Denmark’s 29,000 Doctors Declare Circumcision of Healthy Boys an “Ethically Unacceptable” Procedure Offering no Meaningful Health Benefits
Except within the small Muslim and orthodox Jewish communities, people in Denmark wonder why on Earth any parents would want to have their precious newborn child held down to have a part of his healthy, yet immature, penis cut off. According to a nationally representative poll from the summer of 2016, 87% of Danes favor a legal ban on non-therapeutic circumcision of boys under the age of 18 years. So far, politicians have been hesitant, but increasingly willing to listen.
Doctors and medical organizations in Denmark, the other Nordic countries and, with one notable exception, elsewhere in the Western world agree that circumcision of healthy boys is ethically problematic. It is considered an operation seriously and patently at odds with the Hippocratic oath (”first do no harm”) and one that is in conflict with a variety of international conventions, most notably the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of the Child.
The one Western country that is out of sync with its international peers is the United States, whose federal health authorities and national associations of pediatricians, obstetricians, family physicians and urologists endorse and perform most of these medically unnecessary operations in the country. Amputation of healthy infant foreskins constitutes the single most common surgical procedure in the United States – a several hundred million dollars a year industry.
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Denmark's 29,000 Doctors Declare Circumcision of Healthy Boys an "Ethically Unacceptable" Procedure Offering no Meaningful Health Benefits | The Huffington Post