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We should find sympathy for the doctors here. Administering general anesthesia to a newborn was a terrifying and deadly prospect at the time, so it was much eas

We should find sympathy for the doctors here. Administering general anesthesia to a newborn was a terrifying and deadly prospect at the time, so it was much easier to find a way to pretend it was unnecessary - certainly many of these surgeries had to happen one way or another for the baby to survive.

mike00632 4y ago
I'm afraid it's the case that most all surgeries on infants (circumcision) are elective and performed for aesthetic reasons. For males it's likely they only time they will go into shock from pain during their lives.
- FredPret 4y ago
  Absolute barbarism
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  I find it sad, how people universally agree that female genital mutilation is bad, because cutting off parts for no medical reason is bad.... but then do the same thing to boys, "just because".
  - the_af 4y ago
    I think it's barbaric for boys too.
  - wutbrodo 4y ago
    Most people don't have anything remotely close to what you'd call "beliefs", so no consistency is required between one pseudo-belief they might hold and another.
  - Sharlin 4y ago
    Well, people don't universally agree that FGM is bad because there are people who practice FGM. Also, most people think MGM is… if not barbaric, at least weird, but are somewhat lenient in the name of religious tolerance. The US is the extremely weird outlier.
    - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
      Yeah, i heard that about the US.. that hospitals in some places ask parents directly to do the circumcision after birth as a "default option", and parents have to "opt-out" of it. Really sad and barbaric. Where i live (small eu country), there were some movements to make it illegal (unless medically needed), but it didn't pass, not to offend certain minorities.
  - BitwiseFool 4y ago
    If you want something even more shocking, ask them how they feel about docking a dog's ears or its tail, then ask them how they feel about routine infant circumcision. For maximum cognitive dissonance, inform them that docking ears and tails is done for both aesthetic and purported hygiene reasons.
- King-Aaron 4y ago
  > I'm afraid it's the case that most all surgeries on infants (circumcision) are elective and performed for aesthetic reasons Circumcision is awful, for sure. However am I reading your comment correctly in that you think that "most all surgeries on infants are elective and performed for aesthetic reasons"? Because with my little one, he's had to undergo some pretty invasive procedures in his short life so far that are on the extreme opposite of aesthetic reasoning.
  - DavidSJ 4y ago
    Circumcisions are "most all" surgeries on infants (in the US), since they are sadly done routinely on something like a quarter of them (half of anatomic boys).
    - Sharlin 4y ago
      In the US, yes… although I wonder whether non-MGM surgeries on infants are rare enough that the large number of circumcisions made in the US (and a bunch of smaller countries) actually make them the most common infant surgery worldwide.
notahacker 4y ago
I also suspect that the actual strand of opinion is being fairly uncharitably represented in that article, and the original perception was more along the lines of "they won't feel and process pain quite like adults, and they won't remember it, and they won't develop any pathological fears as a result of it, so anaesthetic is less important as well as riskier", not an assumption babies didn't have senses. Let's not forget the profession used to perform operations on adults without anaesthetic before they understood safe ways of administering it too.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > they won't feel and process pain quite like adults, and they won't remember it Mostly it's that second point. Nobody can complain about their treatment if they can't remember having it. That's how childbirth was done in the mid-20th century - you just give the woman memory blockers and don't worry about whether she's comfortable. That's also how procedures are still done now, even though consensus has moved to the view that the mid-century treatment of women giving birth was an atrocity. When I was getting a stomach biopsy (involving a large tube being shoved down your throat), they told me to take a sedative. I asked if the sedative would help with undergoing the procedure. And they told me no, people are just as unhappy either way, but if I took the sedative I wouldn't remember the procedure afterwards.
  - wruza 4y ago
    Nobody can complain about their treatment if they can't remember having it Some stories are circulating about people having intense panic attacks, psychoses and sometimes becoming suicidal. Are these just myths and legends?
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      I'm sorry, I don't understand the question. The odds are that I don't know the answer.
      - wruza 4y ago
thoms_a 4y ago
I can think of one "routine" prophylactic amputation that was and is still performed with no anesthesia on newborn male infants. The Hippocratic oath really does seem like a marketing gimmick in light of many such facts about modern medical practice.

mike00632 4y ago

I'm afraid it's the case that most all surgeries on infants (circumcision) are elective and performed for aesthetic reasons. For males it's likely they only time they will go into shock from pain during their lives.

FredPret 4y ago
Absolute barbarism
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
I find it sad, how people universally agree that female genital mutilation is bad, because cutting off parts for no medical reason is bad.... but then do the same thing to boys, "just because".
- the_af 4y ago
  I think it's barbaric for boys too.
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  Most people don't have anything remotely close to what you'd call "beliefs", so no consistency is required between one pseudo-belief they might hold and another.
- Sharlin 4y ago
  Well, people don't universally agree that FGM is bad because there are people who practice FGM. Also, most people think MGM is… if not barbaric, at least weird, but are somewhat lenient in the name of religious tolerance. The US is the extremely weird outlier.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    Yeah, i heard that about the US.. that hospitals in some places ask parents directly to do the circumcision after birth as a "default option", and parents have to "opt-out" of it. Really sad and barbaric. Where i live (small eu country), there were some movements to make it illegal (unless medically needed), but it didn't pass, not to offend certain minorities.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  If you want something even more shocking, ask them how they feel about docking a dog's ears or its tail, then ask them how they feel about routine infant circumcision. For maximum cognitive dissonance, inform them that docking ears and tails is done for both aesthetic and purported hygiene reasons.
King-Aaron 4y ago
> I'm afraid it's the case that most all surgeries on infants (circumcision) are elective and performed for aesthetic reasons Circumcision is awful, for sure. However am I reading your comment correctly in that you think that "most all surgeries on infants are elective and performed for aesthetic reasons"? Because with my little one, he's had to undergo some pretty invasive procedures in his short life so far that are on the extreme opposite of aesthetic reasoning.
- DavidSJ 4y ago
  Circumcisions are "most all" surgeries on infants (in the US), since they are sadly done routinely on something like a quarter of them (half of anatomic boys).
  - Sharlin 4y ago
    In the US, yes… although I wonder whether non-MGM surgeries on infants are rare enough that the large number of circumcisions made in the US (and a bunch of smaller countries) actually make them the most common infant surgery worldwide.

notahacker 4y ago

I also suspect that the actual strand of opinion is being fairly uncharitably represented in that article, and the original perception was more along the lines of "they won't feel and process pain quite like adults, and they won't remember it, and they won't develop any pathological fears as a result of it, so anaesthetic is less important as well as riskier", not an assumption babies didn't have senses. Let's not forget the profession used to perform operations on adults without anaesthetic before they understood safe ways of administering it too.

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> they won't feel and process pain quite like adults, and they won't remember it Mostly it's that second point. Nobody can complain about their treatment if they can't remember having it. That's how childbirth was done in the mid-20th century - you just give the woman memory blockers and don't worry about whether she's comfortable. That's also how procedures are still done now, even though consensus has moved to the view that the mid-century treatment of women giving birth was an atrocity. When I was getting a stomach biopsy (involving a large tube being shoved down your throat), they told me to take a sedative. I asked if the sedative would help with undergoing the procedure. And they told me no, people are just as unhappy either way, but if I took the sedative I wouldn't remember the procedure afterwards.
- wruza 4y ago
  Nobody can complain about their treatment if they can't remember having it Some stories are circulating about people having intense panic attacks, psychoses and sometimes becoming suicidal. Are these just myths and legends?
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    I'm sorry, I don't understand the question. The odds are that I don't know the answer.
    - wruza 4y ago

thoms_a 4y ago

I can think of one "routine" prophylactic amputation that was and is still performed with no anesthesia on newborn male infants. The Hippocratic oath really does seem like a marketing gimmick in light of many such facts about modern medical practice.