won’t know until we get the statistics.
George Hill,
Bioethicist Executive Secretary,
Doctors Opposing Circumcision,
Seattle, Wash
