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-------Original Message-------

From: ~mary~
Date: 08/08/05 12:59:04
To: mary
Subject: [Hope4America] Activists Want UN to Declare Circumcision a Human Rights Crime

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=\Culture\archive\200508\CUL20050805a.html

Activists Want UN to Declare Circumcision a Human Rights Crime
By Patrick Goodenough CNSNews.com International Editor August 05, 2005

(CNSNews.com) - New research linking male circumcision with
significantly reduced HIV/AIDS infections has sparked a backlash from
anti-circumcision groups, with some calling on the United Nations to
label the procedure a crime against human rights.

An international AIDS conference in Brazil last week was told that
researchers tracking 3,000 young African men in a randomized
controlled trial found the number of HIV infections among those who
had been circumcised to be three times lower than among those who had
not.
< BR>The dramatic result prompted some medical experts to call for routine
circumcision of young males to be promoted in the drive against the
deadly disease, although U.N. agencies, while calling the
research "promising," cautioned that such a step would be premature.

Anti-circumcision groups are alarmed that the research may encourage
a greater acceptance of a procedure -- surgical removal of the
foreskin -- which they consider to be mutilation.

Several have joined together in calling for the U.N. "to classify
circumcision of male children as a human rights crime."

Millions of parents in America and other western countries routinely
circumcise their baby boys for reasons including hygiene, health
benefits or family tradition.

Carried out on the eighth day after birth, the procedure is a central
tenet of the Jewish faith, while it is also a rite of passage in
Islam -- sometimes at birth, sometimes at a later age. Some African
groups, Australian aboriginals and Pacific islanders also practice
circumcision.

Marilyn Milos, director of the California-based National Organization
of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC), noted that the
U.N. convention on the rights of the child says member states "shall
take all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing
traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children.

"This terminology is fully applicable to male circumcision," she said.

Another campaigner, Dr. George Denniston of Doctors Opposing
Circumcision in Seattle, said circumcision "removes erogenous tissue
and leaves the genitals with significantly diminished sexual capacity.

"The best way to prevent HIV transmission is by using condoms, not by
cutting off part of the genitals," he argued.

San Diego-based activist Matthew Hess focused on the age of boys
undergoing circumcision.

"Circumcis ion of children is genital mutilation ... and the U.N.
needs to take action now to ensure that male circumcision is
performed only on fully informed consenting adults," he said.

Hess represents a group called MGMbill.org, named for a piece of
legislation that it hopes lawmakers will take up at a state and
federal level.

The group is currently looking for a legislative sponsor in Congress
for the Male Genital Mutilation Bill, which seeks to make it an
offense to circumcise, or help or facilitate circumcision, of a child
or a "nonconsenting" adult, punishable by a maximum 14-year prison
term. It would also prohibit Americans from arranging circumcisions
abroad.

'Benefits outweigh risks'

Prof. Fred Ehrlich of the School of Public Health and Community
Medicine at the University of New South Wales in Australia said
Friday he has safely circumcised about 3,000 boys -- both as a
surgeon and as a mohel, or traditional Jewish circumciser.

It is essential that circumcision be carried out by someone who is
competent and trained, he said. "I've never had a complication."

The best age is undoubtedly the biblically mandated eighth day after
birth, Ehrlich said.

"If you do it on the very newborn, they have a higher tendency to
bleed. By the eighth day, the bleeding is less. If you wait say until
the baby is a year old, two years old, they can remember it -- it
hurts -- whereas in a newborn, they don't even notice it."

He compared the anti-circumcision lobby to groups opposing the
immunization of children. "There are plenty of mad people in the
world."

"There is not a shadow of a doubt that circumcision is beneficial,"
Ehrlich said. Apart from AIDS, "there are many other good reasons why
it should be carried out."

These included reducing urinary infections -- "not common in little
boys, but when it does occur, it is a serious proble m" -- and
cervical cancer in circumcised men's partners.

"In India, the Muslim women have much less cancer of the cervix than
the Hindu women because the Muslim men are circumcised."

Ehrlich distinguished between what he called "the lunatic fringe"
among anti-circumcision groups and "a genuine medical anti-
circumcision position," tied to the risk that some infants may bleed
or become infected.

Immunization also carried risks, he argued, but in both cases, "the
benefits outweigh the downside."

Ehrlich said there was no likelihood that the drive to have the U.N.
act against circumcision would succeed, "if for no other reason than
because there are so many Muslims in the world."

Prof. Brian J. Morris, professor of molecular medical sciences at the
University of Sydney and a firm advocate of male circumcision, also
dismissed the latest campaign.

"Whenever there is yet further evidence in support of circumcision,< BR>the anti-circumcision lobby goes into panic mode," he said Friday.

"Their propaganda machine gets propelled into action with this kind
of misinformation in an attempt to shore up their untenable cultist
position."

these people are Just nuts in my opinion.

I've had the procedure done and not had any ill effects