TRENDS Rethinking Circumcision The debate is heating up as the medical profession changes its opinion on the necessity for circumcision. ARLENE EHRLICH Special to The Jewish News S ometimes the ideas our parents discarded as absurd and outworn our own generation redis- covers as wisdom. In medi- cine, for example, any number of once-popular recommenda- tions — from natural child- birth to oat bran — fell into disfavor, only to enjoy renewed vogue in recent years. Now the pendulum of medical opinion has begun to swing again as doctors re- evaluate their attitudes toward the ancient practice of circumcision. For Jews, of course, the question has never arisen. Ever since Abraham circum- cised himself and Isaac, his descendants have sealed their covenant with God through the ceremony of brit milah. Until very recently, a circum- cised man was almost in- variably Jewish or Moslem. The only exceptions were members of a few African tribes, English royalty and the minority of Gentiles who had undergone the operation as a medical necessity. All that changed, however, around the turn of the cen- tury, when American physi- cians began to urge universal circumcision, • albeit for rea- sons that would have ap- palled Abraham. Victorian doctors believed erroneously that circumcision would desensitize the penis and dampen men's enthusiasm for sex. By the 1970s, up to 80 percent of all American male infants underwent the 80 percent of all American male infants underwent the operation, usually at the urg- ing of their pediatricians. Thn years ago in this country, no one could tell the Jews from the Gentiles in any locker room: That high tide began to ebb in 1971, when the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Ob- stetricians and Gynecologists jointly advised parents not to circumcise their sons in the absence of a compelling re- ligious or medical reason. And as medical enthusiasm waned, so did the rate of cir- cumcision. By the late 1980s, fewer than half of all parents chose to circumcise their infants. For one thing, doctors final- ly woke up to the fact that newborns do feel pain. As any Jewish parent can testify, cir- cumcision hurts. In dry medi- cal fashion, the American Academy of Pediatrics noted, "Infants undergoing circum- cision without anesthesia demonstrate physiologic responses suggesting that they are experiencing pain. Behavioral changes include a cry pattern indicating dis- tress during the circumcision procedure and changes in ac- tivity (irritability, varying sleep patterns) and in infant' maternal interaction for the first few hours after: ,- Most babies, of course, suf- fer nothing more than a few hours of transient pain but even so, Gentile parents hesitated to subject their in- fants to medically unneces- sary distress. Besides, local anesthesia, while available in the form of dorsal penile nerve block, carries its own THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 117