CIN (Circumcision Information Network) 2:39

CIRCUMCISION INFORMATION NETWORK
Formerly CIN CompuBulletin
Volume 2, Number 39, 2 December 1995
E-mail:CircInfoNe@aol.com

The purpose of this weekly bulletin is to educate the public about and to
protect children and other non-consenting persons from genital mutilation.
 Readers are encouraged to copy and redistribute it, and to contribute
written material.  --Rich Angell, Editor.

$1.2 MILLION:  ANOTHER BOTCHED CIRCUMCISION
Contributed by mancom@ix.netcom.com (Michael J. Manzo)
The following was reported on FOX TV in New York City and was found in the
news on the internet, 30 Nov.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A clinic has agreed to pay $1.2 million to an 8-year-old
immigrant boy who was mutilated during a botched circumcision five years ago,
his lawyer said.
 
The settlement was reached a month after a civil trial began in state Supreme
Court on allegations the boy, then 3, lost part of his  penis during the
operation, according to his attorney, Mark Pruzan.
 
The boy and his family, who asked that their names be withheld, are Russian
immigrants who were referred to the Brook Plaza Surgical Ambulatory Center in
Brooklyn by agencies that help new Jewish immigrants.
 
The clinic's attorney, Neil Ptashnik, was quoted in Wednesday's Daily News as
saying that the settlement was "a business decision" that carried
"specificall
y no admission of guilt." 

The boy was one of 16 children who underwent circumcision at the Brooklyn
clinic in July 1990.
 
The clinic, a doctor and the rabbi who performed the operation were being
sued for causing "permanent shortening and disfigurement of the penis."
 
During the trial, experts testified that the mutilation would make sexual
intercourse difficult when the boy reaches maturity, according to Wednesday's
New York Post.
 
Under Jewish religious law, ritual circumcision -- or bris -- is performed on
8-day-old boys.  But the procedure was not commonly available in the former
Soviet Union.  In addition, some Jewish families refrained from having their
sons circumcised because it could make them targets of prejudice in
communities where Jews were victims of anti-Semitism.

WHY?
Contributed by BJenk43543

I am an attorney who might be having a son over the next few months and, as a
result, has been seeking information on whether or not to leave him intact.
 Today, I came across a case in the New York Law Journal that really helped
my decision.  The headline read:  " $1.2 Million Accord In Circumcision
Suit".  Why was this not in the regular press?  It certainly is an
"interesting" story if nothing else.

The case involved an eight-year-old boy who was circumcised by a rabbi when
he was three.  The rabbi who maimed this child is named Mordechai Mozes and
he was uninsured and not represented at trial.  Dr. Frederick Greenstein, who
administered the local anesthetic; the Brook Plaza Ambulatory Surgical Center
of Brooklyn, where the act was performed; and Agudath Israel of America, a
third party defendant who arranged the mutilation, all contributed to the
settlement.  The Doctor contributed $550,000, and the other two defendants
contributed $500,000 each.

Mark S. Pruzan, Esq. of Jacoby & Myers, which represented the child, stated
that surgery to reattach the glans of the infant's penis was unsuccessful.
 The boy's name was not released.

Why was this not discussed in the media?  Why was this buried deep in the Law
Journal?  Why were adults given the legal right to authorize this procedure
on this child's body?  What can be done?  I think I have decided what I will
do if my wife gives birth to a male in four months.

CIN:  Have you contacted NOCIRC?  They have loads of medical and legal
information on hand (see address below).  There are several lawyers working
in cooperation with NOCIRC to prosecute and uphold the law, which the
circumcision of minors is clearly against.  

The media are, for the most part, willing accomplices in the crimes of
genital mutilation.  Opponents of circumcision have been largely ignored for
decades.  (This is why we're so active on the internet, where we are free to
express our opinions.)  One example is the fact that studies which suggest
that circumcision has medical benefits get wide publicity, while other
studies which prove them wrong are ignored.  Uncovering the truth about this
subject is simply too painful for most people to bear, whether they are aware
of it or not.

As author Rosemary Romberg said, (I paraphrase), "The decision not to
circumcise is so ridiculously simple that it hardly requires any thought."

SEEING IN COLOR, SEEING IN BLACK AND WHITE
Contributed by steven_svoboda@sfbayguardian.com (steven svoboda)

My performance piece on circumcision is scheduled for the following venues:

Monday, December 4.  Marsh, 1062 Valencia, San Francisco.  8:30 PM.

Saturday, January 20.  Art Jam Night (includes several other performers, nude
figure drawing model, massage, and starving artists' menu), Artist's Cafe
(formerly Cafe Venus), Valencia between 13th/Duboce and 14th, show starts at
9 PM.

Tuesday, January 22.  Climate Theater, 252 Ninth Street between Folsom and
Howard, San Francisco.  8:30 PM (check to be sure)

Some loyal Internet circumcision activists came to my 45-minute extravaganza
at Place Pigalle, which went well.  The show keeps changing and is now almost
unrecognizable in relationship to the original show I premiered at the
Artist's Cafe last June.

CIN:  Dear readers, go see it if you can.  I saw it at the aforesaid Place
Pigalle.  This act (much shorter than the 45-minute extravanza) is a frank,
somewhat shocking waker-upper which addresses circumcision in particular, and
men's rights (gasp!) in general.

NONTHERAPEUTIC CIRCUMCISION SHOULD NOT BE PERFORMED
Letter to the Editor:
American Medical News, vol. 38, no. 26 (July 17, 1995): p. 16.
Contributed by PAHadrian@aol.com

Regarding "Don't equate male circumcision with female genital mutilation"
(Letters, June 5,):

Regardless of cultural milieu, genital mutilation often has the power to
engage the emotions at the expense of logic and science.

The pain of circumcision is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of
scientific fact.  Since 1974, over 126 studies have established that the pain
of this amputative surgery is excruciating.

The opinion that nontherapeutic circumcision has valid medical applications
is held exclusively by certain American physicians.

The notion that the prepuce has no defined function is incorrect, although it
may serve a psychological purpose for the circumcised male.

The prepuce is a highly enervated and vascularized genital structure.  It is
entirely lined with the peripenic muscle sheet. Specialized ecoptic
sebaceious glans on the inner preputial surface produce natural emollients
and lubricants necessary for normal sexual function.  The primary orgasmic
triggers are found in the prepucutial orifice and frenulum.  When unfolded,
the prepuce is large enough to cover the length and circumference of the
erect penis and acts as a natural sheath through which the shaft glides
during coitus.  Only the presence and functions of the prepuce allow for
physiologically normal coitus to occur as designed by nature.

Males and females alike have an inherent human right to the integrity of the
reproductive organs with which nature provided them.

Paul M. Fleiss, MD, MPH
Los Angeles

Frederick Hodges
Berkeley, Calif.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION call NOCIRC, the National Organization of
Circumcision Information Resource Centers at (415) 488-9883, fax (415)
488-9660.  Ask about the resource provider nearest you.  For written
information, write NOCIRC, PO Box 2512, San Anselmo, CA 94979, with SASE
and/or donation if possible.
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