Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Circumcision HIV news frenzy

There's been alot of press lately covering two studies in Africa that show circumcised men contracting HIV at a slower rate than uncircumcised men. Pushing aside all the debate over what this does or doesn't mean, I want to know why there's so little press attention given to contradicting studies. For example an even newer study has shown that African adolescents who are still virgins, but have been circumcised are much more likely to have HIV than uncircumcised ones because they were circumcised in unsanitary conditions with shared knives.

My only guess is that the typical American man who was circumcised at birth doesn't want to admit his circumcision is useless. He doesn't want to admit his parents made a mistake. He doesn't want to admit that an ancient ritual body mod from the Bible is nothing more than an ancient ritual leftover in modern society. He doesn't want to admit he's missing out on something special. A recent South Korean study surveyed a large number of men who were circumcised after sexual maturity, and the majority reported worse sex, but that news story was drowned out by all the "Circumcision = HIV Vaccine!" headlines.

Judging by my previous posts, I have no readers, but if you read this, please comment on why you think there's no balance in the press coverage, or whether you had even heard of the contradicting studies.

8 comments:

Ray Lee said...

I guess properly washing your wang and practicing safe sex is just too hard for some uncut men. Or maybe the problem is lack of sex ed in Africa.

Anonymous said...

Iggy (If you are the Iggy who left a comment on the Circumcision article on my blog www.quickswood.com),
Glad you enjoyed the article and many thanks for your comment. Maybe some of your readers might enjoy it as well and I would be interested in more views on the topic.
Cheers,

Joseph Froncioni

Beanie's Appa said...

Yes, I am that Iggy, and thanks for your comment, but I'm afraid my only readers are my friends who I told to read my blog. Of course, that's probably my fault for posting about once every 2 months.

Unknown said...

...well Iggy, I'll keep checking yours if you keep checking mine...

Cheers,

Joseph

Anonymous said...

hey, thanks for your recent comments on my blog. i moved over to wordpress a few months ago though, and you are welcome to visit me over there. :) http://crunchydomesticgoddess.wordpress.com
thanks!

Beanie's Appa said...

yeah, I'm dumb, I didn't check the date, and actually I had commented on your blog before. I'll check out the new stuff at wordpress.

sweetviolet said...

I guess what leaves me perplexed, is I can't think of a single other example of routinely amputating a body part in order to lessen one's chances of contracting a disease in the future. There is the rare instance of a preventive mastectomy, a choice for an informed adult with a very high likelihood of contracting breast cancer. I suppose to make it close to even, we'd have to be performing routine mastectomies on baby girls.

Beanie's Appa said...

Brazil says no to circumcision:
http://vivirlatino.com/2007/04/03/brazil-says-no-to-circumcision.php

Chinese health official says "it's much more reasonable to get people to use condoms."
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=61183