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No need to circumcise most boys

Doctor says routine circumcision of baby boys is wrong

Date published: 11/13/2005

FOR THOSE OF YOU who read my last column and the letters to the editor that followed, you already know that my comments about anti-circumcision demonstrators at the recent American Academy of Pediatrics meeting in D.C. were not well received.

My column was about SIDS prevention, but I slipped in a little joke about the demonstrators being mostly "graying hippies" and having bumper stickers like, "Not Circumcised? You Lucky Stiff!"

While I was trying to be funny, and make light of the controversy at our conference, I apparently offended people all over the U.S. and Canada. And all this for a column that wasn't even about circumcision. Obviously, people feel very strongly about this issue.

The funny thing is, I agree with the demonstrators. I don't think circumcision should be routinely performed on newborns.

I don't do circumcisions. I was trained to, and had to do them while still in the Navy. But in our area, unlike where I trained in California, Ob/Gyn doctors perform most circumcisions. Even if they didn't, I still would not perform them.

Like the demonstrators, I believe that removing a healthy body part for cosmetic reasons is not appropriate. Well, let me rephrase that, because I have no problem at all with liposuction in a consenting adult. But in most cases of neonatal circumcision, we're talking about a helpless newborn losing a very sensitive part of the body for no good medical reason. Certainly there are religious reasons for some families--more on that later.

In the U.S., most people who choose to circumcise their newborns do it so that the penis looks "normal" and so that it will be cleaner. Neither of these reasons is valid. Isn't the "normal" penis the one that God created? Whatever happened to, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" In fact, 80 percent to 85 percent of the world's male population is not circumcised. So that is more "normal."

I hear fathers say they worry that if their son does not have it done, he'll wonder why he doesn't look like his dad. Well, that is just as easy to explain as questions like, "Dad, why do you have hair there and I don't?" Or, "Dad, why do you have blue eyes and I have brown eyes?"

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Date published: 11/13/2005