The majority of pediatric surgeons in our area, while not doubting the existence of true medical indications, reject the routine practice of circumcision in newborns despite cognizance of the apparently weighty arguments such as the allegedly higher incidence of penile and cervical carcinomas associated with uncircumcised men. These arguments are essentially thinly-veiled justifications for prophylactic circumcision, however, and are not accepted by most of us. The correctness of this silent opposition is being confirmed by the slow but increasing changes in practice in the United States, where for decades circumcision was carried out totally uncritically as a “cultural ritual”; currently efforts are underway to do away with this nonsense