Well, superactive, I see the radicals have jumped in. I figured they would eventually jump in and I'm surprised they stayed out as long as they did. Anyway, yesterday afternoon, I wrote a draft reply to your prior message and I'm putting it in anyway.
SuperActive said:
Yes, antibiotics will cure the infection, but they don't cure the tight foreskin that causes the infection. Alleviating the symptom of a problem without dealing with the cause isn't a long term solution. Until the foreskin is either stretched, loosened or cut, the poor victim will get repeated infections and therefore have to take repeated doses of antibiotics, something that is not recommended in adults let alone in children.
I thought that I had implied or inferred that if both infection and phimosis are present then antibiotics would be combined with a conservative treatment of the phimosis. I hope that's clear now.
With regard to informed consent. Children aren't able to give informed consent to anything. Should we not operate on their hernias, etc. until they are able to give consent?
In USA, only parents and legal guardians can give consent to surgery on a child. The child mostly has no say in the matter, and thus, that makes it more imperative that conservative treatments be pursued
first. If those fail, then progress to surgery. O.T.O.H. for something like a Stage I or Stage II malignancy then surgery is the first choice and as quickly as possible.
Note about USA: The situation that we've been discussing - infection with phimosis - is essentially hypothetical. If a boy in the USA still has his foreskin and these two problems occur, say at age 8, it's quite likely the boy will whisked to a hospital and the foreskin and frenulum removed w/o any consideration of a conservative treatment. Often no alternatives will even be presented. The mentality of USA Medicine is: the foreskin shouldn't be there in the first place.
I've never been involved in Neonatal circumcision (although it would depend how you define neonatal?)
As I understand it, neonatal means the first month. Most circumcisions being done in USA are neonatal and are done without any medical indication. Sad, wouldn't you say?
So, that's what I wrote yesterday but didn't have time to proofread and submit. Now that the radicals are involved, I'd say our civil debate has come to an end. You might want to get out now. If you thought I was "confrontational and argumentative" just watch what those guys will do.