It is important that Australian Federal, State and Territory Departments of Health support the human rights of all people, regardless of their age or sex. Infant Male Genital Cutting (IMGC or "circumcision") raises human rights issues. Many men hate that it was done to them before they could resist. Its medical benefits are highly debatable - slight reductions in rare and/or late onset diseases that can be better prevented by other means and/or treated as they occur. In the 1950s, IMGC was nearly universal in Australia and is now done to fewer than one boy in 8. Over the generation that this has happened, men's health has improved and none of the ailments for which it was supposed to be effective have shown any significant increase.



No national medical association in the world (including the American Academy of Paediatrics) recommends IMGC, but the AAP's position was so ambivalent and culturally biased, 38 paediatricians (heads and spokespeople for the paediatric associations of Austria, Britain, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands, and senior paediatricians in Canada, the Czech Republic, France and Poland) were prompted to write a rebuttal to the AAP journal "Paediatrics" which concluded that:



"There is growing consensus among physicians, including those in the United States, that physicians should discourage parents from circumcising their healthy infant boys because non-therapeutic circumcision of underage boys in Western societies has no compelling health benefits, causes postoperative pain, can have serious long-term consequences, constitutes a violation of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, and conflicts with the Hippocratic oath: primum non nocere: First, do no harm".



Resources:

1. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/.../12/peds.2012-2896

2. http://www.circinfo.org/Medicare_circumcision_review.html



Recommendations:



1. Withdraw all support for non-therapeutic infant genital surgery (including circumcisions done for "cultural reasons") from medical facilities in the Federal, State and Territory Departments of Health's charge.



2. Ensure that the non-therapeutic circumcision of minors is not included in Medicare rebates.



3. Ensure that medical students in all teaching hospitals and medical schools are appraised on the structure and functions of the foreskin, and on proper care of normal boys, especially the avoidance of premature forcible foreskin retraction and unnecessary circumcision.