Circumcision: A Surgery in Search of a Disease

Routine infant circumcision is the only operation we perform on the healthy to fix nothing. We have just agreed not to call it what it is.

A doctor secures a newborn to a molded plastic board called a Circumstraint, which holds the arms and legs in place because the patient cannot consent and cannot be reasoned with. The foreskin is drawn forward, clamped, and cut away. Sometimes there is local anesthetic. Often there is not. The procedure takes a few minutes. The patient is hours or days old. He was born with the tissue and will live the rest of his life without it.

There is a word for the removal of healthy genital tissue from a person who did not ask for it and cannot refuse. The law uses that word without hesitation when the tissue belongs to a girl. It does not when the tissue belongs to a boy. That asymmetry is the heart of the matter.

The foreskin is not a defect. It is rich in nerve endings, that covers and protects the glans and moves freely over it. Removing it cuts away a functioning structure from a body that was not sick. How that is presented to parents matters. It is bundled into the maternity stay and offer…