Many physicians have been saying for some time that circumcision makes HIV infection less likely. Now the National Insitutes of Health is saying a pair of studies in Africa backs it up with hard data. The NYTimes’s Donald G. McNeil writes that AIDS experts are hailing the result as providing a new weapon against the virus. One source tells him demand is sure to soar: “It prevents STD’s, it’s seen as cleaner, sex is better, women like it…”. That seems to cover all the bases except, as he also writes, the surgery can be costly in the third world, and can be dangerous if done by untrained, local healers.
NIH and other funders stopped the study as the results made clear the benefit, permitting the control group to get circumcisions too. The Tracker received one user’s note on all this wondering if the study was adequately controlled in the first place. Perhaps, one may surmise, the previously-circumcised men who took part in the study had done so for religious or other reasons that also tend to inspire more careful sexual habits. So is the circumcision cause, or mere correlate? Good question but The Tracker suspects the docs made the right call here.
Other stories:
Wash. Post Craig Timberg; AP Lauren Neergaard; SF Chronicle Sabin Russell who also quoates a vehement critic of circumcision to go with the news; Chicago Sun-Times Jim Ritter; LA Times Thomas H. Maugh II who notes circumcision rates are about 60 percent in all of Africa alreayd, but only about 20 percent in hard-hit Southern Africa; Boston Globe Stephen Smith; Guardian (UK) Sarah Boseley;
Grist for the Mill: NIH Press Release; Canadian Inst. for Hlth Research Press Release;
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