Doc Mutilates Little Girls' Genitals: Major Journal Publishes It As Research!

Ivy League doctor presumes that girls as young as 4 months have an abnormally large clitoris—then surgically alters them and tests response with a vibrator.

by Heidi Stevenson

18 June 2010

Dr. Dix P. Poppas of Cornell University's Weill Medical College believes that he has the right to decide that girls as young as 4 months have a clitoris that's too big and needs to be trimmed to a more normal size—and then he cuts off the excess. In third world nations, we call that genital mutilation. In the US, it's called clitoriplasty. The physician who does it gets to publish his results in a major medical journal—and the journal isn't focused on sexuality; it's focused on urology.

According to a paper by Poppas, published in the Journal of Urology, about 1 in 2,000 infants is born every year with genital ambiguity. By that, he means that a girl is born with an oversized clitoris that needs to be surgery reduced. The article claims that other surgical centers have "limited experience", leaving the obvious implication that only he has the appropriate experience to treat these girls.

Poppas is attempting to prove that his particular approach to genital mutilation is better than others because it's "nerve sparing". Indeed, the title of his article is "Nerve Sparing Ventral Clitoriplasty: Analysis of Clitoral Sensitivity and Viability".

And just how does he determine that clitorial sensitivity is maintained? He uses vibrators! Yes, on little girls as young as five years, he applies vibrators and asks them how it feels.

In his conclusion, Poppas vaguely acknowledges that he can't be sure that his surgical technique results in full sexual function. His wording also clarifies that he assumes his method is effective. The last sentence of the article says:

Continued, long-term followup is ongoing to document long-term sexual function.

Dr. Poppas is mutilating baby girls' genitals based on the presumption that they have abnormally large clitorises. He further presumes that he has the right to do ongoing tests on these girls—not to see if his method is or is not effective, but to demonstrate that his surgical technique is the best mutilation method.

Hubris Personified

Dr. Poppas presumes that he knows what's best for these little girls. He treats them as sexual beings before they're out of diapers. He assumes that a larger-than-average clitoris is such a serious disadvantage that a chunk of it should be sliced off—and then he poses as humanitarian by saying he's trying to limit the sensoral damage his surgery produces.

The dictionary definition of hubris should be a photo of Poppas.

Children and babies are defined as abnormal based on one man's hubris. He believes that he knows when a baby's clitoris is too big, and that he has the right to cut a chunk of it out. Then, he tests whether he cut the wrong part out by applying a vibrator—or sometimes using a cotton-tipped applicator (Q-tip).

Try to imagine how a scientist could hold a cotton swab in his hand and apply it to the genitalia of a little girl to determine her sensation or arousal. Just how could the response be rated objectively? As Alice Dreger, who blogs on Psychology Today stated:

What's with the cotton-tip applicator (Q-tip) tests? Yeah, what is up with those? That kind of test is so ridiculously subjective that it is rather absurd to use it as "scientific" proof of anything. You can't guarantee the Q-tip user is applying the same pressure every time. On top of that, many of us feel like it's actually a bit more creepy than the vibrator. I just would not want my daughter having the memory of having her thigh, her vagina, her labia minora, and her clitoris stroked with a Q-tip while she's asked if she can feel the doctor touching her. ("Can you feel me now?") And as a parent, I can't imagine ever looking at a Q-tip the same way again.

The Loftiest Realm of Medical Academia

Poppas represents the best that modern medicine has to offer. He's a professor at the Ivy League university, Cornell, and Chief of the Institute for Pediatric Urology at the Komansky Center for Children's Health of New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center. He's the Richard Rodgers Professor of Pediatric Urology in the James Buchanan Brady Department of Urology at Weill Cornell Medical College.

He is, in short, one of the people at the helm of modern medicine. The National Kidney Foundation has given him the E. Darracott Vaughan Young Investigator Award. The New York Academy of Medicine gave him the Edwin Beer Award. He was made a Research Scholar by the American Foundation for Urologic Diseaes/National Kidney Foundation.

If you think this is an aberration, consider that a premier medical journal published his paper bragging about what he's doing.

Example of Medicalizing Normal Conditions

Modern medicine has gone down a very dangerous path. In its ever-expanding appetite for profits, normal states of health are pathologized, given scientific-sounding names, and treatments are devised for them. Menopause. Hypertension. Hypercholesterolemia. And now, a little girl with a clitoris that a doctor deems to be abnormally large is defined as suffering from adrenogenital syndrome or congenital adrenal hyperplasia—and that, apparently, gives him the right to put her through mutilation surgery.

There is an assumption that anything outside a certain norm should be corrected, making them fair game for modern medicine's profiteering. At the very least, how can anyone—doctor or parent—presume to have a girl's clitoris changed simply because it's outside an arbitrary norm? How can anyone presume to determine a child's destiny by risking harm from surgery and associated drugs, psychological trauma, and likely loss of sexual sensations?

The facts are that a doctor from the highest levels of his profession presumes to mutilate girls' genitals, stimulates children with a vibrator to prove that his method is successful, and a major medical journal published his article promoting those actions. That should be more than enough to demonstrate that modern medicine has become a law unto itself, and that the rest of us are nothing more than pawns for them to manipulate for their own ends.

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