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This is so irresponsible. Circumcision is as bad if not worse in terms of damage than all types of FGM bar type 3. It destroys sexual pleasure. It does not prevent STDs and condoms still have to be worn regardless. This is quack pseudoscience at its worst. Male circumcision AKA male genital mutilation should be banned. I was duped into it at 14 for 'phimosis' and it destroyed all my potential for sexual pleasure.
This would be more convincing if it were independent of all the other studies claiming to show benefits of circumcision in the last few years. All have been written by the same small coterie of interconnected researchers - Bertran Auvert led the study at Orange Farm that started the circumcison craze. Circumcision carries a lot of cultural baggage, and needs more than the usual amount of skepticism, rather than the gung-ho adoption it has had so far.
Your headline is a bit misleading. If a man is HIV positive, his ability to transmit is totally unaffected by whether or not he is circumcised. Obviously, if fewer men have HIV, then fewer of their partners will get it too.
Fascinating, but in the ONLY controlled trial of male to female transmission (Wawer/Gray Uganda 2009) cutting he men INCREASED risk to their female partners by 50%. The mostly-cut US has three times the HIV incidence seen in Europe where circumcision is rare. Circumcision is neither necessary nor sufficient to thwart AIDS.
From a USAID report. "There appears no clear pattern of association between male circumcision and HIV prevalenceâ??in 8 of 18 countries with data, HIV prevalence is lower among circumcised men, while in the remaining 10 countries it is higher." It seems highly unrealistic to expect that there will be no risk compensation. The South African National Communication Survey on HIV/AIDS, 2009 found that 15% of adults across age groups "believe that circumcised men do not need to use condoms".
Medical scientific research has shown that female circumcision can reduce HIV by 50% to 60% in women. So why aren't women being given the opportunity of medical circumcision like men? scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1113&context=iph_theses www.iasociety.org/Default.aspx?pageId=11&abstractId=2177677
EuropeanMan
Somebody PLEASE, stop this pro-circumcision propaganda!
March 29, 2014