Amazon Pulls Product That May Promote 'Unnecessary Surgery'

British secular group complained about circumcision kits
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 22, 2017 4:03 AM CST
Amazon Snips Circumcision Kits From Website
What's in the box?   (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

British people hoping to order circumcision training kits from Amazon as bizarre last-minute Christmas gifts are out of luck. The retailer removed the kits from its British website after a complaint from the country's National Secular Society that it could "encourage unqualified practitioners to carry out unnecessary surgery on infants in non-clinical conditions, resulting in serious harm," the Guardian reports. The kits—which can be seen on the US website here—include a model of a boy's genitals, along with several plastic foreskins, an assortment of scissors, and scalpels. They sold for around $500.

The NSS has campaigned for circumcision to be outlawed. "Non-therapeutic circumcision is unethical and unnecessary and is putting infant boys at risk of death and serious injury. This practice could be encouraged by the morally negligent sale of infant circumcision training kits to the public," Antony Lempert, chair of the group's medical forum, wrote to Amazon. The British Medical Association says it has "no policy" on circumcisions carried out for religious or other non-therapeutic reasons and it believes in leaving decisions up to parents, though it warns that there is a "clear risk of harm if the procedure is done inexpertly," Metro reports. (Doctors in Denmark say boys shouldn't be circumcised before they're 18.)

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