Via Leslie on LJ.
This is not a joke. I hope someone will tell me that it is, but apparently it’s not.
Someone in Cornell University believes it is PERFECTLY REASONABLE AND A-OK TO REMOVE PARTS OF A GIRL’S CLITORIS. The procedure is done on 7 year olds. I… I don’t even know how to talk about this. It’s… it’s…
*sits in a corner and weeps*
I wonder how it went through in Cornell. The process to get research funded is pretty elaborate.
Psychology Today reports that it was perhaps the way he had worded it: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fetishes-i-dont-get/201006/can-you-hear-us-now
How come the article says Poppas had IRB (ethics oversight) approval and we suggest he probably didn’t? Because what he has approval for is retrospective chart review, a harmless little look back at what he recorded in the charts as having happened to his patients. What he didn’t do was to get approval in advance for the “clitoral sensory testing” that he was writing down in the chart and then used to produce the systematic and generalized conclusions about his technique. This may sound like a technicality. It isn’t. If he had sought IRB approval for the “sensory testing,” the ethics staff might have sat up and asked him what the heck he thought he was doing to these girls, and they would have tried to make sure the parents were informed about the unknowns and risks, and the girls could have refused to participate.
I’m assuming that is how it go through.
I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again. Some people need to be taken outside and shot, post-haste.