On April 7, 2006, I attended the Hopkins All University Seminar on Africa (HAUSA), and was especially interested by the forum and presentations about the African AIDS epidemic. The speakers came from a variety of academic disciplines, including epidemiology, nursing, anthropology, and biology. Before going to the convention, I had spent some time thinking of what I had learned or at least heard of about AIDS in Africa. I knew that the situation was fairly urgent and that teaching safe-sex methods was the main thrust of most of the effort, despite some cultural taboos forbidding open talk about sex. Even that information, regardless of its accuracy, was fairly vague.
[...] For instance, the treatment itself is a fairly expensive surgery (minimum $60 per person, plus the cost and challenge of promoting the treatment to the public), and even then only lowers the chance of contraction by at best - 60%. The remaining 40% chance is by no means a license for unprotected sex, although this misconceived sense of invulnerability could become popular. The bottom line is that even if circumcision were to reduce chance of infection, it is of no comparison to what safe sex can do. [...]
[...] Circumcision and the Sub-Saharan AIDS epidemic On April I attended the Hopkins All University Seminar on Africa (HAUSA), and was especially interested by the forum and presentations about the African AIDS epidemic. The speakers came from a variety of academic disciplines, including epidemiology, nursing, anthropology, and biology. Before going to the convention, I had spent some time thinking of what I had learned or at least heard of about AIDS in Africa. I knew that the situation was fairly urgent and that teaching safe-sex methods was the main thrust of most of the effort, despite some cultural taboos forbidding open talk about sex. [...]
[...] There have been various studies, each one overturned or disproved by now, that promoted circumcision as a way to prevent all sorts of urological and mental ailments, so I was particularly skeptical towards this presenter's newest claim: a massive campaign of circumcision of sub-Saharan African males will significantly reduce the incidence of HIV transmission. The basis of this is biological, as research has shown that foreskin is an easy target for the virus to penetrate, and thus can be removed so as to make it harder to be infected. [...]
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