LONDON: Doctors criticise new consent guidelines

Secular Medical Forum
April 2, 2013

Secular doctors fear that new GMC guidance conflicts with the equality act.

Secular doctors say new GMC guidance on personal belief and medical practice[i] effective from April 22nd will expose some children to serious harm. Referring to ritual male circumcision, doctors are now instructed that they ‘must include parents’ religious beliefs’[ii] when assessing the child’s best interests. Secular doctors are dismayed that the guidance will support doctors who defer to parents’ insistence that it is in a healthy child’s best interests to undergo forced genital cutting for no medical reason.

Dr Lempert, a GP and chair of the Secular Medical Forum, said: ‘This new guidance conflicts with international medical consensus. Senior representatives of European paediatric associations, including the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons, recently stated[iii] that circumcision "constitutes a violation of the UN convention on the rights of the child’ and can have ‘serious long-term consequences".’

‘The GMC is failing to protect children by not distinguishing between reasonable decisions necessarily made by parents on behalf of children in need of medical care, and parental requests to surgically impose their own religious beliefs on the healthy body of a child unable to give consent.’

‘The guidelines support doctors who collude with parents seeking circumcision for non-medical reasons. Proper child safeguarding procedures should be followed when a parent seeks forced cutting of their child’s genitals. That parents have voluntarily chosen to follow a religion for which circumcision is an obligation is not a sufficient reason to permit the child to be harmed in this way and should form no part of GMC guidance to doctors.’

‘The SMF considers this GMC exception to child safeguarding only for male children subject to forced genital cutting to be of serious concern. According to legal advice received by the SMF, the new guidance incites doctors to breach the 2010 Equality Act.

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‘The SMF calls on the GMC to instruct doctors that the interests and safety of a child must not be overridden by the religious or cultural beliefs of parents. Doctors should be advised that they must not cut into the normal genitalia of a child under any circumstances.’

[i] http://www.gmc-uk.org/Personal_beliefs_and_medical_practice.pdf_51462245.pdf

[ii] http://www.gmc-uk.org/Personal_beliefs_and_medical_practice.pdf_51462245.pdf Paragraph 20

[iii] Pediatrics Vol 131 (4) April 2013

LONDON: Doctors slam MP for pro-circumcision stance

Secular Medical Forum
March 11, 2013

Secular Medical Forum challenges Ed Miliband's support for religious circumcision

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The Secular Medical Forum has condemned Ed Miliband's recent support for the ritual genital cutting of children and called on the labour leader to rethink his stance on the issue.

On 7 March Ed Miliband told an audience in London that he supports the practices of brit milah – a Jewish religious male circumcision ceremony performed on 8-day-old male infants. In reference to ritual circumcision and kosher animal slaughter, the leader of the Labour party said: "These are important traditions … ways of life must be preserved".

The removal of a young boy's foreskin is commonly practised in the UK for religious reasons. The Secular Medical Forum (SMF) argues that the operation disregards autonomy and exposes the child to significant risks, including bleeding, infection and death. In a statement, the SMF said it questioned Mr Miliband's support for the "ethically flawed and medically dangerous" procedure.

Anthony Lempert, Chair of the Secular Medical Forum, said; "The first principle of healthcare is 'primum non nocere – first do no harm'. This guidance is disregarded by supporters of ritual circumcision.

"The Secular Medical Forum calls on Mr Miliband to focus squarely on the rights of vulnerable infants and children. Mr Miliband should prioritise the rights of children rather than harmful religious traditions. Mr Miliband should defend the weak, rather than preserve abusive traditions. He should not be misled by misplaced allegations of anti-semitism against those striving to protect children from harm."

In 2012, a German court caused international controversy when it found that parental consent to religious circumcision was in conflict with the best interests of the child, and ruled that parents do not have the right to circumcise their children without a medical reason. Following the court ruling, the government of Angela Merkel introduced legislation permitting the tradition.

A full statement from the Secular Medical Form can be found here.

BERLIN: Cross party support to legalise cuting (male) baby genitals

Europe Online magazine
July 17, 2012

Cross-party support forms in Germany to back circumcision

By Jean-Baptiste Piggin, Axel Hofmann
Berlin (dpa) - Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s supporters and the main opposition parties are in behind-the-scenes talks to endorse the Muslim and Jewish practice of circumcising boys, insiders said Tuesday.

They are jointly drafting a resolution to be passed on Thursday by the Bundestag, or lower house of parliament, asking the government to overrule a court which ruled last month that circumcision is a form of assault.

There has been an international outcry over the trial of a Muslim doctor, who was let off but told that his circumcision of a young boy had been a crime because the child was too young to give consent.

Merkel‘s government has already said it will introduce legislation that explicitly allows circumcision, but this may take months. The urgent parliamentary resolution is seen as necessary to calm Jewish and Muslim anger on the issue.

Legislators said Merkel‘s Christian Democrats, the Christian Social Union and the Free Democrats (FDP), as well as opposition Social Democrats and Greens, were helping draft the broad resolution.

"Parliament has to do its bit to ensure that the religious beliefs of Muslims and Jews are respected," said Joerg van Essen, the FDP parliamentary whip. "The row shows we have to settle the law as quickly as possible."

Sources said all the parties agreed it was permissible to circumcise boys if the operation was done to a high standard. The resolution would at the same time condemn female circumcision. [Thus it will break the Basic Law 3.2 "Men and women shall have equal rights."] Other details had still to be negotiated.

While some commentators have supported the court ruling, Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that Germany would be a laughing-stock if it became the sole country in the world to ban the practice. [So other countries should ban - or rather, age-restrict - the practice, Dumkopff!]
 

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Reuters
July 17, 2012
... But the court ruling has drawn support from some, including Britain's Secular Medical Forum which has written to Merkel urging her to resist pressure to make non-consensual circumcision lawful.
"EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL"

"We are shocked that religious groups deny the harm (caused by circumcision) and at the distorted and disingenuous claims made by those opposing the court's decision, wrongly suggesting that it is an indication of anti-Semitism," the chairman of the Secular Medical Forum, Dr. Antony Lempert, said in the letter.

"We urge you not to let such emotional blackmail persuade you to change the law or criticise the court's decision. As it stands, the court's decision ensures that today's children will be free to grow up to make their own decisions," it said.

Echoing such comments, Ronald Goldman, head of the U.S.-based Jewish Circumcision Resource Centre which opposes the practice, cited studies he said show that circumcision causes considerable pain and trauma.

"The majority of the world does not circumcise because of an instinctive awareness of the harm, analogous to cutting off any other healthy body part," it said in a statement entitled "The German Circumcision Ruling: What about the harm to the child?"

The German court ruling applies only to the city of Cologne and its environs - home to a large Muslim minority - but Jewish and Muslim groups fear it could set a precedent and the ban could spread to other parts of Germany.

German doctors have also urged politicians to act to clarify the legal situation, fearing the ruling may force circumcisions underground and increase health risks for young boys.
[This has never been offered as a reason to allow any female genital cutting - except briefly and abortively by a committee of the AAP in 2010 - though the health risks to them from backstreet FGC are much greater.]

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Earlier story