The Draft cdc Circumcision Recommendations: Medical, Ethical, Legal, and Procedural Concerns

Abstract

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“cdc”) is poised to recommend that physicians counsel the parents of every newborn boy and heterosexually active adolescent and man in the United States – approximately 36 million boys and men – that the benefits of circumcision outweigh the risks, that parents should take non-medical factors into account in making the “circumcision decision”, and that Medicaid should pay for it. The draft cdc recommendations are not medically correct, ethically sound, legally permissible or procedurally valid. Accordingly, they should not be implemented and would be legally invalid if they are. They provide erroneous and misleading advice to physicians that exposes them to the threat of lawsuits by men and parents. The cdc must revise its draft guidelines to comport with the correct and prevailing view in the Western world that circumcision is on balance deleterious to health; that men have the right to make the “circumcision decision” for themselves; that physicians are not permitted to circumcise healthy boys; and that it is unlawful to use Medicaid to pay for unnecessary surgery.