FRANCE: French Surgeon Heavily Fined for Circumcision

This was recent news, but on the count of I can't read French, I just recently got wind of it. Were it not for a fellow intactivist who translated this from French to English, I may have never heard of it.


The original article in French can be accessed here. (Last accessed 6/26/2016)


I'm not going to comment on it, as I think it's pretty self-explanatory.

CIRCUMCISION: French Surgeon Heavily Fined
June 24, 2016

A French man has won a conviction against the surgeon who circumcised him as an adult. The court acknowledged sexual harm and ethical harm following the lack of information on alternatives to circumcision.

In early 2016, the Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) in Paris ruled on a dispute between a patient and his surgeon, a member of the French Association of Urology. In 2007, then aged 26, the patient was circumcised by his surgeon for an indication of a phimosis. Not only did the surgeon not inform him about the risks and consequences associated with this action, but he failed to propose less invasive alternative therapies.

Deeply affected by the injury, especially by a loss of sensation following the removal of his foreskin, the victim of this procedure decided to sue the surgeon in court and won the case.

After an investigation which revealed that the recommendation to circumcise was made "arbitrarily", and further that the operation had not been carried out properly, the Paris Court fined the surgeon almost 32,000 euros in compensation:

- € 5000 for moral damage resulting from the lack of information given;
- € 3000 for physical and mental suffering;
- € 250 for temporary functional deficit and € 3,560 for permanent functional deficit;
- € 20,000 for sexual harm because, inter alia, "a partial loss of the ability to access pleasure."

Essentially, what can we learn from this judgment?

- The law does not tolerate circumcision as the only therapeutic solution proposed by the medical profession in cases of phimosis;
- The law recognizes that foreskin removal can cause a loss of sexual pleasure; and
- The law recognizes that circumcision, practiced even in a medical setting, can cause considerable and currently irreparable damage.

This is a landmark judgment: the time has come for circumcision victims not to hesitate to prosecute those responsible for their mutilation.

There's been a policy of covering-up, and medical insurance, public or private, will have to make a 180 degree turn: in France, circumcision simply has no place in health care practices, except in extremely rare exceptions. How many circumcisions are performed each year on infants or children under the guise of "phimosis" in order to receive a payment by the medical system? * This fraud is all the more immoral considering it generates great suffering, as illustrated by the testimony of victims, among others.

This judgment confirms the position of the organization Droit au Corps; namely, that we need to have a public debate surrounding consent to circumcision.

* * *

* In Belgium in 2014, 25,698 circumcisions were performed at a cost of 2.6 million euros (from among 11 million inhabitants).

Related Posts:

Phimosis and Circumcision in Japan

Phony Phimosis: How American Doctors Get Away With Medical Fraud

What Your Dr. Doesn't Know Could Hurt Your Child

How Would Circumcised Men React to Suddenly Having Foreskin?

I could only imagine it might be something like this!

So I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed today when I saw this video published by CNBC come up. Since I think it is closely related, I decided to share my reaction to it on this blog.

In case my readers can't see it, it is a video depicting people who have been color blind their whole lives, experiencing for the first time in their lives what it feels like to see color.

They look through glasses that have been fitted with special lenses that separate pigments by blocking certain wavelengths.

To see these people experience what the rest of the world sees normally is nothing short of amazing.

I can only imagine what they are feeling at experiencing something they've been missing throughout their whole lives.

Which raises the question, what if circumcised men could suddenly experience what it's like to have a foreskin?

To feel sensations through nerve endings that they were missing their whole lives?

What would their reactions be?

To feel sensations unfiltered through a keratinized glans?

To feel the sensations of their missing inner mucosa?

For men who had it removed in infancy, their frenulum?

A study conducted in 2007 tells us that the glans of the circumcised penis is less sensitive to fine touch than the glans of the uncircumcised penis.

That the transitional region from the external to the internal prepuce is the most sensitive region of the uncircumcised penis and more sensitive than the most sensitive region of the circumcised penis. 

In essence, circumcision ablates the most sensitive parts of the penis, and desensitizes the remaining parts due to keratinization, desensitizing the penis by a factor of four.

So what if it were made possible for men who were circumcised from birth, to suddenly experience the sensations of having a foreskin?

What would their reaction be?

How would they feel?

To experience what for most men in the rest of the world (something like 70-80%) is "normal?"

To think, that unlike color blindness, this is something that was purposefully taken away from them at birth?

That they have had to live with an artificial condition iatrogenically given to them for life?