Everyone Ready for Circumcision Saturdays?

[3113]

I'm actually not in favor of circumcision...however.....

Studies: Circumcision reduces HIV risk

LONDON - Scientists say conclusive data shows there is no question circumcision reduces men's chances of catching HIV by up to 60 percent — a finding experts are hailing as a major breakthrough in the fight against AIDS. Now, the question is how to put that fact to work to combat AIDS across Africa.

The findings first were announced in December, when initial results from two major trials — in Kenya and Uganda — showed promising links between circumcision and HIV transmission. However, those trials were deemed so definitive that the tests were halted early. The full data from the trials, carried out by the United States' National Institutes of Health, were published Friday in The Lancet.

"This is an extraordinary development," said Dr. Kevin de Cock, director of the World Health Organization's AIDS department. "Circumcision is the most potent intervention in HIV prevention that has been described."

Circumcision has long been suspected of reducing men's susceptibility to HIV infection because the cells in the foreskin of the penis are especially vulnerable to the virus. A modeling study done last year projected that in the next decade, male circumcision could prevent 2 million AIDS infections and 300,000 deaths. Last year, 2.8 million people in sub-Saharan Africa became infected with HIV, and 2.1 million people died.

Experts say the breakthrough is a significant one on par with the identification of the virus and the use of lifesaving combination drug therapy. The two U.S. studies confirm similar results from an earlier trial in South Africa. Given the recent failure of a microbicide trial in Africa and India, and the ongoing difficulties in developing an AIDS vaccine, the potential of circumcision as a new weapon against HIV has become even more significant.

But they caution solid evidence is not justification for mass circumcisions. African health systems are already overburdened. Circumcision requires much more planning than, for example, an immunization campaign.

"It's a tricky one, but it's something we're going to have to move on," said Dr. Catherine Hankins, a scientific adviser at UNAIDS.

"Male circumcision is such a sensitive religious and cultural issue that we need to be careful," she said.

Several African countries have already met with U.N. agencies to explore new strategies for increasing circumcision services. Swaziland, for instance, recently experimented with a series of "Circumcision Saturdays," where existing health care facilities, normally closed on weekends, were opened by local doctors to circumcise approximately 40 men a day on certain Saturdays.

Providing circumcisions across Africa would not be the first time surgical procedures have been adopted by public health campaigns.

"Cataract surgeries have been carried out extremely efficiently to prevent blindness worldwide," said Dr. Richard Hayes, an AIDS expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In some places, the cataract surgeries are performed by trained paramedics.

In recent years, the fight against the AIDS pandemic has focused on the provision of lifesaving drugs. The circumcision data gives prevention, rather than treatment, renewed emphasis.

"Treating people with antiretrovirals is completely unsustainable unless we can turn off the tap of infection," said Hayes.

While circumcision may offer new hope, it is not a cure for the epidemic.

"This is an additional tool, and it must not replace other interventions," said de Cock, who added that there will be no push for universal circumcision. "There is no one size fits all solution for AIDS."

Together with the United Nations AIDS agency, WHO is convening a meeting in Switzerland in early March to evaluate the circumcision data, and to decide on the next steps in slowing the AIDS pandemic.

In the Kenyan study, 1,391 circumcised men were compared to 1,393 who were not. And in Uganda, 2,474 circumcised men were compared to 2,522 men who were not. After tracking the men for two years, scientists found that circumcised men were 51 to 60 percent less likely to contract HIV than their uncircumcised counterparts. Since the studies were stopped, all the men have been offered the opportunity to be circumcised. And all the men were warned not to lapse into sexually risky behavior, such as abandoning condom use.

Scientists theorize that women would benefit indirectly from lower HIV prevalence in men, and a study is currently ongoing in Uganda to determine this. In areas where HIV is spread primarily through heterosexual sex, such as sub-Saharan Africa, male circumcision could theoretically slash the infection rate in half.

It is unknown whether circumcision would be equally effective in concentrated AIDS epidemics, as in Asia and eastern Europe, where AIDS primarily strikes gay men and drug users.

 

[Liar]

So, this isn't one of those "foreskin gives you AIDS" urban myths that pops up every other year and are as swiftly debunked? (Truth there is that yes, myth holds true...if you never wash your damn dick.)


Personally, I still think these are more effective:
http://www.condom-usa.com/images/condomsrow.jpg

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Does this mean HIV is closely related to smegma?

 

[slyc_willie]

Last year, 2.8 million people in sub-Saharan Africa became infected with HIV, and 2.1 million people died.

---

Jesus H. Christ! 2 million people a year? And I can only assume the numbers will rise.

I'm not going to debate education and AIDS awareness in Africa, nor the religious connotations of whether circumcision should be impressed upon the thousands of tribes in Africa.

This is just mind-blowing. I hate to sound ignorant, but I had no idea the African AIDS problem was so epidemic.

One thing's for sure . . . red ribbon donations aren't enough.

 

[Misty_Morning]

I'm sorry...I just can't get past this guys name in relation to the article

"This is an extraordinary development," said Dr. Kevin de Cock, director of the World Health Organization's AIDS department. "Circumcision is the most potent intervention in HIV prevention that has been described."

Hey...I'm tired....and my mind reverts back to a juvenile...

 

[slyc_willie]

I'm sorry...I just can't get past this guys name in relation to the article




Hey...I'm tired....and my mind reverts back to a juvenile...

Could be worse. Could'a been a woman named Ivana . . .

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I'm sorry...I just can't get past this guys name in relation to the artical.

Hmmmm... Kevin de Cock. I wonder if he's circumcised.

 

[TE999]

Lemme give you a tip will have a whole new meaning in Africa if Doc DeKock has anything to say about it.

 

[slyc_willie]

Lemme give you a tip will have a whole new meaning in Africa if Doc DeKock has anything to say about it.

Not to mention 'Nipping it in the bud' as regards the AIDS problem . . .

 

[TE999]

Not to mention 'Nipping it in the bud' as regards the AIDS problem . . .

Owtch!

 

[matriarch]

Guys, guys..........can we save the flippancy for something not quite so freakin' serious?? Please??

This is something we should be aware of, and supporting, not making stupid, infantile jokes about the guy's name.

Sheesh.

 

[floweringquince]

The management is not responsible for the following opinons...

AIDS is Africa is epidemic, pandemic, a plague, a blight that is changing the continent (which had plenty of other problems before AIDS ever came along) significantly for the worse:
- So many parents have died of AIDS that large numbers of orphaned children have been left with no one care for them.
- So many doctors and nurses have died of AIDS that health care facilities can't keep themselves staffed.
- Rape victims primary concerns now include getting anti-retroviral drugs to prevent their getting AIDS from their attackers.

The above is fact (I'll hunt down the sources if you like).


What follows is My Extremely Humble & Personal Opinion, which I do not particularly expect anyone to share:

- I think that western nations and agencies such as the UN should be pouring a lot more money into fighting AIDS in Africa than they are; and probably would be if similar conditions existed in Russia, or the Balkans, or some place where the millions of people dying would be white people.

- I think that anything - anything! - that can reasonably slow the spread of AIDS in Africa (or anywhere) is a Darned Good Idea.

- I found the article on male circumcision very hopeful news.


- (I'll revert to fact for a bit here.) Many men in sub-Saharan Africa having been fervently defending their right to have their daughters and wives undergo what they call "circumcision" - removal of the clitoris, often in combination with wounding the inside surfaces of the vulva so that they will seal to each other as they heal. The clitorectomy is thought to defeat a woman's otherwise inevitable tendency to become lascivious and wanton, the sealing of the labia is to guarantee her virginity.

This "female circumcision" is sometimes called "female genital mutilation."

And women go along with it - it is often women who do perform the procedure, and usually the girl's mother who arranges for it. The societal norms value a woman's virginity and reputation above any other attribute she might have. Men and women alike believe that no one will marry an uncircumcised girl, and that widespread belief makes it fact. Since these are village societies where marriage is one of the very few ways for a woman to support herself, an unmarrigeable girl may well be forced into prostitution.

And if no one will marry an uncircumcised girl, and the only other way she's got to survive is to sell herself - Hey look, it's true! Women with clits *do* turn out to be whores!

(Please not that female circumcision is not a universal practice throughout Africa: it's a big continent with 40 or so different nations and any number of different cultures. (It's hard to think of much that *is* a universal practice throughout, say, the continents of North America or Europe.) Female circumcison is very prevalent in the countries on the south side of the Sahara Desert (Mali, Niger, Chad, etc.) and is practiced in North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Algeria, etc.) to some extent that I'm not sure of.)

The procedure is sometimes performed in a doctor's office, with sterile instruments, sanitary conditions, and anethesia - that's for the daughters of the well-to-do. It is much more often done in the home of the girl or the village midwife/healer, frequently on a dirt floor, with a knife that has not been sharpened, much less sterilized - or sometimes with the edge of piece of broken glass.

The "circumcision" is performed at or just before puberty. When the girl marries, if the labia were sealed they must be separated again for her to have sex with her husband. This again is done by a doctor for the upper classes or the midwife/healer for the vast majority - except where the new husband wishes to separate them himself, with his dick.

(End of factual interlude.)

It is My Not The Least Bit Humble Opinion that female circumcision is a cruel misogynistic travesty. Lining up the men who support, endorse, or tolerate it and cutting off their foreskins is almost nothing in comparsion - but it would be a Damned Fine Start.


- with all this cruelty and evil and death and blood and horror (If you get AIDS, you can cure it by raping a virgin, you know. - Didn't work? She must not have really been a virgin. Better try again.) going on - not to mention the genocide in Darfur, and the war being fought by the child conscripts of the Lord's Resistance Army in Nigeria/Congo/Uganda - if I don't find some silly bit of gallows humor to laugh at, I'll go nuts just thinking about it.

So if the spokesman for the study indicating the benefits of male circumcision is Kevin "de Cock" -
Hell yes, I'll laugh at that (I did, out loud). That sort of thing is just a gift from the gods


- Quince the opinionated

 

[pop_54]

Anything that helps combat the AIDS epidemic in Africa is welcome... as long as the autorities don't sit back and try to rely on one thing alone we should be glad. This new revelation will go alongside drugs to hopefully reduce the disease... Of course the guy's having their dick modified only helps with half the problem to begin with, they are at less risk of catching the HIV... It's a sad fact that so many women have the disease already, and so many children are being born with it, we must step up the medication route as well.

Other things need to be done as well though... now I'm not religion or Catholic bashing in general, but did you know the Catholic church in Africa, (in order to preserve their anti contraception thingie) actually told the locals in some parts that they must not use condoms as condoms are responsible for spreading AIDs. Read that somewhere ages back, maybe they've changed their tune by now.

 

[pop_54]

Hmmmm... Kevin de Cock. I wonder if he's circumcised.

No love... otherwise it would be Kevin De Kut-Cock.

 

[floweringquince]

Just a bump to say I didn't mean to kill the thread, and will delete my earlier post if its prescence is found objectionable.

- Quince

 

[slyc_willie]

Just a bump to say I didn't mean to kill the thread, and will delete my earlier post if its prescence is found objectionable.

- Quince

Not at all, Quince. Yours was a very rational and well-thought out answer. I think there are a few of us still boggled by the enormity of the problem, and to be honest, you said what quite a few of us were thinking.

 

[floweringquince]

Thanks, Slick

 

[slyc_willie]

Thanks, Slick

No prob.