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Why the “circumcision solution” to the AIDS epidemic in Africa may increase it
11–20 of 58 posts
Re: Why the “circumcision solution” to the AIDS epidemic in Africa may increase it
#12[deleted]
Re: Why the “circumcision solution” to the AIDS epidemic in Africa may increase it
#13There is also the aspect of who has a dog in the fight and skin in the game. When you have Americans telling Africans to get themselves circumcised you do have to wonder what is really going on, particularly when there is this dubious level of 'science'. In the U.S. there is always the profit motive. Hence male circumcision is sold to parents as hygienic and beneficial, they go along with it and the hospital makes so…
> everyone getting bonuses except for the baby boy.
The baby boy may not get a bonus, but he does leave a tip.
Re: Why the “circumcision solution” to the AIDS epidemic in Africa may increase it
#14There is also the aspect of who has a dog in the fight and skin in the game. When you have Americans telling Africans to get themselves circumcised you do have to wonder what is really going on, particularly when there is this dubious level of 'science'. In the U.S. there is always the profit motive. Hence male circumcision is sold to parents as hygienic and beneficial, they go along with it and the hospital makes so…
True, regarding the UK.
There are some complex dynamics at work
1. a conflict of interest when there is a financial incentive to do a surgery
2. a pattern of doctors / father who are circumcised feeling the need to promote it to others
3. an issue where men circumcised as infants are never approached for follow-up consent by healthcare professionals, so never know what happened
4. an issue where men circumcised as infants know what happened but rationalise it
Re: Why the “circumcision solution” to the AIDS epidemic in Africa may increase it
#15The page currently times out loading, but from what I gather from the title, it seems that my distrust in the circumcicion against AIDS stories was on track. It always felt a bit like puritans trying to find empiric evidence for their moral and cultural traditions.
This is why we need to integrate more africans into modern science fields.
There are many African students at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (an alumnus of which runs the World Health Organization).
The discourse at that institution around circumcision, and the taboo of mentioning it alongside FGM/C without saying "circumcision is NOTHING compared to FGM" are difficult
Re: Why the “circumcision solution” to the AIDS epidemic in Africa may increase it
#16Site has been overwhelmed by traffic - cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.pr...
Re: Why the “circumcision solution” to the AIDS epidemic in Africa may increase it
#17The page currently times out loading, but from what I gather from the title, it seems that my distrust in the circumcicion against AIDS stories was on track. It always felt a bit like puritans trying to find empiric evidence for their moral and cultural traditions.
It’s unbelievable how far people will twist themselves in knots trying to find utilitarian justifications for what is, at the end of the day, non-consensual mutilation done for no reason other than “because tradition.”
People downvoting the above - see the cached version of the article to see why the utilitarian / public health justifications are incorrect.
I agree - it's on the wrong side of history. When we look back will be shocked at what we did to ourselves and our children, simply because we could not evaluate a study correctly.
In the case of infants it's certainly non-consensual
In the case of adults there is an issue with the "informed" part of informed consent
There is massive historical momentum behind it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_male_circumcision#R...
Re: Why the “circumcision solution” to the AIDS epidemic in Africa may increase it
#18There is also the aspect of who has a dog in the fight and skin in the game. When you have Americans telling Africans to get themselves circumcised you do have to wonder what is really going on, particularly when there is this dubious level of 'science'. In the U.S. there is always the profit motive. Hence male circumcision is sold to parents as hygienic and beneficial, they go along with it and the hospital makes so…
You can add to that a large part of why circumcision was promoted in the US originally was to control men's sexuality (see: Dr. Kellogg[1] - incidentally he also promoted using acid to circumcise girls). You can bet that the idea of desexualizing African men appeals to a certain subset of fearful white Americans.
That may be an inflammatory statement but if one looks at some of the more extreme corners of internet opinion it's not hard to believe. That said I wouldn't expect most people who the idea appeals to to admit it, but given that science is obviously not on the side of those promoting circumcision one has to look for possible motivation elsewhere.
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/moral-landscapes/201...
Re: Why the “circumcision solution” to the AIDS epidemic in Africa may increase it
#19The page currently times out loading, but from what I gather from the title, it seems that my distrust in the circumcicion against AIDS stories was on track. It always felt a bit like puritans trying to find empiric evidence for their moral and cultural traditions.
It’s unbelievable how far people will twist themselves in knots trying to find utilitarian justifications for what is, at the end of the day, non-consensual mutilation done for no reason other than “because tradition.”
My kid was born in a US hospital and the woman who did the circumcisions was very pushy that we should get it done ASAP. We said we'd let him decide when he became an adult and she said "but if you let him decide he'll decide not to do it" which seemed like a pretty good argument to me!
I did hear from the staff that she got peed on pretty much every time.
Re: Why the “circumcision solution” to the AIDS epidemic in Africa may increase it
#20This article is FUD. If the article raised some questions about the (multiple) studies that show the effect, I would just shrug and let it go. But then to go on and say it "may increase it" is irresponsible. There is zero evidence for this -- and in fact a lot of evidence to the contrary. [1]
Yes, every study has limitations. The fact that you can't do a blind study or a placebo control with circumcision is just a fact of life -- people tend to know if they're circumcised or not. This does not refute the many studies' findings.
Can you imagine the outrage if the author published a paper questioning the effect of smoking on lung cancer, and then wondered if smoking actually reduces your chances for lung cancer? That's what this article is doing.
I'm glad that Gates is standing on the side of science here.
1. http://www.croiconference.org/sessions/impact-male-circumcis...