1 Department of Pediatrics, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
As natural optimists, we thought medical indications for the tribal, antediluvian custom of routine circumcision of the newborn had been finally terminated by the brief, crisp, and concise statement on circumcision made by the Committee on the Fetus and the Newborn of the American Academy of Pediatrics: "There are no valid medical indications for circumcision in the neonatal period."1
We hoped that foreskin clipping had been arrested as the last surgical procedure done to man without anesthesia or sedation, but we found the paper, "Why Circumcision?" by Burger and Guthrie,2 with unnecessary pessimism again resharpening the brutalized merry-go-round.