We dispute the claim that Schoen represents the North American view.¹ We think that he represents only his personal view and that of a few disciples.

Schoen’s claims have been rejected wherever he goes. When he published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1990,² his views were opposed by Poland.³ When he published in Acta Paediatrica Scandinavia in 1991,⁴ his views were rebutted by Bollgren and Winberg.⁵ When Schoen published in this journal in 1997,⁶ his views were countered by Hitchcock⁷ and also by Nicoll.⁸ In the present instance, his views are offset by Malone.⁹

When the Canadian Paediatric Society published their position statement on neonatal circumcision in 1996,¹⁰ they followed the views of Poland,³ not those of Schoen.² Although Schoen was chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) taskforce on circumcision that published in 1989,¹¹ …