What is it about?
The British Medical Association (BMA)'s guidance on non-therapeutic male circumcision (NTMC) is limited to ethical, religious and legal issues. Opponents of NTMC, Lempert et al., criticised the BMA's guidance. The present articles exposed a litany of flaws in their arguments. The BMA should produce an evidence-based policy statement as has leading medical bodies in the United States, namely the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and prevention. The article finds that because evidence-based reviews find that benefits exceed risks, NTMC should be promoted in the United Kingdom and access and costs should be covered by the National Health System. Data show convincingly that the neonatal perdiod is the best time for NTMC.
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Why is it important?
Opponents of NTMC, just as opponents of other interventions beneficial for child health, promote flawed arguments in support of their ideological agenda. An extensive set of arguments was presented in an article in Biosocial Sciences by Antony Lempert, Brian Earp and two other co-authors. The present article in World Journal of Clinical Paediatrics (available on PubMed) shows why the arguments by these activists are flawed. As a result, the article by Lempert et al. should be dismissed as misleading. Instead, arguments based on evidence rather than rhetoric should be used for making "the circumcision decision". The latests evidence-based policies in the US support infant NTMC as a beneficial intervention early in life for families who choose it.
Perspectives
Despite the enormous body of scientific evidence that strongly supports the net benefit and low risk of NTMC, especially in the neonatal period when lifetime benefits are maximised and risks are minimised, NTMC opponents are unrelenting in promoting their low quality fallacies by way of low quality articles in weak journals and their campaigning on social media. Here, authors Moreton et al. point out the extensive errors in a social science article by Lempert, Earp and others.
Professor Brian J. Morris
University of Sydney
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Comments by opponents on the British Medical Association’s guidance on non-therapeutic male circumcision of children seem one-sided and may undermine public health, World Journal of Clinical Pediatrics, December 2023, Baishideng Publishing Group Co., Limited (formerly WJG Press),
DOI: 10.5409/wjcp.v12.i5.244.
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