The General Medical Council (GMC) has opened its consultation on Personal Beliefs and Medical Practice, open until 11 June.
This is important because the current guidance, which has been in place since 2013, has helped give regulatory cover to the circumcision of healthy boys under religious or cultural reasoning.The draft update looks more encouraging. This is because, within the existing guidance, medical professionals are guided to use parental beliefs as a proxy for a child’s beliefs when considering parental requests for religious or cultural circumcision on young children.
The draft guidance has removed specific mention of circumcision and commendably appears to focus on the beliefs of the patients themselves. If effected, this change in GMC guidance would represent a significant improvement.
However, the GMC needs to hear clearly from those who believe boys deserve bodily autonomy and proper protection. Medical professionals should be actively encouraged to raise the same safeguarding concerns regarding requests for religious or cultural circumcision on children as they would in other situations where they believe the child to be at risk of significant harm via a breach of their bodily integrity.
The GMC’s Personal Beliefs and Medical Practice Guidance relates specifically to professional practice. It does not cover people’s expression of their beliefs or values outside the workplace, nor how the regulator may investigate or act on any concerns that are raised.
Keep submissions focused, clinical, and consistent. Avoid moral language. Anchor every point to patient safety, consent, and professional standards. Suggested points to help you build a response below:
Clinical necessity threshold
Procedures without clear, evidence-based medical indication should not be performed on children. Circumcision only where there is a diagnosed condition and no less invasive alternative.
Non-discrimination
Boys must receive the same protection from non-therapeutic genital cutting as any other child. The standard should be sex-neutral and consistent.
Safeguarding
Requests for non-medically indicated genital cutting should trigger safeguarding consideration and clear documentation.
Best interests of the child
Best interests must be defined clinically and ethically, not culturally. Non-essential surgery with permanent loss of tissue fails this test. Where the religious or cultural beliefs of a child’s parents or guardians may conflict with the child’s rights, including to bodily integrity, medical professionals should be encouraged to take appropriate action to safeguard children in line with their wider safeguarding responsibilities. Parental requests for religious or cultural circumcision represent a threat to the child’s rights to bodily integrity.Professional boundaries
Doctors must not allow personal beliefs to influence clinical decisions that cause irreversible harm. Where beliefs conflict with standards, doctors must not perform the procedure.
Accountability and enforcement
The guidance should state that performing non-therapeutic circumcision on minors risks regulatory action.• I support guidance that separates personal beliefs from clinical decisions.
• Best interests must be clinical, not cultural.
• Boys deserve equal protection.
• Doctors should refuse and defer until adulthood.
• The GMC should make this enforceable.Please respond before 11 June and make your views on male circumcision known. go to this link -> https://www.gmc-uk.org/about/get-involved/consultations/personal-beliefs-and-medical-practice
That was quite an ordeal. I eventually found a place in the consultation questionnaire that seemed the appropriate place to express my view. The question (17) itself didn’t help but I got all the points I wanted to make in there. 4000 Character limit, so not too bad. Everything else I answered neutrally.