violates all seven principles of the American Medical Associations code of ethics, charges George Denniston, M.D., a Seattle physician and founder of Doctors Opposing Circumcision. By definition its not even surgery. Surgery is removal of diseased tissue, or a repair of some kind. Nonsense, says Edgar Schoen, M.D., director of perinatal screening at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in California, and an outspoken proponent of circumcision. There are numerous medical reasons for it. This pro and con argument has been raging in the medical community for almost three decades. Meanwhile, the circumcisions continue.The doctor enters the room, scrubs his hands in the sink, and snaps on plastic gloves. The nurse passes him a package, and he opens it on the counter beside the child. Inside are several large, light blue cloth napkins; some squares of gauze; a squeeze-tube of Betadine (an antiseptic ointment); and an assortment of stainless-steel utensils: a pair of scissors, two hemostats (small needle-nose pliers), a heavy metal clamp attached to a hollow cone, a scalpel handle, and a scalpel in a sterile packet.If youre like most American men, youre circumcised. But you probably havent given it any thought since junior high school, when you first noticed that not every kid in the locker room looked the same. In fact, if youre single or childless now, you may think that its purely a father/son issue of little concern to you. Think again. Circumcision removes one-third to one-half of the skin on the penile shaft, says Ronald Goldman, Ph.D., executive director of the Circumcision Resource Center in Boston and author of Circumcision: The Hidden Trauma. The average circumcision cuts off what would grow into about 12 square inches of sexually sensitive skin.According to Canadian pathologist John Taylor, M.B., the foreskin is one of the key erogenous zones of the male body. Its 240 feet of nerves and 1,000 nerve endings are similar to those on the ...
