News Archive

News Update—Important Position Statement Issued + Other Positive Events

From: J. Steven Svoboda
Date: 09 Oct 2002
Time: 19:30:13

Comments

We intactivists are in the dizzying position of having almost too many positive events happen recently for us to keep up with all of them. North Carolina recently becoming the third state this year to drop Medicaid coverage of circumcision is of course major news.

Given recent developments including the death of a boy from British Columbia, the Canadian Paediatric Society has stated that it will be reviewing its policy statement on circumcision, and the Canadian Medical Protective Association has advised physicians to proceed cautiously regarding circumcision and the obtaining of "consent" for the procedure. The Canadian Medical Association Journal published a short article announcing these events and prominently quoting George Denniston of Doctors Opposing Circumcision. The Ontario-based Association for Genital Integrity is also mentioned in the article. http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/167/7/789-a.

Recently the position statement of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians was officially issued. This is the most strongly anti-circumcision statement yet issued by a major physicians' group and also, I believe, the first to cite a number of publications written and/or edited by intactivists. The statement's second reference cites the book published by Plenum/Kluwer collecting articles by many intactivists from the Fourth International Symposium on Sexual Mutilations (held at Oxford University), edited by George Denniston, Frederick Hodges, and Marilyn Milos. Articles on which I was a co-author that are cited include the 2001 article on consent in the Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy (authors Svoboda, Bob Van Howe and ARC Board Member James Dwyer) and the 2000 article in the Journal of Law & Medicine (authors Greg Boyle, Svoboda, ARC Board Member Christopher Price and J. Neville Turner). In addition to the consent article, Bob Van Howe got a second citation for his article in the BJU International in 1999 reviewing literature on whether circumcision affects sexually transmitted diseases. The RACP statement may be read at http://www.racp.edu.au/hpu/paed/circumcision/.

As a footnote to all this news, the latest (September-October) issue of the Liberator has reprinted the ARC press release about Flatt v. Kantak surviving summary judgment and going to trial. The lawyer on this case is Zenas Baer.

Steven Svoboda