What the hell?

[jedusor]

The World Health Organization has officially recommended circumcision as a method of preventing AIDS, after studies in Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa showed that circumcision lowered rates of infection by 60%.

Circumcision lowered rates of infection because people in Africa don't clean themselves properly. The way to fix that is to encourage good hygiene, not to waste AIDS relief money on chopping off body parts. And the New York health department is considering promoting circumcision as a method of AIDS prevention. And of course people are going to look at that, get circumcised, and stop using condoms because hey, they don't need to anymore. (At least the mayor has the right idea.)

How depressing.

Comments

[jeffurrynpl.livejournal.com]

You need clean water for good hygiene.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Rereading the post, I see that my point with that sentence wasn't clear. I meant that studies in Africa showing that circumcision reduces the rate of AIDS don't necessarily apply everywhere, and that the WHO shouldn't make recommendations based on it.

[gerald_duck]

I can't read that NY Times article without registering, but I did read the news.bbc.co.uk story a while back. That says "The recommendations largely apply to countries where rates of heterosexual transmission is high.".

I think the problem is more the New York Times's selective reporting than the actual advice from WHO. In a lot of sub-Saharan countries the adult prevalence of HIV is colossal. I abhor the idea of getting circumcised to reduce my risk of contracting HIV from 0.2% to 0.1% (in the UK), but if it reduced my chances from 40% to 20% (in Swaziland) I'd definitely start thinking about it!

[ojouchan.livejournal.com]

1. Most American men are circumcised, so we already know that just circumcision won't help. So don't worry about thousands of New Yorkers thinking it's safe to take condoms off. It's other parts of the world you should be worried about.

3. Jeffury is right. Many places in Africa *don't* have clean water, and what clean water they have is better used for drinking and cooking.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

What happened to 2? :P

I meant that the WHO shouldn't base general recommendations on studies conducted under unusual circumstances, but even if Africa doesn't have access to clean water, I think that money would be better spent on research for a cure. It's not just throwing cash down the drain- there are leads, and more funding means more opportunity to follow them.