Intact America Demands American Academy of Pediatrics Retract its New Technical Report

Press release here. Excerpt:

'Intact America demands that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) retract its Technical Report released today* extolling the benefits of neonatal male circumcision. According to Georganne Chapin, founding executive director of Intact America, the Report disregards pediatricians’ ethical obligations to their patients and promotes the benefits of circumcision through a selective and self-serving literature review. Further, by calling for public and private insurance payments for medically unnecessary circumcision, the Report promotes pediatricians’ self interest, at the cost of the safety and wellbeing of newborn baby boys and the men they will become. The Report, written by the AAP’s Task Force on Circumcision, is to go before the AAP membership at its October meeting in New Orleans. It stops short of recommending circumcision, even as it claims the surgery’s benefits outweigh the risks, and calls for parents to be the ultimate decision-makers.

The AAP Technical Report says, “Although health benefits are not great enough to recommend routine circumcision for all male newborns, the benefits of circumcision are sufficient to justify access to this procedure for families choosing it and to warrant third-party payment for circumcision of male newborns.” In an apparent contradiction, the Report also admits that “the true incidence of complications after newborn circumcision are (sic) unknown” making all the more remarkable the Task Force’s assertion that the surgery’s “health benefits… outweigh the risks,” and that if parents ask for it, insurers should pay for it.'