Discuss Paul Perchal's Dec. 3 Op-Ed article
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People who promote male circumcision but think female circumcision is brutal are circumcised in mind (unable to think clearly). Unfortunately someone with inability to criticize a study that is totally flawed is holding a power position and continues propaganda.
Art P @ 8:43 AM PST, Dec 4, 2008
The author also fails to note that the United States has both the highest per capita rate of HIV infection and the highest rate of circumcision in the industrialized world. Western Europe has no circumcision besides the religious variety and some of the lowest HIV rates in the world. Same for Japan. Even among somewhat less developed countries, such as those in South America and Mexico, they too have low circumcision rates and lower per capita HIV rates than we do. See the CIA World Factbook for a rank order of HIV rates throughout the world. I sincerely hope that mother didn't listen to you an did her own research.
JorgeM @ 5:50 AM PST, Dec 4, 2008
Studies prove that use of condoms is 95% more effective than male circumcision in reducing rates of HIV transmission. There are cemeteries full of circumcised AIDS victims. Telling the public that circumcision will prevent your son, or your daughter, from getting HIV is just not scientific.
Camellia May @ 5:27 AM PST, Dec 4, 2008
This article is so much in tilt, I held on. Your neighbor should be advised, properly, that the foreskin is her SON's property and therefore his decision to make. My 2 sons remain attached to their foreskins and have thanked us for leaving them the way they were born - and that's what this woman should know.
Laurie @ 4:43 AM PST, Dec 4, 2008
By the way, the plural of millenium is millenia, not milleniums. Starting to cut the copyeditor budget too, eh Sam?
Brian @ 10:30 PM PST, Dec 3, 2008
Circumcision has been a "cure" looking for a disease for a very long time. In the 19th C, they starting doing it non-religiously to prevent masturbation, which they serious thought caused all kinds of diseases. (It didn't work, but it scared the boys out of getting caught, so they thought it did.) Then they said it prevented sexually transmitted diseases (it doesn't). Then came cancer and urinary tract infections (it might, but not enough to justify doing it). It would be surprising if they didn't make the claim about HIV/AIDS. Some people just like the idea of cutting off foreskins - especially if they've had their own cut off.
Hugh7 @ 10:22 PM PST, Dec 3, 2008
Even if circumcision does half-protect men from infection from women (but not women from men) in Africa, where the rate is high, that wouldn't justify doing it to a baby in the US, where the rate is much lower and the main vectors are receptive anal sex with men, and dirty needles. Peter Perchal's organisation is leading the drive to circumcise Africa. His article seems to be using HIV as a stalking horse to keep on circumcising the US (where the rate in the western states is more like one in three).
Hugh7 @ 10:20 PM PST, Dec 3, 2008
Your neighbour needs better information before she chooses. The evidence is far from "irrefutable". While a huge number (10,900) began the three trials, only 201 (64 of them circumcised) are known to have contracted HIV, while 673 (327 circumcised) dropped out, their HIV status unknown. The researchers wouldn't tell the men their test results, but they were encouraged to get tested down the road. If you learnt you had HIV, after a painful operation you'd hoped would prevent it, would you go back? So it's quite possible that just as many circumcised men got HIV as non-circumcised, and circumcision didn't protect anyone at all.
Hugh7 @ 10:18 PM PST, Dec 3, 2008
your article is written on the basis of research thats good. but our so called secular friends opposed it. the use of condom is the best way to prevent AIDS but circumcision is also a good way to reduce AIDS.
Zaki Ahmad @ 9:48 PM PST, Dec 3, 2008
All the clichees are back: 'most sensitive parts'. 'male genital mutilation'. It seems as though any time the subject of circumcision is discussed the foreskin lobby comes out of the wood-works in full force. The rhethoric would be laughable, if it wasn't pathetic... and recently DANGEROUS! Friends of former South African reality denyer Mbeki no doubt!
Bernhard @ 6:19 PM PST, Dec 3, 2008
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