AAP Retracts Controversial Policy on Female Genital Cutting

[ismnotwasm]

June 2, 2010 — The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is again changing its policy on ritual female genital cutting (FGC) after advocacy groups protested the academy's recently revised policy statement regarding the excision of girls' external genitalia, which some African, Middle Eastern, and Asian cultures perform as a rite of passage.

The AAP board of directors voted on May 22 to retire the new policy, published in the May issue of the journal Pediatrics, and to immediately revise it because of the confusion it generated, AAP President Judith Palfrey, MD, told Medscape Pediatrics.

That policy statement expressed concern that girls from cultures that practice FGC who now live in the United States may be sent by their parents back to their native countries for a genital-altering procedure that can be harmful and even life-threatening. In the statement, which revised the academy's 1998 policy, the AAP's Committee on Bioethics wrote, "It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm."
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/722840?sssdmh=dm1.620219&src=nldne&uac=146094FX

And while I'm at it, a few health articles.

Low-Dose Transdermal HRT Does Not Appear to Increase Stroke Risk
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/723078?sssdmh=dm1.620951&src=nldne&uac=146094FX

Here are two that go together
Antidepressant Use During Pregnancy May Increase Miscarriage Risk
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/723077?sssdmh=dm1.620951&src=nldne&uac=146094FX

Then the 'no shit?' one.

Women Fearful of Effects of Antidepressants During Pregnancy
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/723121?sssdmh=dm1.620951&src=nldne&uac=146094FX

FDA Approves First-in-Class Injectable Osteoporosis Drug for Postmenopausal Women

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/722816?sssdmh=dm1.620083&src=nldne&uac=146094FX

Some Sexual Lubricants Linked to Increased Risk for Chlamydia, Gonorrhea

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/722607?sssdmh=dm1.619353&src=nldne&uac=146094FX

I was just talking to a young pregnant addict who told me this drug is not paid for yet by medicaid. (She's on methadone, and we were discussing infant addiction--she knows to expect it, and is preparing)

Buprenorphine Treatment Safer Than Methadone for Infants of Opiate-Addicted Mothers
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/722213?sssdmh=dm1.618548&src=nldne&uac=146094FX

[get the red out]

1. Reach out to families...

Who want to destroy their children. No, child services ought to reach out to those families.

[BlueIris]

2. I'm still fuming over the idea that the AAP ever CONSIDERED the policy they just revised,

let alone actually went through with implementing a policy that condoned FGM. Despicable.

[get the red out]

3. Me as well

It made me wonder if their reaction would be the same to a family that had ritually cut off their son's penis? Would they calmly say, "you know, it would be so much better if we legalized certain families of certain cultures having a qualified medical professional cut off their son' penis, after-all, we will try to leave a dab of it that they wouldn't leave, it will be so much more inclusive and loving". So would the outcry against that be heard all the way to Mars on further?

And also, if this were to become legal in the United States, how do you stop families from having their children mutilated? How does it ever stop? Horrific child abuse condoned and carried out by our medical professionals. I am sorry, from the time humanity lived in caves cultural practices have come and GONE, and none have ever been nor ever will be sacred and in need of protection against change. And these horrifically abusive practices should not be protected against extinction. This has always been one of my huge problems with a number of liberals, they believe culture is set in stone as something sacred and no matter how abusive, all "foreign" cultural practices must be protected. The reaction I had seen through the years of a lot of male liberals to this very issue, the mutilation of young girls as cultural practice, kept me from calling myself a liberal for a long time, even though I am extremely liberal in my outlook. It seemed so many men totally disregarded women's bodies as anything worth protecting and their sexuality as worth even mentioning as an important part of their life as a human being if they need to disregard it in order to fawn over some chosen culture. But the same men would fight tooth and nail to oppose Christian Fundamentalism and site their disregard for women's rights in a heart-beat. This disconnect that I perceived (many probably perceived differently) had me angry for a long time.

If this had been legalized then how do you prosecute any child abuse at all short of murder? There is very little short of death that is worse than this? So why couldn't parents born right here in the US beat their children senseless without fear of the law if the couple next door legally had their daughter brutally ripped apart and her sexual organs destroyed as a part of their culture? Hell, I'd rather have the beatings every day.

[bliss_eternal]

4. same here.

...steam was coming out of these ears, and i'm still quite hot over it. :grr::mad: