Revista de imprensa (30/8/2012)

• «(...) The British Medical Association states that “the evidence concerning health benefits from non-therapeutic circumcision is insufficient for this alone to be a justification.” Although the World Health Organization has found “compelling evidence” that the practice can reduce the risk of transmitting HIV, this claim has been disputed by various studies and was recently savaged on the Oxford University Practical Ethics blog, which concluded that it was based on “bad science”. (...) A shocking 2010 report in The Journal of Public Health found that, in a sample of 29 Muslim children circumcised at an Islamic school in Oxford, 45 per cent ended up developing medical problems as a direct result of the surgery. Then there was the recent case of 28-day-old Angelo Ofori-Mintah, who bled to death in February of this year after a circumcision in Queen’s Park, London – a tragedy echoed by that of Goodluck Caubergs, an infant who died in similar circumstances in 2010 following the cut. While the fatal haemorrhaging of Ofori-Mintah was ruled a “tragic accident”, the midwife responsible for Caubergs, Grace Adeleye, was charged in April of this year with manslaughter. She is currently awaiting trial. Around the world, the story is depressingly similar. At the start of June, The Times of Israel reported on a two-day-old Muslim boy having his penis entirely severed in a catastrophic circumcision in the Galilee – the second bungled cutting reported at the same hospital within a month. And then there was the recent case in Germany at the heart of the current controversy. It was only after a four-year-old Muslim boy was taken to hospital with complications following circumcision that the matter came up in a Cologne court and the practice was declared illegal. (...) In June, New Yorkers were aghast to read about infections apparently spread by the custom of metzitzah b’peh – a tradition, still prevalent in certain Hasidic sects, that involves the mohel attempting to salve the child’s wound by sucking blood from the tip of his penis. The New York Times reported that, between 2000 and 2011, eleven newborn babies in the New York area had contracted herpes simplex virus following circumcision, and in over half of these cases there was definite proof of metzitzah b’peh having taken place. The consequences of the infection were appalling. Ten of these infants were hospitalised, two suffered brain damage and a further two died. (...)» (Toby Lichtig no New Humanist)