serendipity22
09-06-2008, 11:00
I came across this:
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: An international physicians' group has charged the Royal Australasian College of Physicians with encouraging a common injury to children.
The parents' magazine, Kindred, today details their analysis of an obsolete medical practice widely used in the 19th century but considered injurious and painful today.
The forced retraction of the foreskin of
uncircumcised baby boys is still common in Australia and the US, yet has no therapeutic benefit, the physician's group says.
These physicians note that as the rate of circumcision has fallen, the number of intact (uncircumcised) boys has increased-but so has the painful and unnecessary practice of forcible retraction for what the group terms
'imaginary' hygiene. The harmful effects, these physicians argue, continue into adulthood and can impact normal adult sexual functioning.
'Surprisingly, this paranoid and puritanical version of male infant hygiene has not yet died out. It still lingers, in various watered-down versions, passed around among generations of physicians and nurses
folklorically, who then teach it to parents,' says John V. Geisheker, co-author of the article. 'Likely, at this moment, a professional at your local well-baby clinic is forcibly retracting a hapless little boy or advising the parents to do so at each bath.
Even the Royal Australasian College of Physicians' website, Paediatrics and Child Health Division,
offers young parents antique and even potentially harmful advice on this subject.'
The international physician's group advises that proper infant hygiene,
for both girls and boys, is actually astonishingly simple: Only clean what is seen. This means the boy (or girl) needs only warm water, gently applied
to the outer, visible, portions of his or her genitalia.
No soap is needed.
No intrusive or interior cleaning of the genitalia of either gender is ever needed or desirable.
Aggressive interior hygiene is destructive of developing tissue and natural flora, and is harmful as well as painful.
While an increasing number of boys are kept intact, many older Australasian doctors are circumcised, which may account for professional misunderstandings and ignorance about how to care for an intact penis, the physicians' group speculates.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Kali Wendorf, 02 6684 4353,
kali@kindredmagazine.com.au
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: An international physicians' group has charged the Royal Australasian College of Physicians with encouraging a common injury to children.
The parents' magazine, Kindred, today details their analysis of an obsolete medical practice widely used in the 19th century but considered injurious and painful today.
The forced retraction of the foreskin of
uncircumcised baby boys is still common in Australia and the US, yet has no therapeutic benefit, the physician's group says.
These physicians note that as the rate of circumcision has fallen, the number of intact (uncircumcised) boys has increased-but so has the painful and unnecessary practice of forcible retraction for what the group terms
'imaginary' hygiene. The harmful effects, these physicians argue, continue into adulthood and can impact normal adult sexual functioning.
'Surprisingly, this paranoid and puritanical version of male infant hygiene has not yet died out. It still lingers, in various watered-down versions, passed around among generations of physicians and nurses
folklorically, who then teach it to parents,' says John V. Geisheker, co-author of the article. 'Likely, at this moment, a professional at your local well-baby clinic is forcibly retracting a hapless little boy or advising the parents to do so at each bath.
Even the Royal Australasian College of Physicians' website, Paediatrics and Child Health Division,
offers young parents antique and even potentially harmful advice on this subject.'
The international physician's group advises that proper infant hygiene,
for both girls and boys, is actually astonishingly simple: Only clean what is seen. This means the boy (or girl) needs only warm water, gently applied
to the outer, visible, portions of his or her genitalia.
No soap is needed.
No intrusive or interior cleaning of the genitalia of either gender is ever needed or desirable.
Aggressive interior hygiene is destructive of developing tissue and natural flora, and is harmful as well as painful.
While an increasing number of boys are kept intact, many older Australasian doctors are circumcised, which may account for professional misunderstandings and ignorance about how to care for an intact penis, the physicians' group speculates.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Kali Wendorf, 02 6684 4353,
kali@kindredmagazine.com.au