How many of these cases will we need before we realize that healthy children should not be surgically altered? (Originally from the Canadian Pediatrics and Child Health Journal’s April issue – pdf.)
Ontario’s chief coroner, Jim Cairns, details how the child, 7 days old, was brought to a doctor for a circumcision in 2006. The doctor used a PlastiBell ring. Local anaesthetic was not used.
I’ll spare the details, but the baby boy died from complications seven days after the PlastiBell was applied to his penis to unnecessarily remove his previously healthy foreskin. When people advertise all of the potential medical benefits from infant circumcision, they tell a woefully incomplete story. When they advertise the surgery as having only minor, rare complications, they lie. Again, how many boys must die unnecessarily to serve a utilitarian dream of risk-free society?
From the article:
Dr. Cairns writes that in canvassing colleagues, he found a number of complications following circumcision in Canada, including:
– two children with necrosis or death of tissue in the penis
– two infants requiring transfusions
– one baby with a buried penis following to a circumcision
– a number of infants with complications related to the use of devices to perform the circumcisions.Yet none of these complications were reported in the medical literature and so are not publicly available for study or for review.
On that last point, I don’t wonder why. Denial helps avoid the inevitable guilt when realizing that society allows and encourages this abomination.
Link via Clara.
You can find more information on the PlastiBell ring from its make, Hollister.
Hollister Incorporated is an independently-owned global company that develops, manufactures and markets healthcare products, servicing over 90 countries. From the earliest days of our company, there has been a strong sense of community—a connection to people. That connection is embedded in the very fabric of our company, and as we continue to develop new products and services, we are focused on meeting the healthcare needs of people throughout the global community.
Routine infant circumcision is not a “healthcare need”. While I’m sure Hollister feels it is serving the health care community, I don’t understand how making a product that violates the human rights of every single patient who has that product attached to his penis conforms to Hollister’s mission “that the ethical way is the only way to conduct our business.”
From the linked news story:
I love how the writer naively assumes that the media would’ve dutifully reported this boy’s death if only his parents had been willing to talk.
The fact is that mainstream newspapers rarely report cases where children are killed or seriously injured by circumcision, and television almost never does.
The only exception is the David Reimer tragedy, but even then, the coverage focused almost exclusively on his disastrous gender reassignment while barely acknowledging the reason he was forced to undergo that reassignment.
I remember watching one report (I think it was on ABC’s 20/20) that simply said that Reimer had been the victim of a “surgical accident” without ever mentioning the word “circumcision”.
Overheard on the Internet
Anyone who follows discussion of circumcision on the Internet will encounter regular moments of an overwhelming desire to hate mankind. It’s impossible to avoid. People are so devoid of any logic or consideration for the child that disgust is the…