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$4.6 Million awarded for botched circumcision 7/18/2011

http://www.presstelegram.com/ci_18500080?source=rss_viewed

 

Hall case:  a 4.6 million USD settlement approved by Los Angeles judge on 7/18/2011 based on a circumcision:

 

There is a lack of information given to parents in the process of consenting them for elective circumcisions of infant boys.  I have read that as a result of settlements like this one the manufacturer of the Mogen clamp is now bankrupt and out of business.  The relevant information parents need is in the model consent form on the NOCIRC website as follows:  http://www.nocirc.org/consent/form.php

 

Most clinical/hospital circumcisions of newborns in the USA are now done using the Gomco clamp.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO) ablation (amputation) of the glans penis is also an adverse clinical outcome using the Gomco clamp despite training and practice in its use.

 

Melanie Hall’s statement after settlement (mother):

“I hope this case helps prevent this from happening to anyone else and that that warnings will be given people to let them know what could occur,” said Hall, a single parent with one other son.

Browne Greene’s statement after settlement (child’s attorney):

“In the process of this litigation, we also have exposed a danger to children which we hope to eradicate by the effects of this litigation and settlement,” Greene said.

 

Child:

No statement from the child (now 8 years old) is quoted in the press report.   He is under continual psychiatric care.  85% of his glans penis was amputated in elective surgery at 1 week of age by Dr. Anthony Pickett using a Mogen clamp. 

Corrupt NPR Editorial Policy

We are looking at corrupt NPR editorial practice here folks.

  http://www.npr.org/2011/06/27/137442660/sub-saharan-africa-adopts-circumcision-program

I believe that NPR presents pro-circumcision propaganda because its editorial content caters to Bill Gates, a major NPR contributor and a major financial backer of African circumcision programs. 

A coincidence?  I do not think so.  We subscribers to NPR affiliate stations are small fish compared to the powerful Bill Gates.

Sub-Saharan Africa Adopts Circumcision Program

NPR June 27, 2011 Morning edition

 http://www.npr.org/2011/06/27/137442660/sub-saharan-africa-adopts-circumcision-program

Last September 9th the NPR ombudsman acknowledged that previous NPR coverage of circumcision had a pro-circumcision bias.  Consequently I should not have been surprised that the coverage on this morning’s program was so blatantly biased that it sounded like an unedited Operation Abraham press release.  There was neither one word about controversy surrounding circumcision nor any hint that the scientific basis for circumcision in HIV prevention is dubious.  Your September 9th acknowledgement of bias was not an apology, so your commitment to biased reporting is an established habit.  After decades of support for NPR affiliates I assure you that my support of your irresponsible broadcasting ended today.  You can be a mouthpiece for pro-circumcision propaganda on somebody else’s dime.

Denver Post, June 22, 2011

Denver Post

Article Discussion: Medicaid will stop covering circumcision

by tabrizkeshan on Today, 3:34 pm

Is it not a human rights violation to strap a baby boy down and cut off half the skin of his primary sex organ? Supposed benefits have been debunked time after time, but people who have a fetish to cut baby boys penises can never be convinced that what makes them happy is of no benefit to the baby, and it is obviously incredibly painful. The idea that somebody with a sharp knife can improve on the sex organ designed by G*d (or by eons of evolution) is obviously blasphemy against G*d (or ignorance of science). Circumcision is a crude, brutal, act that traumatizes the baby. Please, take about 4 minutes of your time so you will actually know what we are talking about: http://www.givingbirthnaturally.com/circumcision-video.html

Why Circumcision Does NOT Slow the Spread of HIV.

http://www.4eric.org/why-circumcision-does-not-slow-the-spread-of-hiv/

Lots of good data in the above reference.  Those circumcision trials in Africa were obviously flawed, and in so many ways.  I have read in a credible source that the HIV strain in Africa is not the same as the one in the USA, which in many ways makes it a different disease.  I need to document that source for you.

The file drawer problem and medical research:

An HIV research problem is what is known as the ‘file drawer problem’ in biomedical research.  Results that support the funding agencies and researchers’ original theories are submitted for publication and widely disseminated, studies that fail to back up those preceptions go into the file drawer, never to see the light of day.  The problem is that if an idea is wrong but strongly held, then it will be studied again and again until somebody, on the basis of chance alone, gets results that look good enough to publish

Check out who funded the research in judging its objectivity:

Many years ago I was on my way to teach a graduate research methods health science seminar, and on the way to class I saw a headline in a newspaper dispenser:  Male Balding Associated With Heart Attacks.  I like to start every class with a joke, it gets people’s attention in a gentle way, so I said:  “That was the headline, and what do you want to bet that the study was funded by Monoxidil?”  My point was that researchers tend to find what they are looking for.  It turned out that I had guessed correctly, that study was funded by the makers of Monoxidil!  (Who would think that an exogenous treatment for baldness could alter a man’s heart attach risk?)  OK, Now:  who was it that invested in the results of the African HIV research?  My point is this:  Beware of conflicts of interest when making policy decisions based on research finding.

My mind is boggeled today.

Please help me understand this: 

You live in the last civilized nation on earth where new parents routinely order that half the skin be cut off the penis of their newborn baby boys, who are strapped down and operated on without anesthesia and without regard to preservation of adjacent structures like the frenulum, leaving a 360 degree open wound around the corona and a short tube of penis sheath skin attached only to the abdomen.  Then the cutters wrap these remains of the baby’s penis in gauze smeared with Vaseline, and then they pack this bloody mess into a diaper with urine and feces.   And don’t 100% of these baby boys suffer both immediate and long-term adverse consequences of this unnecessary surgery?  And don’t hundreds of them die from pain, shock, hemorrhaging, infection, and other adverse consequences for whom the actual cause of death, circumcision, is obscured and hidden to protect the guilty and preserve this bizarre ritual mutilation?

And isn’t the healthy baby penis tissue amputated from these boys “disposed of in accordance with hospital policy”, which means sold in the marketplace for use in women’s cosmetics and other commercial purposes?

And you cannot outlaw this ritualized mutilation of helpless innocent baby boys because some of your countrymen believe that thousands of years ago their tribal ancestor was ordered to mutilate baby boys on the eighth day after their birth by an imaginary all-powerful fairy in the sky? 

And I spend hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours trying to persuade parents of baby boys to stop amputating parts off their penises?  Am I nuts, or what? 

http://www.icgi.org/2010/04/infant-circumcision-causes-100-deaths-each-year-in-us/

Scholarly and Well Reasoned Position Paper on MGM

Impressive debunking of the stinkiest pro-circ bunkum can be found here, check it out:

http://www.canadiancrc.com/Circumcision_Genital_Mutilation_Male-Female_Children.aspx

Women’s Standing to Have an Opinion about Circumcision

Again today I read a pro-circumciser’s challenge to a woman who questioned the value of circumcision.  He told her that because she does not have a penis she had no standing to have an opinion or to voice it in the debate.  He was about as wrong as he could be.

If you have to have one to have an opinion about it, it just now struck me that the pro-circumciser has no foreskin.  So by his own logic he has no standing to have an opinion about foreskin yes or no. 

Circumcision always removes 30% to 80% of the penis’ skin and ancillary structures, always entirely destroying the frenar band and other highly enervated and sensitive penile structures, usually wasting the frenulum, and always reduces or destroys shaft skin mobility.  The damage from a successful circumcision amputation of the foreskin is serious, extensive, and has lifelong effects.  From this knowledge, as an intact man of more than 72 years standing, I extrapolate this simple fact:  once circumcised, no man can fully experience what life is like with a foreskin.

Even for men circumcised in adulthood, recall is at best an unreliable anecdote about the facts.  After the most sensitive male tissues in the prepuce and frenulum are destroyed, the most sensitive place left on the circumcised penis is the scar marking where the sensitive tissues once were. 

It is sad that we are still debating a barbaric practice that should have been abandoned long ago.  And as for women’s qualifications to participate in the debate, I think that it is as absurd to disqualify them, because they have to deal with the lifelong consequences of male genital mutilation the same as men do.  For a brief review of some of these lifelong consequences please see http://intactivists.blogspot.com/2011/05/keratinization-and-circumcision-status_315.html

/s/ tabrizkeshan