Male circumcision can be carried out for reasons of faith or hygiene, but is it an operation that should be performed on children?

Should infant male circumcision be regarded as an abuse of the rights of the child? Two doctors debate this issue in the current issue of the British Medical Journal.

Geoff Hinchley, an A&E consultant at a North London hospital argues that:

"Ritual (non-therapeutic) male circumcision ... continues unchecked throughout the world, long after female circumcision, facial scarification, and other ritual forms of infant abuse have been made illegal. The law and principles pertaining to child protection should apply equally to both sexes, so why do society and the medical profession collude with this unnecessary mutilating practice?'

He adds that many of the supposed health benefits relating to the practice of circumcision have now been shown to be "spurious and unsupported" while the recent reports of increased protection from sexually transmitted HIV relate to adult sexual behaviour and underline why the choice to be circumcised should be left until the child is old enough to make his own informed healthcare choices.

Kirsten Patrick, a former registrar, disagrees with this approach, and observes that male circumcision is "not illegal anywhere in the world" and therefore "regulating its provision" so that it is performed by competent authorities would be the most sensible course of action by members of the medical community:

" ... recent strong evidence shows that circumcision is medically beneficial. If competently performed, it carries little risk. It cannot be compared with female circumcision, which has been shown to be no more than genital mutilation without medical benefit and with an unacceptably high likelihood of pain, immediate and long term medical complications, and psychosexual scarring. Although any surgical operation can be painful and do harm, the pain of circumcision, if done under local anaesthesia, is comparable to that from an injection for immunisation.'

Among Jews, the circumcision (brit milah) is normally done on the eighth day after birth. According to the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, it signifies a divine link:

"The meaning of brit milah should now be clear. It was precisely in the sexual organ that Jews were to carry the sign of holiness."

While in Islam no mention of circumcision is made in the Qur'an, a saying attributed to the prophet Muhammad praises the procedure as part of personal cleanliness alongside shaving the armpits and cutting one's nails. No specific time is given for when the operation should be performed but an early age is recommended. Interestingly, the popular Islam Online website says that undergoing circumcision is not necessary to become a Muslim.

I had my own son circumcised when he was two weeks old by a GP friend of mine. I'm not even sure that he used a local anaesthetic. Ouch.

In the US 80% of all males have been circumcised and it seems this is mainly due to a belief in its hygiene benefits.

And then there is the strange case of South Korea, where more than 90% of men have been circumcised, usually in their teens and twenties. The practice was almost unknown there before the second world war. Researchers say that the extraordinary increase in the practice there is the result of the influence of American culture. But I digress, as this case does not involve helpless infants.

The British Medical Association has made a very useful summary of the law and ethics surrounding the issue of male circumcision and note that "The welfare of child patients is paramount and doctors must act in the child's best interests ... Where people with parental responsibility for a child disagree about whether he should be circumcised, doctors should not circumcise the child without the leave of a court."

So, to return to the question, is infant circumcision an abuse of the rights of the child?