The history of medicalized circumcision is a fascinating study in Victorian medicine and anti-sexuality.1 The phenomenon of circumcising boys and girls for pseudomedical reasons was almost exclusively confined to the Englishspeaking world. American pseudomedical circumcision began in 1870 when New York physician Lewis A. Sayre treated a boy for paralysis by amputating his foreskin.2 The operation appeared to succeed. Thereafter circumcision was relentlessly promoted as a necessity for hygiene as well as a treatment for all sorts of illnesses, including masturbation, epilepsy, elephantiasis, insanity, asthma, alcoholism, hernia, premature ejaculation, penile cancer, cervical cancer, and virtually every other identified ailment3

Research done over the past 13 years in Great Britain and New Zealand indicates that Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is an environmental poisoning in the crib. In 1988, Barry Richardson, a British chemist specializing in deterioration and preservation of materials, and Peter Mitchell, a marquee specialist, were working on Mitchell's deteriorating marquee, awnings and party tents. Mitchell's marquee supplier told him that the chemicals in awnings and tents were the same chemicals that had been approved for use in baby mattresses. Mitchell also learned from Richardson that these same chemicals could be converted into nerve gas. Mitchell and Richardson decided maybe there was a connection here to SIDS. The research by Richardson began immediately.