Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
This month's issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics is a special issue devoted entirely to the ethics of infant male circumcision—an elective surgical practice that is currently performed on around a third of the world's male population.1
The last time the Journal ran a symposium on this issue was in 2004, and there has been relatively scant discussion of the practice in the ethical literature since then. Three events that took place in the past year have brought the ethics of infant male circumcision back into the global spotlight.
First, in April of 2012, controversy erupted after it was reported that a baby had died in New York City after contracting Herpes Simplex virus during the Orthodox Jewish variant of circumcision known as metzitzah b'peh, which involves the oral suction of blood from the infant's penis following the circumcision procedure.2
Later that year, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a policy statement which suggested that the health benefits of ordinary forms of male circumcision outweigh the risks and …
Linked Articles
- Current controversies
- Current controversies
- Current controversies
- Current controversies
- Current controversies
- Current controversies
- Current controversies
- Current controversies
- Feature article
- Commentary
Other content recommended for you
- Infant circumcision: the last stand for the dead dogma of parental (sovereignal) rights
- The child's interests and the case for the permissibility of male infant circumcision
- Female genital alteration: a compromise solution
- Veracity and rhetoric in paediatric medicine: a critique of Svoboda and Van Howe's response to the AAP policy on infant male circumcision
- Ancient rites and new laws: how should we regulate religious circumcision of minors?
- A covenant with the status quo? Male circumcision and the new BMA guidance to doctors
- Male or female genital cutting: why ‘health benefits’ are morally irrelevant
- The development of professional guidelines on the law and ethics of male circumcision
- Value judgment, harm, and religious liberty
- Out of step: fatal flaws in the latest AAP policy report on neonatal circumcision