Urgent AAP Petition - sign today

[admin]

Please sign the pettition at: http://www.inaapt.com/

Each signatory results in an e-mail going to:

csc@aap.org [csc@aap.org];
martha.andreas@med.uvm.edu [martha.andreas@med.uvm.edu];
djacobson@aap.org [djacobson@aap.org];
stephen.tauber@wt-group.com [stephen.tauber@wt-group.com];
ahegland@aap.org [ahegland@aap.org];
aapnews-feedback@highwire.stanford.edu;

John Dalton, Norm-UK

[admin]

America's Got Foreskin Issues

On Monday the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) will release a new policy statement which members of their policy task force have hinted will endorse infant circumcision. Supposedly the press can get an advanced copy.

All over Europe and as far away as Australia political and medical groups are backing away from tolerating forced genital cutting. {Germany's PAP: allowing circumcison is "a scandal." Holland's KNMG: infant circumcision has "an absence of medical benefits and danger of complications."} Most of the world does not circumcise and has no special health issues. Human rights group Intact America has issued a statement about the AAP's policy making: http://www.intactamerica.org/pr_082212

Any legitimate policy statement on male infant circumcision would:

- Make clear that waiting for the child's own informed consent at a rational age has very little cost, and the benefit of respecting his basic human right to keep his whole healthy body.

- Make clear that many men forcibly circumcised as infants strongly resent that circumcision, like female genital cutting, alters sexual experience dramatically. Thousands of men are enduring non-surgical foreskin restoration.

- Make clear the exact status of each AAP member responsible for the policy. Is each circumcised or from a family that circumcises for cultural reasons? Has each member (or has anyone in the member's family) performed circumcisions for money?

- Point out that no research has confirmed or refuted Wawer/Gray's 2009 finding that Ugandans they circumcised infected their female partners with deadly HIV 50% more often than the men they left intact did.

- Point out that a very high percentage of circumcision-related research which the policy is based on was published by people from culturally circumcising families.

If the past and their own leaks are any indication, the AAP will miss the mark by a mile. When covering this topic let's leave a little space for discussing how foreskin feels REALLY good and how every male deserves to make his own informed choice.

Cheers,
-Ron Low
President - TLC Tugger Foreskin Restoration
Northbrook, Illinios
847 414-1692

[Chris]

I just signed the petition.


The AAP released a statement in 2010 stating that female circumcision should be allowed. Maybe people are brainwashed into thinking it’s okay to cut boys. But in the US practically everybody knows it’s wrong to do it to girls. But the AAP said it’s okay to circumcise girls anyway. After a public outcry, the AAP was forced to retract their statement. This was all very quiet though, and never made big news, but it did happen.

And this is the organization we are supposed to trust when they tell us to circumcise boys?

[photenman]

The AAP claims that "the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks". Is that right? Their Facebook page is taking a pounding. http://www.facebook.com/AmerAcadPeds. Let them know what you think!

[peterpink]

The comments are excellent. Take some time to read a few hundred. It will restore your faith in humanity - or at least some of the more aware.

[photenman]

AAP Circumcision Policy 'Seriously Flawed', Condemned by Canadian Children's Rights Group. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48798567/#.UDy58NZlRcQ This is a good short critique of the new policy statement.

Yes, the comments on the AAP's Facebook page are overwhelmingly against the AAP and circumcision. I am impressed that people are comfortable publishing their names, and that so many mothers and girls are opposed. The tide of public opinion in the U.S. against circumcision is turning. Maybe it has turned.