I have to agree with cyghost here. If you are doing the rounds without a condom you are asking for it.
Looks like certain folk just don’t get the concept of risk reduction…ah, well; not my problem, I’m circumcised AND monogamous and I trust my partner.
But if you weren’t any of those things: every little bit helps. Even the lack of a little bit…B-)
A German judge has deemed circumcision of boys without their consent as bodily harm and an impediment to religious freedom in later life. here
In principle I kind of agree with the judge, but if the decision is upheld, I fear it will achieve little more than to create an underground “backstreet circumcision” industry, which will likely do more harm than circumcision does at the moment.
As for the circumcision/HIV thing, I wonder if, among South Africa’s mostly fairly uneducated and naive populace, there will not soon exist a belief that circumcision immunizes you against HIV, after which people will happily screw around unprotected even more than they already do, with even more infections resulting. The Xhosas are almost all circumcised; as far as I know they do not have low incidences of HIV/AIDS?
Once again we are left to marvel at the utter tripe and undiluted hogwash that religious “authorities” are so quick to confect whenever their special privileges come under threat. Each of these vocal nutcases has barefacedly averred that the court’s ruling is an infringement on religious rights and freedoms. Predictably, none of them is able to offer any explanation whatsoever of how it constitutes such an infringement to allow a child to choose freely later on in life what religious beliefs and practices to follow simply by deferring their mutilation by a decade or two (that is, insofar as any free choice in this regard is likely to eventuate anyway, given all the other brainwashing that occurs).
The clamour of self-righteous whining is good, for it marks another own-goal by religiotards.
Edit: In any case, circumcision looks awfully like an implicit negative criticism of the applicable god’s design…
'Luthon64
In any case, circumcision looks awfully like an implicit negative criticism of the applicable god’s design…
brilliant!
I’m all for self mutilation, it’s a human being’s right to do with their bodies what they want. However circumcision at birth is the mutilation of others.
If I started a religion that demands I cut off a piece of earlobe of everyone who does not follow my religion, would it be reasonable for the state to sanction my rampant mutilation spree?
Didn’t think so.
It is reasonable and rational to hold the view that human rights have to become a consideration at some stage during the development of the human foetus. As with most legal and moral assessments, a clearly defined line does not present itself and a measure of discretion is therefore required. What can be held with confidence, is that an undeveloped embryo has no rights whatsoever, whereas a baby qualifies as a human being and should have all the rights usually associated with humans, bar certain rights for which adulthood is a prerequisite. On this basis it is easy to justify early abortion, where the mother’s rights should be paramount, while rejecting religious or ritualistic infant circumcision, where the child’s rights should prevail. The ritualistic circumcision of adolescents, as practised widely in South Africa, takes place under tremendous pressure from society and regarding it as free choice is naive.
A more accurate analog would be if your religion demanded that you cut off a piece of earlobe from your children shortly after they are born, but your point stands nevertheless, because if you did have such a religion the state would probably prohibit the ritual.
The idea that circumcision reduces HIV infection risk is being bandied about as if it’s unquestionable. But the meta-analyses that conclusion is based on have been strongly criticised, as you can read in this paper: http://www.salem-news.com/fms/pdf/2011-12_JLM-Boyle-Hill.pdf
There was a similar study some decades ago that found that Jewish women’ cervical cancer incidence was lower than the norm…conclusion was that circumcision did the trick…can’t remember the reference now but I’ll look for it. Sounds like propaganda to me.
There might be some truth in this in my opinion, circumcised men tend to be “cleaner” down there, and I know that women married to uncircumcised men are more prone to vaginal infections, and its a prominent question asked by many GP’s when a woman comes in with a blazing infection, and the husband often also receive a script to clear up his bugs that he so freely passes along.
Sheesh… Sensitive much for the smite I got for posting my opinion? |-O
Care to discuss the horseshit and attempt to change my opinion?
My column on this, for those who might be interested: http://dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2012-07-03-the-cutting-edge-of-religion
Faerie, battle scars become you! 
Jacques, I notice with dismay that what is perhaps your most forceful point — viz. that tradition is not in itself a sufficient reason for perpetuating customs, especially harmful ones — does not resonate well if at all with others. It astounds me how individuals of an ostensibly sapient species can be so firmly bound by the grip of childhood indoctrination and programming.
'Luthon64
Though somewhat delayed, the predictable repercussions of the Cologne court ruling have begun…
'Luthon64
A few selected quotes from a most revealing article about the HIV circumcision trials.
Quote:
The “randomized controlled clinical trials” upon which these recommendations are based (I use scare quotes deliberately) represent bad science at its most dangerous: we are talking about poorly conducted experiments with dubious results presented in an outrageously misleading fashion
Quote:
Let’s assume for a second that the circumcised men really did end up getting infected with HIV at a lower rate than the control-group men who were left intact—even though, as we will see in a moment, we have very little reason to believe that this is so. Why might that outcome have happened?
If you answered, “Because those men knew they were in the treatment group in the first place, had less sex over the duration of the study (because they had bandaged, wounded penises for much of it), and had safer sex when they had it (because they received free condoms and special counseling from the doctors), thereby reducing their overall exposure to HIV compared to the control group by a wide margin” then you are on the right track
Quote:
What does the frequently cited “60% relative reduction” in HIV infections actually mean? Across all three female-to-male trials, of the 5,411 men subjected to male circumcision, 64 (1.18%) became HIV-positive. Among the 5,497 controls, 137 (2.49%) became HIV-positive, so the absolute decrease in HIV infection was only 1.31%.
That’s right: 60% is the relative reduction in infection rates, comparing two vanishingly small percentages: a clever bit of arithmetic that generates a big-seeming number, yet one which wildly misrepresents the results of the study. The absolute decrease in HIV infection between the treatment and control groups in these experiments was a mere 1.31%, which can hardly be considered clinically significant, especially given the numerous confounds that the studies failed to rule out.
Quote:
Some major issues with trying to roll-out circumcision in particular include the fact that the RCCT participants—who were not representative of the general population to begin with—had (1) continuous counseling and yearlong medical care, as well as (2) frequent monitoring for infection, and (3) surgeries performed in highly sanitary conditions by trained, Western doctors. All of which would be unlikely to replicate at a larger scale in the parts of the world suffering from the worst of the AIDS epidemic. And of course, circumcisions carried out in un-sanitary conditions (that is, the precise conditions that are likelier to hold in those very places) carry a huge risk of transmitting HIV at the interface of open wounds and dirty surgical instruments. So this is a serious point.
What should we conclude? Green et al. get it right: “Before circumcising millions of men in regions with high prevalences of HIV infection, it is important to consider alternatives. A comparison of male circumcision to condom use concluded that supplying free condoms is 95 times more cost effective.”
There is also the danger that some circumcised men may think: “I’m circumcised, so I’m safe. I don’t need to wear them pesky condoms.”
Yup. This circumcision mania is going to backfire, big time.
For the record, I did not smite you. However I can see why someone perhaps would, so I’ll tell you why I think you got smited.
a) Can you provide evidence that circumsized men are “cleaner”. Wouldn’t hygiene determine this much more than a foreskin?
b) Data for women with uncut men having more infections?
c) Is it really a common question? I’ve been present for the diagnosis of this and never heard it asked. A more prominent question I heard is: “What birth-control do you use?”. But then we just have two competing statements with no data to adjudicate. Have references?
the husband often also receive a script to clear up his bugs that he so freely passes along
Or gets passed to him, which if left untreated, would re-infect the woman. How do you go about determining the causality?