Leonora Lopez,M.D.

I am a family doctor. Family doctors generally like to do procedures. I like to take molds, I like... I like to do circumcisions! When I have done a circumcision and it looks really nice, I say, "Oh! I did a good job!" and I feel good about that. And I feel very comfortable with my skills. And I'd rather do it than have somebody else do it who I don't know what their skills are like.

Even if a person is not very well-educated and they're really off-the-wall in their reasons for doing something like that, they have very strong reasons for doing it. And to me, I don't think circumcisions are a mutilation; I think circumcisions are more of a costmetic, sort-of plastic-surgery-type thing, like taking a mole off of somebody's face, or something like that. And I don't fell in my heart that I am damaging this boy for life. And so, if the parents feel strongly about it, I go with their wishes.

Every circumcision that I have done, you know, I know that the baby is feeling something. When I do a dorsal penile block [a.k.a. Dorsal Penile Nerve Block, or "DPNB"] I know that the baby is felling that. Sometimes the blocks work real well...[She trails off.] I use a GOMCO [clamp], and when I tighten the GOMCO, by that time then the baby sort of calms down. But up until that time, it's traumatic I think.

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