German court bans circumcision of young boys

zeggman said:
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Obviously they do: repairing a harelip is a cosmetic body modification.

Since it's a surgery, and no surgery is free of risk, I'm sure there are probably tales of unfortunate complications which resulted from those too.

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A cleft lip and pallet is an abnormality that can prevent a child from speaking, eating, breathing and so on. It is corrected because of all the health problems not for cosmetic reasons.
 
jdp said:
You have not established that. You've established that some believe circumcision has some marginal prophylactic value not therapeutic value. Unless you believe that most boys are born with diseased or deformed foreskins.
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Therapeutic, adj., pertaining to results obtained from treatment.

Therapeutic exercise - exercise for the purpose of preventing muscular atrophy...

Therapeutic anticoagulant - the use of anticoagulants to decrease the tendency of the blood to coagulate and cause thrombosis

(from Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary)

So "therapeutic" is not used solely to describe the correction of an existing diseased or deformed condition, but to describe the prevention of an undesirable condition (muscular atrophy, thrombosis, increased susceptibility to urinary tract infections, etc.) Q.E.D.

jdp said:
Typically social pressure and not knowing what the normal, healthy, body part looks like. Also a medical community who are not willing to stand up to parents.
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Sounds like the sort of thing that education would address.
 
Darat said:
A cleft lip and pallet is an abnormality that can prevent a child from speaking, eating, breathing and so on. It is corrected because of all the health problems not for cosmetic reasons.
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My example is confined to the most minor cleft lip conditions, and does not involve cleft palate at all.

The condition does not prevent a child from speaking, eating, or breathing. It simply prevents him from looking like other children. It is "corrected" purely for cosmetic reasons.
 
zeggman said:
My example is confined to the most minor cleft lip conditions, and does not involve cleft palate at all.
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Your argument means nothing when you don't even know the correct medical terminology for whatever the hell you are trying to say (which appears to be nothing). If what you are trying to refer to is a microform cleft lip then LEARN what a microform cleft lip actually is.

It seems that actor Joaquin Phoenix had surgery for microform cleft lip and he's hot as hell. Again, back to the original argument; what a guy's knob looks like doesn't matter at all. I've been with both "Sargent Schultz" and guys without the helmet. All that I cared about was how they treated me and that they didn't snore too much. As for everything else, it was all good either way.
 
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And an abnormality that is so minor that it is purely cosmetic can indeed be the subject of an informed discussion as to whether it might be best for the child to do anything. Such abnormalities are often left alone.

You need to understand that therapeutic and prophylactic are two quite different terms in medical discourse. This is a medical discourse. Anything done to a healthy patient with the intent of preventing disease is prophylactic. It is not therapeutic. Anything done purely for appearance is neither, it is cosmetic.

Circumcision is a cosmetic body modification dressed up as prophylactic by those who seem to get their rocks off mutilating newborn infants in the same way they themselves were mutilated.

Rolfe.
 
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zeggman said:
.;..snip...

The condition does not prevent a child from speaking, eating, or breathing. It simply prevents him from looking like other children. It is "corrected" purely for cosmetic reasons.
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You are mistaken, a cleft lip causes major problems with speech and eating and especially with drinking.
 
I was thinking, do I know anyone who is circumcised. I guess I do, because several of my good friends are Jewish men.

I remember a conversation at a reading group meeting at someone's house. For some reason Peter had never realised that Marcus was Jewish. Don't know how because I knew, but unlike Peter, Marcus didn't have a recognisably Jewish surname. Marcus confirmed that yes, he was indeed Jewish. (Well, of a Jewish family - most of that group aren't actively religious.) Then Peter said, you mean you're....? Pregnant pause. Marcus agreed that yes, indeed, he also was.... Another pregnant pause.

Both men did a sort of roll-eyes heavenward, as if bonding in a "well, what can you do?" moment.

It was quite striking really. I didn't get the impression it was no big deal, that's for sure.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
And an abnormality that is so minor that it is purely cosmetic can indeed be the subject of an informed discussion as to whether it might be best for the child to do anything. Such abnormalities are often left alone.
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Of course. And sometimes a cleft lip is fused anyway, and sometimes teeth are pulled and straightened anyway, and sometimes a foreskin is removed anyway.

And in each case it's something the doctor and parents can decide perfectly well without your consent or mine.
 
Darat said:
You are mistaken, a cleft lip causes major problems with speech and eating and especially with drinking.
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That may be true in some cases. The fact that I can pull my upper lip to the tip of my nose and speak, eat, and especially drink with no problems is all the evidence I need that it is certainly not true in all cases.
 
And if the parents wanted to pull out the baby's toenails because they thought it would look better and besides it might protect against athlete's foot, would you be OK with that too?

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
And if the parents wanted to pull out the baby's toenails because they thought it would look better and besides it might protect against athlete's foot, would you be OK with that too?
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There you go again, dredging up completely irrelevant parallels.
 
Why is that irrelevant? Just because it isn't fashionable?

It's an irreversible body modification of a part that isn't usually on display, which probably doesn't cause significant loss of function, and it's arguable that it might be prophylactic against some diseases in future.

It's something which would be painful at the time, but which would heal up looking reasonably OK, especially in a society where is was a common procedure, and the child wouldn't remember it being done.

It's a hell of a lot more relevant than examples involving correction of birth defects.

Rolfe.
 
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Darat said:
You are mistaken, a cleft lip causes major problems with speech and eating and especially with drinking.
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Forget drinking- it makes a proper latch very difficult for a breastfeeding infant. One of my kids had a cleft lip and needed surgery as a newborn he was struggling so hard to nurse, poor little guy.
 
ddt said:
Another difference is that corrective surgery on a cleft lip is actually easier on an infant, whereas circumcision is harder.
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Apparently not:
In general, complications (reported by parents) occur least frequently among neonates and infants than among older boys, with the majority of prospective studies in neonates and infants finding no serious complications, and relatively few other adverse events, which were minor and treatable. The prospective studies in older boys also found virtually no serious adverse events, but a higher frequency of complications (up to 14%) even when conducted by trained providers in sterile settings [47]. The lower frequency of complications among neonates and infants is likely to be attributable to the simpler nature of the procedure in this age group, and the healing capability in the newborn. Further, a major advantage of neonatal circumcision is that suturing is not usually necessary, whereas it is commonly needed for circumcisions in the post-neonatal period. This advantage is illustrated by the US study in which no complications were seen among 98 boys circumcised in the first month of life, but 30% of boys aged 3-8.5 months had significant postoperative bleeding [24].
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Our systematic review was restricted to circumcision complications among boys aged 12 years or under. However, there are several published studies of circumcision complications among adolescent and adult men (Table 6) and these indicate a generally higher frequency of complications than seen in neonates, infants and children.
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Is pulling deciduous teeth to effect the reorganization of the non-deciduous teeth mutitlation?
 
mijopaalmc said:
Is pulling deciduous teeth to effect the reorganization of the non-deciduous teeth mutitlation?
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I would say yes, but it's done FOR A REASON. Circumcision is still routinely performed for no other reason than social convention. zeggman keeps bringing up cleft lips, dental surgery, etc. as though it's an apt analogy, but it's not. Parents don't blithely rip out teeth and have surgery performed on their children for no reason (at least I hope not) yet circumcision is still done for no better reason than "well, everybody else does it"
 
zeggman said:
Your rules.
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Yes, his rules. Society's rules. Parental control isn't a license to do whatever you want to your child. Wouldn't you have a problem with me piercing the ears of my newborn son and tattooing his back with "born to raise hell"? That's how some of us view circumcision. I'm sincerely glad that you have no problem with yours; as a matter of fact, neither do I. But a five day old infant never has a choice, does he?
 
TheGoldcountry said:
I would say yes, but it's done FOR A REASON. Circumcision is still routinely performed for no other reason than social convention. zeggman keeps bringing up cleft lips, dental surgery, etc. as though it's an apt analogy, but it's not. Parents don't blithely rip out teeth and have surgery performed on their children for no reason (at least I hope not) yet circumcision is still done for no better reason than "well, everybody else does it"
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Well, circumcision is ostensibly done for reasons other than tradition and aesthetic value.

The point is that parents are often presented with decisions that they are not qualified to make and therefore depend on the opinions of people the consider to be experts. Sometimes, their children find out that the procedures their parents subjected them to are unnecessary, but the term "mutilation" is not uniformly applied these procedures.
 
mijopaalmc said:
Well, circumcision is ostensibly done for reasons other than tradition and aesthetic value.

The point is that parents are often presented with decisions that they are not qualified to make and therefore depend on the opinions of people the consider to be experts. Sometimes, their children find out that the procedures their parents subjected them to are unnecessary, but the term "mutilation" is not uniformly applied these procedures.
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I can understand if parents have a legitimate concern about their baby's health, but I have spoken to my own mother and other parents from that generation and they have said that "that's just what you did back then". Circumcision was almost uniformly done for no other reason other than some kind of social expectation. They didn't have interviews discussing the pros and cons; they asked you "do you want your son circumcised?" and the standard response was "well sure, everybody else does it, right?"
 
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