Experts have criticised "serious weaknesses" in medical guidance which permits religious and cultural circumcision on boys.
Professionals in academic, legal and medical fields have called for the UK's largest doctors' union to change their "permissive" stance on non-therapeutic male circumcision on infants and children, in a journal article published this month.
The authors said they are "not aware" of any other non-therapeutic invasive procedures on children involving "significant harm" that the BMA treats as "ethically neutral".
Right said!
The guidance has the effect of tilting parents' personal, religious and cultural preferences for circumcising their child against the child's best interests.
The BMA says it is committed to non-discrimination in terms of sex. But the guidance "undermines this commitment by affording differential protection to children on the basis of sex" because it does not apply the same protections afforded to girls from genital cutting (female genital mutilation, or FGM) to boys.
The guidance states without any supportive evidence that male infant circumcision "does not require medical expertise". The article explains how this "contradicts the BMA's own exposition of the numerous clinical, anesthetic and hygiene standards required of a doctor carrying out the procedure."...
he BMA says it "cannot envisage a situation where it is ethically acceptable to circumcise a child…who refuses", but does not offer the same ethical judgment on circumcision on neonates who are "even more vulnerable" than children who can speak.
Alss ob das nur Neugeborene beträfe!
Als ob Kinder (also unterhalb ca. 14 Jahren) überhaupt auch nur die geringste Chance hätten, sich gegen eine medizinisch nicht notwendige OP zu wehren!
Ich weiß das aus eigener Erfahrung. Ich wurde mit zehn auf Drängen meiner Mutter einer völlig überflüssigen OP unterzogen. Meine Schwester, vier Jahre älter sollte auch unters Messer. Aber sie hat energischen Widerstand geleistet, erfolgreich.
Mit zehn kann man das noch nicht. Deswegen war die Forderung nach dem "Vetorecht" des Ethikrats auch völliger Kappes. Wenn sonst das Leben oder die Gesundheit des Kindes in Gefahr sind, muss operiert werden - ob das dem Kind schmeckt oder die Eltern dagegen sind ist unerheblich. Nicht medizinisch notwendige oder aufschiebbare OPs an Kindern gehören ausnahmslos verboten.
The article warned that the BMA's guidance would, if applied to female genital cutting, yield the conclusion that cutting healthy tissue from a non-consenting child's vulva "could permissibly be performed if the parents request it for cultural or religious reasons".
https://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2022/07/e…on-circumcision
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/14777509221104703