Should there be a national law that require anesthesia (topical anesthetic cream/ ring block/ dorsal penile nerve block) during neonatal circumcision?
Over 1/4 of neonatal circumcisions are done without anesthesia so I know it’s very painful for the babies. For males that went through unanesthetized circumcision, may God have mercy on our souls - that’s the most pain and terror we will ever suffer in our entire life. If you don’t believe that babies feel pain, try this : Have your lips cut out with a pair of scissors without anesthesia - is that painful? If you’re a woman, have your vaginal lips (labia majora) cut off with a scissor - is that painful? The Drs. that don’t use anesthesia are either sadistic, heartless or cheap.
Check out this link: http://www.cirp.org/library/pain/
I think some Drs. still subscribed to that myth from 1872 that babies don’t feel pain. And if you read further down, the American Pediatric Association recommend anesthesia during circumcision and other paragraphs talk about pain.
Check out this circumcision video then tell me if babies feel pain. Imagine you’re that little baby quiet asleep then the circumcision began without anesthesia, you cry your heart out. http://youtube.com/watch?v=2wL1Zdq0mmY
In the bible God created man in his own image, then later God tell man to cut off his foreskin. Isn’t that contradictory? If God is perfect, didn’t he got it right the first time when he made man?
When you take a shower it take less than 20 seconds to clean your penis and foreskin so it’s not cumbersome - the same amount of time to clean a circumcised penis.
People are not complaining about cleaning the baby’s a** which produce toxic, disease-ridden, bacteria-infested feces. Then why are they complaining about washing the baby’s penis that produce sterile urine? It’s easy to keep the baby’s penis clean if you wash it at every bath time.
republic15, your topic is one that might deserve consideration. I will note, however, that your manner of posting resembles that of several previous posters who have made the elimination of circumcision into a matter of a personal mission to the world.
You might want to consider backing off a bit and seeing what other threads and Fora on the SDMB might interest you. I am going to leave this thread open in the hope that it develops into a genuine discussion, but it it jumps the track it will be closed quickly. We have enough trainwrecks around here.
I agree that circumcision is almost totally unnecessary, and should be eliminated as common practice. At the very least anesthesia should be used. I think things are moving in this direction anyway, but speeding it up a little is a good idea, although I’m not sure how to do that in practice. Attitudes are changing, though, and I’m happy about that.
I don’t think it traumatizes babies, really, but it’s still unneeded suffering.
According to Christian theology, and Muslim and Jewish I think, circumcision didn’t begin until God made a covenant with Abraham. Part of the requirement was circumcision. Nothing about circumcision is contradictory to Christian theology.
I dunno, the various times I’ve sprained my ankles were very un-fun, and I can clearly remember each incident. My bris, by comparison, isn’t even a shadow of a ghost of a memory.
Babies don’t have the mental capacity to know pain. So there is no pain during neonatal circumcision.!
I don’t remember the physical pain of being circumcised immediately after birth, nor do I remember the physical pain of slicing my palm open at age of 2 requiring about 30 stitches but I do remember the physical pain of shredding two inches of my arm on bard wire fence at age 7 and the physical pain of a nearly burst appendix at age 12 and dislocated shoulder at age 20.
None of my physical pains above had a long lasting effect nor did they effect my behavior. None of the above physical pains were accompanied by psychological or emotional pain which can last a life time if you allow the emotion to control you…
I did carry an emotional pain for a long time when in the boys locker room one kid razed me about the size of my wanky. I let the incident slide and the emotional pain was difficult to overcome. But later when I learned that when enlarged the size was adequate I decided to stand up to the dispensers of emotional pain by punching the SOB’s in the nose. I no longer am troubled by emotional pain.
Some of the yahoos on this message board attempt to give me emotional pain in their posts with their 1st 2nd and 3rd level of negative stereotyping but I don’t care to pass a law to prevent that. There are other ways for men to even the score. 3 down 4 to go.
Don’t make your emotional pain my physical pain with some new stupid unnecessary law which will only raise the cost of health care and government.
In summary if parents decide to circumcise or not circumcise their baby boy with or without anesthesia it don’t matter. It only matters to you because you feel some emotional pain which only you can work through. You need to confront those that gave you your emotional pain and release it and let it go.
It seems you are the one in pain.
I hope that is the most pain you will ever suffer. I can envisage all other kinds of much much worse physical and emotional pain that I would not wish on a dog and certainly pray none of those effect you during your long life. John McCain’s time in a POW camp or having loved ones burned alive in the towers during 9/11 comes to mind.
Should there be mandatory psychiatric counselling for people who have an unhealthy obsession with the elimination of circumcision? Really, you can be for it or against it, but there is a group of people who have gone off the deep end.
I believe that information is seriously out of date. Brain activity and neural development in a full term newborn does indicate pain reception and perception, while preterm infants and fetuses before 25 weeks do not.
Don’t agree at all. I did have my boy circumcised. He most definitely felt pain, and I didn’t even need electrodes wired to his noggin to see it. He cried a pain cry - the same pain cry he later cried as an infant when in, you know, pain. It’s a very specific cry that researchers and parents know, very different from a hunger, boredom or shock cry.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not even really that adamantly anti-circumcision. I think that there are several things we do to our kids cosmetically that make them feel pain - some of them at their request and some not. (Braces, pierced ears, spine braces for minor scoliosis, dress shoes…) But to cling to the outdated notion that newborns don’t feel pain and their screams are “just reflex” doesn’t serve the debate. For one thing, it makes it too easy to shoot down your argument when you may have other, valid points.
I don’t think there needs to be a law about circumcision anesthesia, by the way, but I do think the it needs to become the standard of practice, and I’m shocked it hasn’t already.
Imagine there was no such thing as circumcision, or that it was a vanishingly rare medical procedure, performed only when immediately necessary.
What sort of public reaction would there then be to a proposal to introduce it as a standard procedure? I’m guessing it would not be placid acceptance.
No, but then again, you could say that about nearly any cosmetic procedure.
Imagine, if you will, that we’re going to cut you open and insert small sacks of saline solution just under the skin above your pectoral muscles. No reason, really, just to make it look nice.
Or perhaps I can interest you in thrusting this bit of metal through your earlobe, or that of your infant daughter? It’ll look pretty and shiny.
Or, perhaps we’ll glue metal bits onto your teeth and string them together with thick wire. Every four weeks, when it stops hurting, you come back and we’ll tighten the wire so it hurts again. Four years of this should just about do it, and then we’ll whack the metal bits with a pliers and hammer, because nothing dissolves that glue, we just have to break the metal off your teeth…
