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IOTM – Dr. Morten Frisch

APRIL 2013: Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a new report claiming the benefits of circumcision outweigh the risks. Intact America called on the AAP to rescind this statement, but rather than engage in dialogue with us, the AAP kicked us out of its annual conference. So intactivists protested. And the world watched.

Now, the world has spoken. In its April issue of Pediatrics, the AAP has published an article signed by nearly 40 pediatricians, urologists, epidemiologists and other doctors from 17 countries, led by Dr. Marten Frisch from Denmark. Titled “Cultural Bias in the AAP’s 2012 Technical Report and Policy Statement on Male Circumcision,” the article criticizes the AAP’s report as utterly out of step with the increasing awareness among doctors and parents that routine infant circumcision is unnecessary and inherently risky.

It is with great privilege and gratitude that we honor these doctors as our Intactivists of the Month. They are:

Morten Frisch, MD, PhD; Yves Aigrain, MD, PhDb; Vidmantas Barauskas, MD, PhDc; Ragnar Bjarnason, MD, PhDd; Su-Anna Boddy, MDe; Piotr Czauderna, MD, PhDf; Robert P.E. de Gier, MDg; Tom P.V.M. de Jong, MD, PhDh; Günter Fasching, MDi; Willem Fetter, MD, PhDj; Manfred Gahr, MDk; Christian Graugaard, MD, PhDl; Gorm Greisen, MD, PhDm; Anna Gunnarsdottir, MD, PhDn; Wolfram Hartmann, MDo; Petr Havranek, MD, PhDp; Rowena Hitchcock, MDq; Simon Huddart, MDr; Staffan Janson, MD, PhDs; Poul Jaszczak, MD, PhDt; Christoph Kupferschmid, MDu; Tuija Lahdes-Vasama, MDv; Harry Lindahl, MD, PhDw; Noni MacDonald, MDx; Trond Markestad, MDy; Matis Märtson, MD, PhDz; Solveig Marianne Nordhov, MD, PhDaa; Heikki Pälve, MD, PhDbb; Aigars Petersons, MD, PhDcc; Feargal Quinn, MDdd; Niels Qvist, MD, PhDee; Thrainn Rosmundsson, MDff; Harri Saxen, MD, PhDgg; Olle Söder, MD, PhDhh; Maximilian Stehr, MD, PhDii; Volker C.H. von Loewenich, MDjj; Johan Wallander, MD, PhDkk; and Rene Wijnen, MD, PhDll.

The importance of the action they have taken cannot be underestimated.

The United States is the only Western country where doctors routinely cut baby boys for non-medical, purely cultural reasons. At conference after conference, doctors from Europe, Asia and Latin America tell us how horrified they are that:

  • the foreskin is not seen as a normal functional body part, but rather an ugly, dirty nuisance;
  • American doctors ignore basic ethics and perform medically unnecessary genital surgery on minors who cannot consent;
  • the majority of American boys are still cut at birth.

Commenting on the AAP Task Force report, the international group of physicians say, “Seen from the outside, cultural bias reflecting the normality of nontherapeutic male circumcision in the United States seems obvious.… The report’s conclusions are different from those reached by physicians in other parts of the Western world, including Europe, Canada, and Australia.” They go on to show how the AAP’s report is flawed, systematically considering and rejecting the variety of medical reasons the AAP used to justify its position.

The international physicians also argue repeatedly that boys should be allowed to decide for themselves, when they are of an age to do so, whether to permanently alter their bodies to seek a level of protection against diseases for which there are less drastic, more effective preventive strategies.

“It has become clear that the AAP, not those of us in the intactivist movement who have argued for years against the surgery, is an outlier in the discussion about the efficacy and necessity for male circumcision,” said Georganne Chapin, founder and executive director of Intact America. “I applaud this international coalition of doctors for speaking the truth and standing on the side of ethics and human rights.”

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Author

Marilyn

Marilyn Fayre Milos, multiple award winner for her humanitarian work to end routine infant circumcision in the United States and advocating for the rights of infants and children to genital autonomy, has written a warm and compelling memoir of her path to becoming “the founding mother of the intactivist movement.” Needing to support her family as a single mother in the early sixties, Milos taught banjo—having learned to play from Jerry Garcia (later of The Grateful Dead)—and worked as an assistant to comedian and social critic Lenny Bruce, typing out the content of his shows and transcribing court proceedings of his trials for obscenity. After Lenny’s death, she found her voice as an activist as part of the counterculture revolution, living in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco during the 1967 Summer of Love, and honed her organizational skills by creating an alternative education open classroom (still operating) in Marin County. 

After witnessing the pain and trauma of the circumcision of a newborn baby boy when she was a nursing student at Marin College, Milos learned everything she could about why infants were subjected to such brutal surgery. The more she read and discovered, the more convinced she became that circumcision had no medical benefits. As a nurse on the obstetrical unit at Marin General Hospital, she committed to making sure parents understood what circumcision entailed before signing a consent form. Considered an agitator and forced to resign in 1985, she co-founded NOCIRC (National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers) and began organizing international symposia on circumcision, genital autonomy, and human rights. Milos edited and published the proceedings from the above-mentioned symposia and has written numerous articles in her quest to end circumcision and protect children’s bodily integrity. She currently serves on the board of directors of Intact America.

Georganne

Georganne Chapin is a healthcare expert, attorney, social justice advocate, and founding executive director of Intact America, the nation’s most influential organization opposing the U.S. medical industry’s penchant for surgically altering the genitals of male children (“circumcision”). Under her leadership, Intact America has definitively documented tactics used by U.S. doctors and healthcare facilities to pathologize the male foreskin, pressure parents into circumcising their sons, and forcibly retract the foreskins of intact boys, creating potentially lifelong, iatrogenic harm. 

Chapin holds a BA in Anthropology from Barnard College, and a Master’s degree in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University. For 25 years, she served as president and chief executive officer of Hudson Health Plan, a nonprofit Medicaid insurer in New York’s Hudson Valley. Mid-career, she enrolled in an evening law program, where she explored the legal and ethical issues underlying routine male circumcision, a subject that had interested her since witnessing the aftermath of the surgery conducted on her younger brother. She received her Juris Doctor degree from Pace University School of Law in 2003, and was subsequently admitted to the New York Bar. As an adjunct professor, she taught Bioethics and Medicaid and Disability Law at Pace, and Bioethics in Dominican College’s doctoral program for advanced practice nurses.

In 2004, Chapin founded the nonprofit Hudson Center for Health Equity and Quality, a company that designs software and provides consulting services designed to reduce administrative complexities, streamline and integrate data collection and reporting, and enhance access to care for those in need. In 2008, she co-founded Intact America.

Chapin has published many articles and op-ed essays, and has been interviewed on local, national and international television, radio and podcasts about ways the U.S. healthcare system prioritizes profits over people’s basic needs. She cites routine (nontherapeutic) infant circumcision as a prime example of a practice that wastes money and harms boys and the men they will become. This Penis Business: A Memoir is her first book.