What is it about?
This critique of the RACP 's latest online policy on infant male circumcision reveals numerous errors, selective citation, obfuscation and inferior scholarship. It is at odds with US paediatric and CDC evidence-based policies, as well as that of the Circumcision Academy of Australia peer-reviewed policy in J Mens Health listed on PubMed. By adhering to its long-standing ideological opposition to the procedure, the RACP policy undermines public health and fails to address the need to reduce common adverse medical conditions that include immediate and lifelong genito-urinary infections and cancers in males and their sexual partners, with sufferings, deaths and increased costs to Australian health systems.
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Why is it important?
Public health must be based on evidence. When a medical body distorts stong medical evidence to maintain a long-outmoded status quo, then such a failure needs to be exposed. This is especially true given the detrimental consequences to infants, children and men, as well as their sexual partners when older.
Perspectives
In recent times evidence-based medicine has been prioritised for medical decision-making and policy development. This critique shows why the RACP's latest policy in infant male circumcision is instead a one-sided ideology-based opinion piece that maintains its opposition to the procedure. It will continue to undermine public health, maintain the ban on parent-approved elective circumcision in public hopsitals, drive up costs to the medical system and to parents who want the best for their children's health, and fail to reduce paediatric and lifelong kidney infections, STIs, genital inflammatory disorders, phimosis, inferior hygiene, cancers of the urogenital system in males, and their sexual partners when older.
Professor Brian J. Morris
University of Sydney
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Detrimental to public health: Royal Australasian College of Physicians’ recent policy on infant circumcision, Pediatric Research, April 2024, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1038/s41390-024-03190-8.
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