Circumcision is not enough to fight HIV: iLIVE

27 November 2013 - 17:21 By Tom Tobin, USA
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IT'S A SNIP: Dr Thabo Mashigo performs a circumcision at the Boipelo Clinic in Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg. He has more than 25000 such snips under his belt
IT'S A SNIP: Dr Thabo Mashigo performs a circumcision at the Boipelo Clinic in Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg. He has more than 25000 such snips under his belt
Image: DANIEL BORN

I applaud Rwanda’s efforts to bring HIV under control.

That being said, there is no reason to believe that circumcision will accomplish this.  In the US, about a million mostly circumcised men have died of AIDS. 

PrePex works by cutting off the blood supply. The foreskin rots off from gangrene.  I think that if most men knew this, they would be very reluctant to allow it to be used on them.

The most disturbing thing in the article, is the absolute faith in the three African studies which declared that circumcision lessens a man's chances of contracting HIV by 60%. 

There are many serious scientific flaws in those studies.

Here is a professor from Britain's Oxford University, discussing the many problems with those studies.

Those studies were not a coincidence. Their authors communicated during the studies, and each was very pro-circumcision before the studies were undertaken.

A study in Uganda showed that female partners of circumcised men were more likely to contract HIV, than female partners of men with foreskins.

The study cut off, and was never published.

No-one in the US believes that circumcision is enough to fight HIV.

The circumcision rate in the US has been steadily declining since the 1980s. The percentage of boys circumcised has fallen from close to 90%, to 55%. 

The rate is declining in Australia, Canada, the UK, New Zealand, and elsewhere, except where the hype of those three faulty studies has mobilised Africans.

Circumcision damages a man's sexual input. How could it not?

Better, and less expensive, to educate him, and help him to practice safe sex, than it is to remove a useful body part for life, and make him a sexual amputee.

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