NEW YORK: Metzitzah now virtually unregulated

the Washington Post
September 9, 2015

NYC ends consent requirement for circumcision suction ritual

by Jennifer Peltz 
NEW YORK — People who perform an ultra-Orthodox Jewish circumcision suction ritual will no longer have to get parents to sign acknowledgements of potential health risks, the city Board of Health decided Wednesday, reversing a policy that pitted health officials against religious leaders over a practice that dates to biblical times.

The vote formalized a tentative policy shift Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration made in February. The city now distributes information about what officials see as possible risks of oral suction circumcision, but signed consent forms are no longer required.

“The Board of Health, from the start, aimed to ensure that parents had information so that they could make informed decisions,” Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett said Wednesday, adding that the consent requirement “hadn’t been that effective.”

The practice is performed each year on an estimated 3,000 New York City babies, a fraction of the city’s Jewish population. The ritual, formally called metzitzah b’peh in Hebrew, entails a rabbi or another circumciser sucking blood from an infant’s circumcision wounds.

City health officials believe the practice was linked to at least 18 cases of infant herpes since 2000, though DNA testing to pinpoint the source of the infection was not done in all cases. Two babies died, and two others suffered brain damage.

In 2012, the health board passed a requirement for signed consent from infants’ parents or guardians, including acknowledgement that they understood that health officials recommended against the practice.

Some rabbis objected, seeing the requirement as an imposition on religious rights, and they urged their faithful not to comply. Those who performed the ceremony questioned any link between the practice and spreading herpes, saying they deployed herpes testing, hand-scrubbing and mouthwash to ensure it didn’t.

Rabbi Romi Cohn of Brooklyn, who says he has safely performed about 35,000 such rituals, commended the city’s change of direction.

“Oral circumcision is part of our tradition,” he said by phone after Wednesday’s vote. “I think New York will be blessed for doing the right thing.”

The matter put the health board in a difficult position, members noted.

“It is our core responsibility to protect the health of New Yorkers,” member Dr. Deepthiman K. Gowda said. “At the same time, we have to institute educational policy that actually works. ... The rollout of our previous policy actually eroded the relationship we wanted.”

But some weren’t convinced the problems merited ending the requirement.

“A very significant public health concern is served,” said Dr. Lynne Richardson, who abstained from the vote.

The city has distributed 20,000 printed copies and 22,000 email copies of a new informational brochure in English and Yiddish, Bassett said.

Earlier story

NORWAY: Hospital ritually cuts first baby

The Local (Norway)
March 10, 2015

Norway hospital does first ritual circumcision

A newborn baby had his foreskin surgically removed on Monday under local anaesthetic, while his Muslim parents waited outside the operating room.

“They were very happy,” Ole Tysland, head of surgery at Sørlandet Hospital in Kristiansand, said of the couple. “Most people are glad that we now have the possibility to do this in the hospital.”

Tysland said that several doctors in his hospital believed carrying out the operation was unethical.
“They would say that this is a type of surgery that is not indicated. It’s more a tradition than a necessary operation,” he said. “But they don’t have to do it. We have found other doctors that don’t mind, so we use a doctor who thinks this is OK.”

He said that the hospital did not allow religious officials, or even the children’s parents, into the operating theatre while the circumcision was taking place.

“They stand outside the door and they take the child when we come out with it, and I don’t think it’s a problem. They accept this way of doing it.”

Ritual circumcision has in theory been available under Norway’s public health system since January 1st, following a bill in parliament in 2013.

But it has taken several months for hospitals to start carrying out the operation.

Dr Tysland said that Sørlandet was only offering ritual circumcision to boys under four weeks old, as otherwise the child would require an expensive general anaesthetic.

Norwegian Health Minister Bent Høie caused an uproar in the international Jewish community when he first proposed regulating circumcision, known as Brit Milah in the Jewish community, at the start of last year.

In the end, Norway’s government stopped short of mandating hospital circumcision, instead only insisting that a doctor must be present.

It did, however, rule that public hospitals must start offering the operation to encourage Jewish and Muslim parents to have it done in the safest possible way.

DENMARK: Circumcision ban "unnecessary"

Copenhagen Post
June 28, 2013

Circumcision ban not necessary, board of health finds

There is so little risk involved in the ritual circumcision of boys when carried out by competent doctors that there is no need to recommend banning the procedure, according to the board of health.

[Risk is only one of many reasons infant circumcision for other than pressing medical needs should not be allowed.]

Sundhedsstyrelsen (the National Board Of Health) laid out its findings into the potential dangers of circumcision in a report commissioned by the Health Ministry and published on Wednesday. They also found that there was insufficient documentation to generally recommend circumcising young men and boys.

The findings disappointed anti-circumcision group Intact, whose deputy chairman Leo Milgrom stated in a press release that it will mean that boys will continue to lose the right to decide over their own body.

“Even without all the weighty ethical considerations, and without all the many legal, sexual and psychological consequences, at the very least a scientific precautionary principle should apply: circumcision should be immediately stopped simply as a result of the scientific uncertainty described in the health agency’s own report,” Milgrom stated.

Intact argues that male ritual circumcision should be stopped because of unpredictable and unintended psychological consequences that the boys might suffer later in life. They argue that banning female circumcision yet allowing male circumcision, which they argue is equivalent, is discriminatory.

But according to Sundhedsstyrelsen there have been no serious complications as a result of ritual male circumcision in Denmark [not true], though the risk of complication does increase if a boy is circumcised later in life. [There is no evidence for this.]

The current guidelines for male circumcision only require that boys aged 15 and over must consent to the procedure [a meaningless protection if they are fair game before that age]. The procedure must also take place under the supervision of the doctor under proper medical conditions and the children must be administered adequate pain relief.

Sundhedsstyrelsen estimates that between 1,000 and 2,000 ritual circumcisions take place every year in Denmark.