Circumcision May Cut Risk of HIV

No offense, but if someone is sticking his unprotected penis into someone who has HIV, you've already lost the battle. The slim chance that not having a foreskin will help sounds about as desperate as raping virgins as a cure. All thinks like this do is give people looking for an excuse to have unprotected sex one more detail to help them not worry while they do it.

It's irresponsible and shameful.

"It's not a magic bullet, but a potentially important intervention," agreed Dr. Kevin De Cock of the World Health Organization."


Well how bout that huh? Ya mean God knew what he was talking about after all? .......

All thinks like this do is give people looking for an excuse to have unprotected sex one more detail to help them not worry while they do it.

well now you're talking about curing stupidy.....and that's a whole nuther subject.

It is also said to reduce some cancers for males by the circumcision since the uncircumsized male has the folds that breed bacteria and fungi.  In the final analysis, it is not harmful (unless done by a drunk Rabbi), and potentially helpful.  For males.

Females are a whole nother subject.

Agrees Dr De COCK?

I guess that guy was really "cut out" for hit profession huh?

I'm not quite with this speculation. Dirty boys and dirty girls are the cause of the spread of HIV. Dirty boys, uncircumcised or not, spread the infection, and, dirty girls
spread it to dirty boys in turn. Is there any logic in saying that circumcised men are less at risk? Depends who they sleep with.

All thinks like this do is give people looking for an excuse to have unprotected sex one more detail to help them not worry while they do it.

I'm not to sure about this Baker. I really wonder if the people of Uganda and Rakai have the option to run down to the 7/11 to pick up a package of rubbers when the heat is on to begin with? How available are condoms in some of these countries and can folks afford them? In countries where AIDs is prolific amongst heterosexual couples, my guess is anything that helps prefent the spread HIV would be a blessing.

Actually, the way I see it, is this article is bent in no way shape or form on safe-sex, but rather to find any way possible to reduce the spread of HIV.

No offense, but if someone is sticking his unprotected penis into someone who has HIV, you've already lost the battle.

According to the study, this is false.

The slim chance that not having a foreskin will help sounds about as desperate as raping virgins as a cure.

I don't see a 50% chance as being slim Baker. How do you see it this way? Raping virgins as a cure? I'm quite interested to hear you explain this one.

.....and that's a whole nuther subject.

Absolutely, and completely separate from the thrust of this article.

I'm not quite with this speculation. Dirty boys and dirty girls are the cause of the spread of HIV. Dirty boys, uncircumcised or not, spread the infection, and, dirty girls spread it to dirty boys in turn. Is there any logic in saying that circumcised men are less at risk? Depends who they sleep with.

I'm thinking you did not read the study, or you have no understanding of medical research and how it works in finding solutions to the worlds medical epidemics.

"According to the study, this is false."

That's laughable. So you're really saying that people who are circumcised don't get HIV? I have almost daily contact with an HIV clinic, and that's bullshit, frankly. If it gives you a 2%, or a 5%, or a 50% chance it is meaningless, and my statement stands:

If someone is sticking his unprotected penis into someone who has HIV, you've already lost the battle.

...people that laud stupid stuff like this just promote people dying. If you told people that spitting on it gave you a 2% chance of dodging the virus, people would be 20% more likely to risk it. Studies like this kill people.

That's laughable. So you're really saying that people who are circumcised don't get HIV?

I dont think that was ever said or even implied. The study said "cut the risk" not eliminate it. Condoms "cut the risk" but they do not eliminate it either.

"I dont think that was ever said or even implied. The study said "cut the risk" not eliminate it. Condoms "cut the risk" but they do not eliminate it either."

That's not how xythe is portraying it. Evidently to him this is the third world's answer to the condom. What such an ignorant perspective ignores is the fact that the small percent of a chance you won't get the disease promotes a LOT more irresponsible behavior from people who believe they are protected.

In Africa right now HIV is becoming as common as the cold here. In that kind of environment, you want to tell them that if you are circumcised there's not as much to worry about? These people perpetuate myths that raping virgins cures AIDS, how do you think this will effect their behavior?

This is an in-fighting issue between healthcare, religious people, etc., and the result will be people dying. They don't care, though. If you sold condoms that ripped 50% of the time, no one would be hailing them as a "worldwide value". Most people with a brain would call them dangerous because they promote a false sense of security.

But, because of the continual 'to circumcise or not' debate, this will get a lot of play. Then, circumcised people will have one more excuse not to bother with protecting themselves with something that isn't mythological in nature. Then people will die.

What Xythe isn't talking about are the other people in the studies who contracted HIV. These are people in developing countries that don't have much of a chance of getting the drugs they need. They are going to die.

I guess it's worth it so people can make a point about how their penis configuration is the superior style.

I guess it's worth it so people can make a point about how their penis configuration is the superior style.

Somehow, and maybe I missed that part, I did not see that here.

I thought this was "it does no harm, and may do some good". And in that, medical science seems to agree.

"I thought this was "it does no harm, and may do some good". And in that, medical science seems to agree."

A false sense of security does great harm. Anyone who has to deal with STDs will tell you that one of the greatest problems they have are these little urban myths that make people feel less apt to protect themselves. You put out information on a practice that produces a 2% chance you won't get the virus, you're going to have 20% more cases because of one more excuse you've handed the irresponsible.

How many times have we seen studies like this that ended up being overturned 10 years later? Again, what about those 22 who will die now in the study above? Now you'll have people going to get circumsised to "protect" themselves. You think that will decrease the number of AIDS cases? Hardly.

What people like Xythe either don't understand or don't care about is that one irresponsible person in a community ends up killing many. HIV is a disease perpetuated among many by a few. You give one person a false sense of security and they produce multiple cases.

Those 22 cases that contracted AIDS, if given the idea they are somehow more protected, will infect exponentially more people before they find out. And that's if they ever get tested at all since they believe themselves to be protected. You can usually trace the infection in a community to a single digit percent of the population, so those 22 can do great harm.

You give one person a false sense of security and they produce multiple cases.

Well I don't see this as a false sense of security either. It's plain to see from the article that circumcised men and uncircumcised men get HIV the same way....unprotected sex. The only difference is for some reason, as stated, the uncircimcised seem more suseptible than circumcised. But it doesn't let circumcised men off the hook. Otherwise it'd be like Russian Ruellette.

I don't think Mom's are all now going...."Oh I think I'll have my sons circumcised so that when they have unprotected sex later they won't catch that dreadful HIV."

So what's the alternative? Don't tell people the truth because they might be irresponsible with the info?

Who knows? Maybe Baker's right. Ignorance is bliss after all. Maybe we know just too much.

I always thought more knowledge brought more responsiblilty. The more you know the more you would be accountable for.

If you were dealing with people who would act responsibly based upon this information, sure. You aren't. As I said, if circumcision is a factor in whether or not you get AIDS, then you've ALREADY done something you weren't supposed to do.

If people use condoms and behave responsibly, the chance of circumcision making a difference is nil. If people don't, posing circumcision as a ghetto condom just gives people a false sense of security. This is just another of those irresponsible studies that will end up killing more people than it protects.

"I don't think Mom's are all now going...."Oh I think I'll have my sons circumcised so that when they have unprotected sex later they won't catch that dreadful HIV."

No. You have a nation of predominately uneducated, superstitious, poverty stricken people who are contracting HIV in hordes every year. What you'll see is grown men either lauding the fact that they are circumcised and being more careless, or men rushing out to be circumcised so they can be more careless.

This is what HIV educators are battling, and world-wide. The same kind of fear, irresponsibility and arrogance exists in India, China, even here to a lesser degree. You give these people an OUNCE of belief that some hocus pocus can cure/prevent HIV, and they jump on it.

So, you read that article. READ THIS ONE. Ask yourself how the subtle nuances of this preliminary study and its interpretation will be received by people who rape infant girls and go to witch doctors for cures. We are looking at a future where the entire continent of Africa will be politically destabilized by HIV death.

We can't afford this kind of irresponsibility.

You'll have 'cut' men feeling invincible and convincing their equally ignorant partners that they are safe, rather than taking the only REAL course of action that can protect them by avoiding promiscuous sex altogether and using a condom EVERY time they fail to do so.

Sure...but the same thing happens with condom use too. Should we hush up studies which suggest they're the most effective tool save abstinence against STDs? That would really learn those irresponsible young folks.

Same with those damn fools who go skiing. They should be denied medical treatment, because it only encourages them.

To get off my sarcastic high horse, I really don't see what the problem is with spreading this knowledge. Idiots may well take it for an invulnerability cure, but if so what, pray tell, could be said to them to prevent them being idiots anyway? They obviously don't listen to reason in the first place.

Their problems are caused more by ignorance, paranoia, and superstition than anything else, and I agree that it this becomes common knowledge it will contribute to the spread of AIDS, rather than a reduction due to the increased number of circumcisions.

Rubbish. I don't see how it will have any effect, especially when the medical workers who perform the operation explain that it's only a slight reduction rather than a guaranteed preventative measure. It's something to be used in combination with condoms and the rest, not as a single approach.

As for the ignorance and paranoia those will get cured in the plague. The ignorant will, eventually, die and those left will have some pretty clear evidence of what needs to be done to save themselves.

It's probably for the best anyway. Europe was saved from feudalism by the Black Death, maybe tribalism and the warlords will be banished by AIDS. We can only hope that some kind of silver lining hides behind this cloud.

"Should we hush up studies which suggest they're the most effective tool save abstinence against STDs?"

Funny that when abstinence is the topic how this conversation gets reversed. Supposedly it's a boon to the world to teach that unprotected sex with a circumcised penis gives you a chance of not getting HIV, but teaching that abstinence is 100% effective is somehow laughable.

I've yet to see anyone here provide any kind of perspective that argues this as meaning any damn thing at all. The fact remains that if the absence of a foreskin is what you are counting on, then you're already doomed. If you are using condoms, then the foreskin isn't an issue.

...what REALLY means something, and what you'll never hear, is the instances of HIV in those 80% that subsequently get circumcised. This study will be the cornerstone of idiotic blog arguments, regardless of whether or not ten times as many contract HIV after the study is over and they get their magic circumcision.

You give these ass-backwards, paranoid, and superstitious populations far too much credit, cacto.

Not really. I just know from the Indonesian sexual health and population control programs of the early 1960s that they were complete failures for the first decade or so, right down to the quite funny examples of villagers cutting the ends off US-made condoms so they'd fit. But their kids didn't make the same mistake.

I can't see any good reason why Africa will be any different when its governments actually get serious about the problems their citizens face.

Funny that when abstinence is the topic how this conversation gets reversed. Supposedly it's a boon to the world to teach that unprotected sex with a circumcised penis gives you a chance of not getting HIV, but teaching that abstinence is 100% effective is somehow laughable.

You'd have to admit abstinence is an extremely unnatural thing. It takes a great deal of ugliness of body or soul for a person to be abstinent without making a supreme effort of will. It's a cheaper and more efficient use of time to teach alternative methods that aren't 100% effective than something that is 100% effective but has no likelihood of widespread acceptance.

Speak to a prelate and they'll tell you their abstinence policies don't seem to be having much effect. The Anglicans in particular have sunk a lot of time and money into both abstinence and conventional programs and, from the figures, have concluded the second is the most effective. You only have to look at their PNG efforts to see how they've come to that conclusion.

But you're probably right, it's nature's way of weeding the stupid out of the gene pool, so we shouldn't even be sending them anti-retro-virus drugs in order to prolong the lives of the infected. It just gives them more time to infect others, right? Or is that the plan all along?

I gave up on conspiracies years ago. I honestly don't know what to do about Africa. The things the average person in Africa tolerates makes me want to shake them like a British nanny with a baby. Like most populations everywhere they need to grow up and yet they seem to refuse to do it. I don't know whether we're to blame for mothering/fathering them or they're to blame for letting us. But there should be limits to what we give them. Education, yes. But retrovirals to give peasant farmers a few more years where they can't work to support themselves and only spread their diseases further - what purpose does that serve? Our western fear of death should have no place in our aid programs. Good health is for those who can make best use of it, otherwise Tolstoy's right and it's just prolonging misery.

By the way, sorry Xythe for dragging this off-topic, but this is an interesting tangent in my view.

By the way, sorry Xythe for dragging this off-topic, but this is an interesting tangent in my view.

Not a problem Cacto, it's all rather interesting to me as well.

What I do not understand, how this medical study, that happens to shed some potential light on one of the worlds greatest menaces is a bad thing. Baker seems to feel the entire study is fruitless and a waste of time; thats how I'm reading him anyway.

Face it, no matter how anybody wants to juggle numbers, infer this and that hypothetically and/or philosophically, the fact remains that this study shows yet another potential enemy of HIV.

Now personally, I don't screw every pretty girl I see today as I did in my youth, simply because of my fear of HIV; condoms or no.

HIV is a threat to human kind, at least I see it that way and much of it is spread via every humans prime objective; simply to get laid and procreate. Guess what people, believe it or not, this medical study says that whether you use a condom or not, if you're circumcised, your chances of getting HIV/AIDs via heterosexual intercourse, are potentially 50% less.

Some of you have done a fine job of manipulating statistics to suit your needs, and bent the entire subject to another thesis. I never said, nor did anything in the report talk about circumcision as an alternative to condoms, in fact quite the contrary is true. What this article and report does say that medicine may have found another weapon in slowing down the spread of HIV.

These facts have nothing what so ever to do with how stupid people are, or what kind of sex they practice other than to say you may be less inclined to contract HIV/AIDS via heterosexual intercourse; nothing more, nothing less.

Now it seems to me as Baker would toss this study and its conclusions out the window as trash, and take to heart some philosophical debate over physical evidence. Me, I tend toward the empirical rather than the esoteric, and random thoughts of a thinker. After all, it's science that gives credence to the thinker.

This that and the next thing, emperical evidence shows that circumcised males, regaurdless of who they are, where they live, or what level of education they have, are potentially up to 50% less likely to contract HIV when screwing a woman....Period.

To me this seems a good thing. Its not uncommon for some people to turn a good thing into the bad, for whatever resons they may or may not have.

"Baker seems to feel the entire study is fruitless and a waste of time; thats how I'm reading him anyway."

Yep. You keep saying it is meaningful, but you refuse to say how it translates to saved lives. People who have unprotected sex won't dodge the bullet forever. You may get by for two years, but eventually the coin will land on the other side. Since you admit that this isn't 100% effective, you have to admit that people who use this as an answer will eventually be unlucky in the odds.

"What this article and report does say that medicine may have found another weapon in slowing down the spread of HIV."

• Unprotected sex is not a weapon against HIV.
• The only way your foreskin matters is if you are having unprotected sex.
• The only people who would feel empowered by this study are people who have unprotected sex.
• Individuals infect numerous others, that's the nature of the disease.
• If the study promotes *any* extra unprotected sex, it has caused an INCREASE in cases, not a decrease, as those 22 people who contracted it pass it off to multiple partners.

Frankly Xythe, I don't think you know a damn thing about the disease, nor do I think anyone else here lauding this study does. I have daily contact with the phenomenon, how it works, how it is dealt with socially by the people who have it. I know how ignorance, myth, and self-delusion perpetuates this disease, and frankly anyone that hails circumcision as a "weapon" is perpetuating an environment that kills people.

If you tell people that cutting off their foreskin will make unprotected sex safer, you are killing people. Period. Any myth of safer unprotected sex is a HARM, not a help. I don't see the point in continuing a conversation with someone who would believe otherwise, because they just don't live in reality.

Yep. You keep saying it is meaningful, but you refuse to say how it translates to saved lives.

Why do I have to do this? I never read where I, or the original article said anything to do with people living or dieing, only that if one is circumcised, that you may be up to 50% more likely NOT TO CONTRACT HIV WHE SEXUALLY ACTIVE WITH A WOMAN. This is what is meaningful; potentially fewer people contracting HIV in this way. If lives are saved, all the better.

People who have unprotected sex won't dodge the bullet forever.

This article is not about unprotected sex, it's about a potential way to reduce HIV. I's a preliminary study, for which I feel certain will continue on. Once more is known, perhaps we can talk about lives being saved.

Like all other matters of this sort, education, prevention and treatment is what it takes to save lives.

Unprotected sex is not a weapon against HIV.

Nobody says that it is. Even protected sex does not prevent aids by a small percentage. But it does potentially reduce the likelyhood of contracting HIV.

The only way your foreskin matters is if you are having unprotected sex.

Yes, that is what the study is about; unprotected sex between man and woman.

The only people who would feel empowered by this study are people who have unprotected sex.

This is your speculation. With all due respect, I can't imagine how you know what the world finds as empowering. I personally find it emporering in that this study will continue on in some form, and may lead to further, more concrete conclusions.

Individuals infect numerous others, that's the nature of the disease.

Common knowledge.

If the study promotes *any* extra unprotected sex, it has caused an INCREASE in cases, not a decrease, as those 22 people who contracted it pass it off to multiple partners.

I dont see where it promotes anything of the like, but rather IF you do have unprotected sex between man and woman, then you may be potentially safer from contracting HIV.

Did you read this part?:

"Male circumcision alone cannot bring the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa under control. Even circumcised men can become infected, though their risk of doing so is much lower,” the journal cautioned in a commentary."

THIS IS WHAT THE STUDY SAYS!

Frankly Xythe, I don't think you know a damn thing about the disease, nor do I think anyone else here lauding this study does.

I'm not a medical professional, so my knowledge of the disease is limited to what I know from my own studies, and from several folks I have associated that are infected by HIV. The people that lauding this study are in fact medical researchers, and I'm certain they know enough about HIV to perform a study, and produce preliminary conclusions. You may know more than these people Baker, and really, you might look them up for employment. Some of them make damn good money.

The rest of this seems little more than some crusade as nobody is promoting unprotected sex anyplace in this article or in the original report itself.

""Male circumcision alone cannot bring the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa under control. Even circumcised men can become infected, though their risk of doing so is much lower,” the journal cautioned in a commentary." THIS IS WHAT THE STUDY SAYS"

People who thrive on hearsay and myth won't read the study. They'll just read your headline, or get it third-hand when it has turned into "You're immune if you are cut".

"I never read where I, or the original article said anything to do with people living or dieing, only that if one is circumcised, that you may be up to 50% more likely NOT TO CONTRACT HIV WHE SEXUALLY ACTIVE WITH A WOMAN."

...

"This article is not about unprotected sex, it's about a potential way to reduce HIV."

...

"Yes, that is what the study is about; unprotected sex between man and woman."

...

"The rest of this seems little more than some crusade as nobody is promoting unprotected sex anyplace in this article or in the original report itself."

'nuff said. You're just as conflicted and ignorant as the study itself, frankly. Every day doctors the doctors and workers in clinics that I am acquainted with mourn this kind of foolishness. BILLIONS of your tax dollars are going to go to treat people who believed they were safer with a cut penis. Thanks for this xythe, it's right up there with your Britney Goes Commando blog.

This just in: Study finds that less bullets in the gun makes russian roulette safer!!! Morons worldwide breath a sigh of relief and reschedule their roulette parties!!!

People who thrive on hearsay and myth won't read the study. They'll just read your headline, or get it third-hand when it has turned into "You're immune if you are cut".

Ahhhh, I see your point.

Is it really hearsay though? And I definately see your point on the second part "You're immune..."

Thanks for this xythe, it's right up there with your Britney Goes Commando blog.

I love you man *kiss*