From: thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: The Ultimate Circumcision
Date: 2 Jan 93 22:53:11 GMT
Reply-To: thf2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago

In article <6068.434.uupcb@ehbbs.gwinnett.com> curt.tucker@ehbbs.gwinnett.com (Curt Tucker)  writes:
>   randle@nosc.mil (Mike Randle) writes:
>     +
>     +I Recall reading about a medical mishap back in the late 70s (I think).
>     +A doctor slipped up during a circumcision of a bouncing baby boy, and
>     +recommended to the parents that he should have a sex change operation
>     +and be rasied as a girl. Seems that the kid's fledgling manhood was
>     +beyond repair.  If I'm right, the doctor was in the military, and the
>     +hospital may have been Trippler (Hawaii).  Can anyone confirm this
>     +incident, or is this just another urban legend?  If it is true, whatever
>     +became of him/her?  What happened to the doctor?
>
>I don't know about the incident to which you refer, but this did
>happen in a metro Atlanta hospital in the last two or three
>years.  The incident and the instantly-filed lawsuit were big
>news in all the local media.
>
>As I recall, it was either a hardware problem or a bad setting on
>the electric cauterization gizmo.  Painful but true.  There were
>allegations that similar machines had malfunctioned around the
>country.

I hate to insert some *facts* into this newsgroup, but...

The Washington Post , October 23, 1985

   Two infants in Georgia lost their penises in August when  circumcision
operations went awry.

   In  Atlanta,  two families have filed malpractice suits against the
physicians, the hospital and Valley Labs of Boulder, Colo., maker of an
electrical cauterizing device used to perform the operations.

   In one case, the parents claim that the "severe and progressive nature" of
the baby's burn -- including the entire scrotum -- resulted in the need for a
sex-change operation.

   "Baby Doe is now a female person who has been rendered sterile and
completely
incapable of reproduction, and who will require medical monitoring and
hormonal
therapy for the remainder of her life," the suit says.

   The second malpractice suit claims that 90 percent of the boy's penis was
severely burned, causing the entire external shaft to fall off.

   In a third case in Sylvester, Ga., an out-of-court settlement recently
awarded $5 million to the parents of an infant burn victim after a plastic
surgeon testified that he reconstructed a miniature penis for an infant who
was
severely deformed by  circumcision  several years ago.

   Subsequent to those suits,  Atlanta's  Northside Hospital has banned the
electric cautery instrument that was used.

    Most  circumcisions  are still done with surgical knives, experts say.

   "Electric cautery devices were used in a few cases with bad results.
They're
not a medically acceptable way to do  circumcisions, " says Dr. Joseph
Greensher, a pediatrician and chairman of the the American Academy of
Pediatrics
accident and poison prevention committee.

Ted "always use a mohel" Frank
-- 
ted frank                     | thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu 
standard disclaimers          | void where prohibited
the university of chicago law school, chicago, illinois 60637