SYNECHIOTOMY, YES; CIRCUMCISION, NO

Almost 50 years ago, a Mexican physician who is a child surgeon and one of the pioneers in this field in his country (still in active practice), was absorbed in observation of the unusual increase of newborn circumcised boys, and not only those of this hebdomadal age but also school-age children.

To a great extent this was due to the market introduction of some little bells, initially made of metal -Gomco bell–and later on made of plastic. By means of them, circumcision was routinely and indiscriminately performed over a huge number of little boys, in a quantity never before seen. One of the countries that were more affected by this pseudo-scientific and wrong technique for circumcision, to which considerable thought was not given, was undoubtedly the same United States. Because of the nearness and the linked scientific exchange, both Mexico and other countries pretty soon became involved.

This partial mutilation, which is stigmatizing–an exeresis of a healthy human portion, as is the case of the prepuce in almost 100 percent of newborns wrongly considered useful, exaggerated its evil and lightly taken indications under the subtle pretext of usefulness for hygiene and to avoid cervical-uterine cancer and now, as well as urinary infections and even AIDS. In all truth, this practice carried in itself great lack of knowledge and illicit profits, which provided good earnings.

Professor Straffon, who at the time was heading pediatric surgery at two very important, high concentration hospitals in Mexico City–Central Military Hospital and "La Raza" Medical Center at the same time had a tenure on this assignment at the Military Medical School, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and the National Polytechnic School Institute, was greatly surprised to observe not only the unjustified abuse of the circumcidising resource but also he acted as a silent witness of the very frequent and severe complications is brought.

In a scientific world in which the voices of medical doctors with high prestige and international fame was heard, and in which undoubtedly valuable medical journals published articles sponsored by universities, reknow academies and societies, all of them favoring the execution of early circumcision, the mellifluous, and dissident voice of Dr. Straffon was heard like an utopic preacher in the desert which also provided a basis for strong controversial issues, laughable scorn, veiled threat, and even egotistic envy and estrangement from very dear persons.

In spite of such very sad difficulties, his desire to protect the child has led him to demonstrate, categorically and with all amplitude, that circumcision is not only unnecessary but also that it is damaging. In order to do so, he had to undertake deep research and study, precisely related to the organic element that was the purpose of such persistent excision.

He collected hundreds of bibliographical items from all over the world, he insistently researched in the fields of antropophilogenetics, embriology, anatomy, histology, physiology, deontology, surgery, psychiatry, neonatology, hygiene, venereology, sexology and others, and he aiso deeply studied the opinions in favor and against the postectomic procedure. He researched with all devotion in the physiology laboratory, in order to perform rudimentary, incipient, and original work all of it related to the important role that the prepuce plays in the sexual reproductive activity (erection, tumescence). Late work included samples of preputial portions from non-claimed dead bodies, ranging from fetuses to old age individuals of over eighty. He worked on studies never carried out before, under powerful microscopes, and the wasable to prove that all samples the presence of the smooth plexiform and circular position muscle (like a sphincter?) was found. He read and inquired on theology and interviewed mostly Christian and Jewish wise men. He weighted legislation on the universal right of men, especially working over children's rights. He deeply studied legislative codes, and in the criminal one he was able to prove that circumcision could be embodied within the crimes of injuries. He intentionally observed the naked bodies of art sculptures, exhibited in various famous museums all over the world, and found that all of them showed and a esthetic preputial element, and that all the authors were and are considered as geniuses in painting and sculpture.

Professor Straffon has traveled considerably lecturing on the subject. His travels have been able to support and enrich his findings. He proposed theories and hypotheses for work (The prepuce, also a sphincter during intrauterine life? Is the prepuce useful during sexual intercourse?) and all his research and study meet in the assertment that the prepuce is a muscle-mucous-skin and not only a foreskin, with multiple protective functions –from intauterine life to old age–and that this is the reason why God, mother nature, or simply life has decided to preserve it unmodified with all the peculiar attributes unchanging along the centuries.

His deep research over the course of several scores of years, has produced a true revolution faced against opposite assertments of medicine itself, which were previously considered undeniable truths. This caused considerable stirring, which once settled little by little, has gained an acceptable confirmation. Professor Straffon's works, lectures, papers and texts–probably his last four edition monograph on the prepuce is the first and only one in the world–have the intention of informing that the prepuce is a human body element that must be preserved and which, to some extent, could be compared to what for men are the ears, the nails, the eyelids, the lips or the nose.

Not content with just having contributed to the direct or indirect abatement routine and indistinct circumcision on the newborn (by means of thousands communications to distinguished pediatric surgeons and pediatrician, distinguished doctors, to universities, medical societies, libraries, medical journals such as Pediatrics, Journal of Pediatrics Surgery, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Association, O.M.S., O.P.S., UNICEF, etc.) both in Mexico and overseas, but by obtaining a 25% decrease of circumsicion in the same United States up to the year of 1985. Professor Straffon for the past 40 years has been practicing and teaching the practice of SYNECHIOTOMY to the various organizations within the Health Sector. This is the peculiar and conceptually modern procedure by means of which Professor Straffon liberates, expands and distends the preputial jacket after 3 months of life from the "normal adhesions" that hold it functionally and temporary to such glans, but which have served as an important excuse for quacks to practice circumcision, at these edges stating lack of local hygiene. However, it was not only the idea of preserving the prepuce, but the provision of hygiene in the uncircumcised that was important here. Thus the author emphasizes that the procedure must be performed in a single operation, always by the use of the SYNECHIOTOMY forceps, in order to separate, expand with a soft distention, tuckup all the way back the mentioned prepuce– without any probes, thermometers, nor rough and repeated manual handling–always from and after the three months of age, and not before (because the walls doze sanguinolent exudade of the strong and serious adhesions), and without forgetting after this nonmutilatory, easy, undamaging, and quick (10-20 seconds) and almost unpainful resource, to vigorously rub the semi-transparent ointment containing a powerful anaesthotic, a non inflamatory streoid, and a disinfectant, at least for 10 day period after the procedure (Scheriproct or Ultraproct Schering). Tucking-up and elongating the prepuce while urinating–even in pre-school children–to expose the glans of the penis during the bath, is to produce the habit of early genital hygiene for all life.

By means of SYNECHIOTOMY, mostly Mexican and Latin American little boys have been spared prepucial excision, and have been able to learn of a correct early genital hygiene that was previously unknown in uncircumcised children. Professor Straffon insist that presently there is no scientific evidence to circumcised a child or the adolescent, if such boys have been taught early genital hygiene after SYNECHIOTOMY.

A firm believer of respect to the various religious thoughts, he states that Jesus Christ, Good of the Christians, although he was circuncided, repealed circumcision for Christian liturgy. He is still insistingly stressing that SYNECHIOTOMY must be considered something like vaccination or inmunization, for to avoid illness, because in similar manner the technica tends to erradicate obsolete illness previously attributed to preputial permanence–phimosis, balanus postitis, smegma cysts, paraphimosis, etc.–and which have served as purposeful excuse to the illicit unjustified profits obtained.

Already well know in national and international medical fields as the Apostie of the prepuce, which was proposed as a mock, he does not move one step back, and keeps on stating all over the world that the term prepuce must be a well know and popular word of an everyday vocabulary as may be the names of any others parts of the human body. Professor Andres Straffon is President of the ANPREN from Mexico (National Association for Protection of the Newborn) and due to these considerations, invites you to add your efforts to the preservation of the prepuce, and say NO to circumcision and YES to SYNECHIOTOMY in the 5th edition of his book entitled. México, 2007.